I collect people in much the same way that others might collect vintage clothing. Some stand out because they are in a window display. They speak to you as you walk down the street, appealing to your sense of style or utility or values. But you may have to rummage for other pieces. And there, right at the back, in the corner, is a piece with possibilities. This is the basis of how we build community to enable social prescribing.
Collecting
And I think ‘maybe if I pair this scarf with that jumper, I can give it a life.’ Often, it isn’t about an individual piece, it is about the ensemble – how by combining colours, fabrics and designs you can turn the everyday into something remarkable. By combining what is good about a place, community grows.
Or maybe I just need something to keep me warm in winter – something I can afford – something I feel good about because I’m avoiding wasting the planet’s resources by buying new. I come from a frugal family you see – my grandmother Florrie used to darn socks you know. So, I guess that I’m hardwired to hunt out a bargain. Community wealth building starts with finding and connecting assets that aren’t necessarily monetary.
The collector of vintage clothing knows that they are wearing history. It’s been places; the fabric has been altered by the experience of the wearer. That pair of jeans hasn’t just been thrown away. The donor has given careful consideration to whether someone else might appreciate it. Citizen experience can likewise be passed from person to person.
Collecting is what leaders do: Collect – Connect – Respect.
And of course, listen with fascination and empathy.
Now a little word about what I mean by collecting: many of you might be thinking that I am speaking about networking – but to me, collecting isn’t about me and who I can connect with to make my venture a success. Collecting is about appreciating, about valuing people and what they can contribute to a joint endeavour.
The role of ‘systems convenor’ is now entering the health and care lexicon. Perhaps this is the role that you take once you have collected the people with strengths, skills and talents. System convenors look across the landscape at what is going on and draw people together across difficult boundaries to facilitate conversations and opportunities to find solutions to problems.
Collecting book contributors
I’ve now edited a book about social prescribing, and I’ve applied the same thinking that I use for vintage clothes shopping to the process. You see I thought that, if I collect the right people to contribute to my book, maybe the combined ensemble might have something useful to say. Because the whole idea about finding solutions to health and wellbeing woes by ‘prescribing’ social activities has been much discussed, both positively and negatively. We need a holistic view of where we have got to, because I believe that a workable social prescribing approach isn’t a destination but a journey that will unfold over time. We need some guidance now from diverse voices on how social prescribing can help us to achieve their aim of health that can be made at home and how we might keep hospitals for repairs.
I decided that the book should summarise the current position: social prescribing’s history and the evidence behind it, followed by an exploration of paradigms, or ways of looking at how wellbeing is created. Then of course, we need a wide range of critiques of social prescribing, followed by various contributors describing how they practice social prescribing.
I set about exploring my collection of people and asking them if they would contribute a chapter to my book or put me in contact with people from their own collection who might help. It is of course very important as I said to search in corners for the right people, because I didn’t just want well known authorities like Michael Marmot, Cormac Russell and Gus O’Donnell, I wanted those seldom heard/easily ignored voices too, like Simon Cramp and David Ashton, talking with authority about their personal experiences of social prescribing – both pretty good and pretty awful.
There is not one best way to develop social prescribing. My contributors gave me food for thought about
- The problem we are solving: is it about addressing rising demand or helping people to flourish?
- Understanding what makes us well as well as what might help us when we are sick and how we might communicate the difference to the public
- Whether and how social prescribing ‘works’
- How social prescribing should be resourced and designed
- The economic theories might support wellbeing and wealth-building
- The real drivers that will help tackle health inequalities
- The importance of giving away power, understanding culture and behaviour and recognising alienation
- Considering how the future health and care workforce might develop.
I very much hope that, like when deciding which top goes with what pants, I have managed to put together a balanced collection of voices that have history and experience on their side. They all come from different places, ages and times, just like pre-loved jeans. My collection expands beyond health and care, with reflections from Noel Sharpe, who runs a social housing company in Bolton, Ged Devereux from fire and rescue and Justin Srivastava from the police, because social prescribing embraces the social determinants of health.
Connecting
I saw my father Geoff collecting people every Saturday. He always did the shopping whilst my mum ran her hairdressing salon. I was designated bag-carrier and audience. My father was a super-salesman, somewhat toe-curling-ly ‘hail fellow, well met’. He chatted everyone up, he persuaded, he cajoled and he was very good at winning stand up rows as well, like when someone able bodied parked in his disabled space on Bolton Market. Well, as usual with your parents, you copy the good bits and try to dodge the bad bits. As a somewhat introverted spekky asthmatic child, I remember the exact moment that I decided to mimic my father’s ability to reach people. I was facilitating a diabetes network meeting at the time. And afterwards I heard that I was a potential chief executive. Well, that never happened because I was destined for another path; one of community development in communities experiencing disadvantage. But, on reflection, collecting is what leaders do – collect, connect and respect. And of course, listen with fascination and empathy. Telling your story to someone who is really listening promotes healing.
And then, years later, I met a retired health visitor called Hazel Stuteley, who ran an extraordinary organisation called Connecting Communities or C2, as part of the University of Exeter. Like dad, she is a people collector, except that she calls it being a ‘serial connector’. And, like my dad, Hazel has an extensive address book of people and an intuitive skill of knowing which person can help another person. She says it is about finding the assets in the community and then introducing them to each other, with meaning and purpose, as if she is running a sort of Match.com of wellbeing.
I saw Hazel listen and understand. I saw her gain entrance to hallowed halls because of her increasing fame as someone who could enable communities to turn deep disadvantage around. And as she entered these halls, she ushered in the authentic voices of real people. And I saw the power of those voices to change policy. Hazel kicked doors in to let residents pass. So sometimes the serial connecting can be more guerrilla diplomacy – but it works – because I’ve done it too. Of course, I asked Hazel and her close colleague Merron Simpson of The Health Creation Alliance to write a chapter in my book with some tips for readers.
When my father died, to my surprise I discovered in his papers that he wasn’t all talk and had chaired the local British Heart Foundation branch. He had persuaded the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, for whom he sold advertising space, to support his favourite charity, the Samaritans.
I developed pneumonia one year whilst on a New Year visit to York and dad couldn’t drive over the Pennines safely due to snow. Instead, in true Geoff-style, a captain from the Salvation Army came to comfort me, all due to the strong support that dad offered to his organisation. Reciprocity comes from connecting.
Connectors like my father are celebrated in Malcolm Gladwell’s famous book on tipping point leadership. They have a disproportionate number of contacts, knowledge and social skills across many different worlds that can spread a message effectively. Believe you me, if my father found a way to make money by investing, he told literally everyone that he met, even the man he met casually in the street. By contrast, my focus as a more reserved connector than my father is to take ideas from a wide range of people, triangulate them to look for common themes and evidence and then spread them by publishing them.
Respecting
My approach as a health professional long ago enlarged from needs-based, caring and curing to recognising and appreciating a community’s strengths and skills, something I learnt from Cormac Russell, Jane Foot and Trevor Hopkins. Everyone I meet is good at something and has a contribution to make. I just want to work out what.
I was listening to an interview being recorded with Maff Potts, the founder of an organisation called Camerados, in a teepee in a hospital atrium in Blackpool. This teepee was a ‘public living room’: a place where everyone, staff, patients and visitors could sit, have a cuppa and chat and ‘be a Camerado’, or friend, to others. Strange things happened in that teepee. Like when a visitor emotionally supported an exhausted surgeon.
Maff had worked for years with the homeless before establishing Camerados. Then to my delight and surprise he told the interviewer that the one thing that he had learned that really helped homeless people to move on was to ask them for help. People grow when you do.
One day I found a pair of jeans in a charity shop in Altrincham. They were pink-trimmed denim, but had no buttons, yet something made me buy them. Later I discovered that they were expensive designer jeans that should have had Swarovski crystal buttons, so the previous owner must have cut them off before donating them. Likewise, I met a father in his early 30’s in a café in Salford who had barely left his house in 12 years due to agoraphobia brought on by trauma. He sat cloaked in leather and said very little except for ‘thank you very much’ when I invited him to judge a children’s competition. That man went on to champion the wellbeing of dozens of fathers, just like him. He changed their lives. His story and the project that he worked with me on became so apocryphal that it is now taught at the University of Salford. He was just like my jeans without the buttons. Sew back the missing bits and their value becomes visible again. And all I had to do was to respect him as a father and ask him for his help, so that he could help other fathers.
Collect, connect, respect
We are joined by a common humanity, yet there is much that divides us on our journey to wellbeing. We cannot collect people, their skills, talents and ideas by travelling the same routes every day. We must make the effort to go to the ‘shops’ that we have never been into and speak to people that we have never spoken to. We must embrace being uncomfortable, being the outsider and having different opinions. I have edited a book about social prescribing that reflects this diversity of thought. There are no right answers, just a curiosity and openness to understand that by connecting with and respecting others, we will find some ideas.
Social Prescribing: Paradigms, Perspectives and Practice is available for preorder here and will be published globally on 14 November 2024.
Heather Henry is a Queen’s Nurse, writer and social entrepreneur. She is a bit vain and has an unhealthy obsession with clothes.