Communitydialogue

Saffron Carnival: Residents speak out

Watch local resident Ryan tell us about his own experiences in Saffron, here:

Ryan at Saffron Carnival 2008

Local resident Carol shares her views with me, here:

Carol at Saffron Carnival 2008

There are many more related videos from the day,  uploaded to Youtube.  As you will see, we gained a wealth of information from just being out and about talking to local people.  These comments and views act as a valuable benchmark for our Community Dialogue Projects, and it will be interesting to re-visit the area in 2009 to see how public opinion has evolved.

Leicester: Talk, learn and plan

Knowledge is power, as they say and that's where we are with the Saffron and Highfields Community Dialogue projects in Leicester.  We are in our scoping phase, getting to know Leicester people; what makes them tick?  What are their concerns?  How do they feel about healthcare in their area?  How can we best support them? 

Karen and Naim (our Community Health Development Workers) are rallying around, bringing residents, practitioners and NHS staff together, to talk, learn and plan.  How can we really begin to co-design healthcare solutions with the community for the community? 

In late summer, we joined the Saffron Summer Carnival to begin our research.  It was important to us to move away from questionnaires and form-filling, knowing that this in itself may create a barrier to sharing, for some people. We chose instead to create a 'roving reporter' vibe, with a small camera crew and myself and Alison as 'interviewers'.  This created a buzz, and a lot of interest from local people of all ages.

I was amazed at the openness and enthusiasm of Saffron people.  It occurred to me that most people are willing to talk, if we are willing to listen. 

The carnival was the perfect starting point to talk to residents and find out what was on their mind.  And, this is exactly what we discovered!  Mental Health challenges such as depression and anxiety seemed to underpin many of the residents concerns, and were also effecting matters indirectly with links to smoking, substance abuse, teenage pregnancy and Incapacity Benefit.  So now we are officially 'Keeping Saffron in Mind'.

Sinfin Funday Saturday 18th October 2008

  A combination of the usual favourites- a bouncy castle/bouncy slide,face and henna painting,food,music and dance workshops alongside the pulling power of some extremely dedicated local people and groups resulted in 4 hours of non stop fun.

Its estimated that over 1500 local people joined in on the day.

What did we learn from the day?

The results of the engagement activities provided us with a snapshot of the communities' priorities and what they felt would make a difference to peoples health. In addition to this hundreds of people found out about our commitment to improving people's health in the area and that we're ready to engage with local people at a level that suits them.

The majority of people interpreted health as being holistic. They felt that the things that had the most impact couldn't be defined as a service but instead as an activity or a change to something really simplistic like access to toilets on the local park or the creation of a space for young people in the area.The top three issues included young people,health and community activities.

How did we get this information?

We worked on keeping the activity interesting, relevant and quick so that the anticipated crowd could all access the activity.

We asked them to tell us their Make  A  Difference ideas ..!!!

At the start of the "Make a difference" challenge individuals, families and groups were invited to have their picture taken. This helped with capturing attendance, the demography of the people who participated on the day and created an opportunity to start a conversation with people. The pictures were added to a display titled "People who can Make A Difference". In total 109 people were photographed on the day.

The visual image of a community who can "make a difference" did attract attention. A number of groups and families responded well to the idea of having their photograph taken.

People were encouraged to look at the background information and respond to the question - What do you think would make a difference to your health and the health of your community? Their ideas were noted on brightly coloured cards and displayed next to the portfolio of "People who can make a difference".

In total 196 comments were recorded on the challenge activity.Some comments were given freely without deliberation. Others involved more prompts and explanations about what "health" means to different people. In such cases we explained our intention to develop improved services that will impact on people's health and asked people to think about what that service might look like for them.

When all comments are sectioned into themes it's clear that participants prioritise work with young people, future events and activities and health.

Conversations with a number of people were extremely detailed, with eight people consenting to being videoed whilst discussing their thoughts on what would make a difference locally.

Realising the limitations of the space given to the activity a member of the engagement team and a local volunteer worked on a detached basis, moving around the various activities and the surrounding area of the event encouraging people to take part in the activity.

For those people who didn't feel like talking we created - Your Space: no names - just your thoughts

We thought of using a book where local people could write down their comments without having to leave their name as people don't always like to be identified. 'Your Space' was a play on words using 'My Space', which is web based social networking site. The 'Your Space' book can be taken to future events to build up a portfolio of comments from local people.

Next steps

The community is ready to work with health on future service developments.

These developments might not be traditional solutions or those that have an evidence base but people are willing to work with us on improving things in the future. As a result of the engagement activity we now have a list of individual's names who have expressed an interest in remaining involved/informed of any future work.The next step is to meet with these interested indivduals at a preplanned Community events/activities meeting on the 6^th November - The aim of this meeting will be to identify and plan future events/activities within the community. The meeting was promoted at the event and will hopefully help to continue the momentum that Sinfin Fun day 18^th October 2008 kick started!

Early signs of success in Derby?

Our two projects in Derby really seem to be getting good participation and reach.

In Normanton, working with the Roma has generated a growing group of people who not only attend the meetings held by our team but are prepared to participate and work with us. The team, Sue & Kay, are organising a conference in February of next year, in which the Roma will play key roles; the conference will be used to share knowledge and raise awareness nationally about the Roma, their lives and culture. There will be invited guests from several countries and narratives from the Roma themselves, describing life here and in Slovakia.

Sue and Kay are also a lot clearer about the needs of the Roma in the UK and we started to sketch out some service ideas – assertive outreach and practice-based services – and how they might be designed to be most acceptable to the Roma families. In terms of coproduction, apart from their guidance and contribution to the conference, we’re wondering whether we could specify a service that hosts members of any new community to act as “ambassadors”, taking their hard won knowledge of UK life to newer entrants who share their language or culture.

The Sinfin Fun Day is almost upon us (as I write in early October); Michelle and Marlene, our two lead members of the community have been working increasingly hard to bring this together, but it’s clearly going to happen and be a success. And boding well for the future, they are now getting a lot of people coming forward with ideas and energy, so their plans for a significant Sinfin Carnival in the summer are getting support.

As a coproduction, the carnival is looking like a success. From a traditional health perspective, however, the story is harder to tell; clearly we have co-created a local initiative that has engaged, enthused and socialised, it may well have had tangible benefits to physical and psychological health, but can we tell and is it enough?

The team will take part in the Fun Day and assess its reach and impact, we will also use it to engage with the community on their health needs and see whether we can identify new capabilities or problems.