Town Hall Meeting

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Andy

Interesting things are afoot in Renfrewshire. ALISS was invited along to take part in the yesterday’s Disability Network Day at the very grand Paisley Town Hall where there was some lively discussion, great participation and some creative thinking. The event was put together by the Renfrewshire Access Panel and the Physical Disability Steering Group. It was designed to get local people together to find out what’s happening locally, to share ideas and concerns and to hear from a range of speakers.

I took part in the morning’s proceedings during which Heather Fisken, Project Manager at Independent Living in Scotland challenged us to think about what independent living really means. To quote the ILiS site, ‘…Independent living means all disabled people having the same freedom, choice, dignity and control as other citizens at home, a work and in the community. It does not necessarily mean living by yourself or fending for yourself.  It means rights to practical assistance and support to participate in society and live an ordinary life’. Heather also talked about the need to involve people in designing services … something we were about to attempt.

As the audience split into workshop groups, a small gathering including Cathy Gormal and some of her colleagues from Renfrewshire Libraries, found a quiet corner in which to try out some rapid co-design.

We’ve had a number of conversations over the months about services which provide advice at a particular location – the local Citizens Advice Bureau, voluntary groups, the library or perhaps the GP surgery. We wanted to explore with the group what works and what doesn’t when accessing this type of service.

We looked at the entire journey – from how we might find out about such a service to how we would get there, the problems of access, the challenge of getting the most out of a consultation and then what we’re likely to come away with.

Time was short but some useful points came up:

  • we often find out about these services by word of mouth although posters work in places like GP surgeries, supermarkets, libraries and the like.
  • access, in its widest sense, needs to be flexible. Drop-in arrangements might be more useful because getting around on public transport (particularly with mobility issues) can be unpredictable – so appointments might be missed.
  • there must be ways of taking the service to people rather than having to go to a particular place?
  • framing the question is difficult sometimes – what is it that I really want to know? there’s so much I probably need to know about, what is it that’s important right now?
  • the question isn’t always about ‘health’
  • training is important for everyone involved in the journey – for those asking and those giving information.
  • we need to come away with printed information and some kind of follow up. A phone call perhaps?

Throughout the discussions the need to have someone to call on for help was mentioned. We gradually built up a picture of an info-buddy – someone who would:

  • help us to think about what we want to find out – ahead of time. Maybe using a mind-map to show the types of information available.
  • translate our needs and concerns into useful enquiries
  • prepare us for the consultation – ensure we get out of it what we need.
  • maybe accompany us to the consultation – or bring the service to us if we can’t make it to the location.
  • ensure we come away with the information we need in a form we can use.

Useful stuff.

As I wandered back to the exhibition hall I was thinking back to the workshop we held in Paisley last year – and how the group I had been facilitating had worked up a nice idea about volunteers helping people navigate the disability benefits system. The people around the table agreed that the services we needed to put in place to make the idea work exist already – they would just need to be joined up in a useful way.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when I bumped into the people at You First – Advocacy Service. You First supports individuals living in Renfrewshire who need help engaging with advice services. They’ll come along to appointments with you, write or telephone agencies on your behalf. I also picked up information about the Renfrewshire Carers Centre and discovered that they run an Advocacy Project that can help carers to access social work, health, housing or education services.

Maybe the beginnings of an Info-Buddy service are already in place in Renfrewshire.

Events like this are incredibly valuable for making connections, starting conversations, raising awareness and to show the local support that’s available – I came away with information about Recovery Across Mental Health, the Renfrewshire Visually Impaired Forum, the West of Scotland branch of Ataxia UK and others as well as some ideas and phone numbers to follow up.

Thanks to everybody who came along and contributed to the workshop. It was fun and useful but, as I mentioned at the time, the outcomes will help us to shape an idea we’re working on. If you’d like to be involved do get in touch.

Posted in co-creation, Health Assets, reflections, workshops | 1 Comment

One Hour Service (Design)

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Andy

What does the future hold for self management support? That was the theme of a workshop we got involved in at the Better Health and Wellbeing for People with Long Term Conditions conference at the Western Infirmary Lecture Theatre, Glasgow this week.

The morning had begun with a moving and inspirational talk from Helen Cadden who described how her life had changed when her spine was damaged in an accident whilst training to be a nurse. Dr Harry Burns, Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer followed by asking what does good health really mean? He reminded us that by focusing on the treatment of disease we can miss opportunities to consider what really constitutes good health. We need to be thinking about assets not deficits. Both speakers had a similar message – let’s focus on what we can do, not what we can’t.

Another clear message was that we can only do this through true dialogue – by recognising that people with long term conditions, their carers and the people and groups that provide support, are just as well informed about how to live well in their situation as health professionals. Sometimes, better informed. We all need to be involved in developing solutions.

This was a perfect introduction to our workshop which, to be honest, was a bit of a surprise for the delegates who had signed up for our session. Due to a last-minute change of programme we got the chance, thanks to Audrey Taylor and Cheryl Harvey at NHS Education for Scotland, to hold an impromptu ALISS-style workshop (with a generous helping of guidance from Snook and Social Innovation Camp wisdom thrown in for good measure).

We spoke a little about ALISS, but focused on the workshops we held last year and described how creative the process had turned out to be.  We told them about ideas that our groups had developed over the course of a day and then challenged them to do the same – develop an idea for a service or resource that could support people with long term conditions. But this time in about 45 minutes. And they said yes! So, that was the challenge:

Develop an idea for a service or resource that could help to address some of the issues that people living with long term conditions often encounter

It was all a bit hectic. Four groups, lots of post-it notes, no tables, not quite enough space … but lots of good ideas. Here’s how it went:

Say hello and choose a theme (10 minutes)

Some rapid intros around the groups and then we threw in four themes to start thinking about:

  • encouraging participation
  • improving self confidence
  • people are good sources of information
  • reducing isolation

Groups seemed to use one as a starting point but brought elements of the others into their ideas.

Shout out some ideas on your theme (10 minutes)

 

Groups were asked to shout out solutions around their chosen theme. Not too much talk about the problems – think about potential solutions. The challenge was to capture them…

 

 

 

Choose your favorite idea and work it up in more detail (15 minutes)

Then the fun really began. We asked the groups to choose an idea, or draw together their best ideas, to tell a story of a new type of service. We provided some blank storyboards and lots of colourful pens. The groups provided ideas, experiences and lots of imagination.

Tell your story (10 minutes)

Each group had 2 minutes to describe their idea. The storyboards seemed to make it easier to put their ideas into context. Each group also looked at the problem and solution from the perspective of an individual, which helped us all to see their story in context. This is what they came up with:

Tom the Dog Walker

Tom doesn’t get out much and feels pretty lonely. He sees a notice that the Scottish SPCA needs volunteer dog walkers – something he’d really like to do. Tom tries it and ends up volunteering his services locally. In fact he gets so involved he ends up as chair of the local SSPCA group!

This reminded me of this post ‘Dog buying not leg chopping‘ by Sir Stephen Bubb.  It also occurred to me that Tom might be able to help out those tackling the challenges for Fred and his Dog.

Sharing Stories

This group focused on the power of telling and sharing stories to help build confidence and to remind us that others have similar challenges – we’re not alone. Some nice ideas about school children collecting stories and people with conditions visiting schools to share experiences. It sounded as though teachers would be working with students to create podcasts which were then shared  with the community…very nice and  an idea that seemed to touch on all of our themes including people being great sources of local information. I think the students at Trinity Academy who have developed their own prize-winning ALISS project would have some  contributions to make to this…

Swop Shop

This group ‘volunteered’ Craig from the Scottish Government as artist-in-residence and as you can see, he did them proud! This one tells the story of Jane who finds herself unable to get out much. She finds out about SwopShop – a service that allows her to trade skills. Using credits she receives from teaching people to sew, she has someone visit to decorate her living room which makes a big difference to her quality of life.

 

Care-Call in Reverse was the fourth idea which either didn’t make it to the storyboard stage or it got lost. No matter, it was a nice idea. This group talked about the care-call services that put people in touch with emergency help and care through their phone. Then they turned the concept upside down and gave volunteers a call sheet to regularly contact people signed-up for the service – and who could probably do with a friendly natter now and again. The infrastructure is there – just a matter of joining some services up (and maybe some nudging of the network providers to provide some free minutes, magic numbers etc).

So, 45 minutes, a change of programme and some focused thinking later, we had these ideas on the table. Well, all over the floor really. Ideas that wouldn’t take a lot of investment to get off the ground. All of them tapping into existing networks, services and technology. So what would it take to make them real?

Well, people are coming up with ideas like these all over the place. This weekend the excellent Social Innovation Camp comes to Edinburgh to tackle some intriguing ideas that could help to reduce isolation, whilst Nesta’s Age Unlimited Scotland continues to support people with good ideas to help their local communities by developing social enterprises.

This process doesn’t have to stop at the scribbling stage!

Afterwards, the conference organisers asked for some key messages from our workshop. Peter summed them up nicely for us … we don’t know what the future looks like for self management support, but the important thing is for us all to develop it together.

Hopefully those that came along had a few thought-provoking moments. We certainly did. Thanks everyone for being such a spontaneous, willing group of creative thinkers, artists and story tellers!

Shall we do it again some time?

Posted in co-creation, Health Assets, Self Management, workshops | 1 Comment

ALISS Project Board Meeting Thursday 13th. January, 2011

Posted on May 31, 2011 by peter


Here’s what we were talking about back at the beginning of the year. All part of open project governance – albeit a wee bit late! Papers discussed are linked to alongside the item on the agenda.

AGENDA

1. Welcome and Apologies
2. Minutes of Previous Meeting (Paper 01-1 ALISS Project Board Minutes Nov 2010)
3. Action points from previous meeting (Paper 01-2 ALISS PB Action Points from 24-11-10)
4. Technical Presentation (in attendance: Snowcloud & Gavin Venters (SHOW))
5. Highlight Report (Paper 01-3 Highlight Report)
6. Future of ALISS (Paper 01-4 Options for ALISS Future base v3)
7. Any other business
8. Potential dates for next meeting:

 

LTCU Secretariat, January 2010

 

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Everyone’s talking about Assets

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Andy

There’s quite a lot of policy discussion currently focusing on the ‘assets approach’ and the potential of empowering individuals and communities in Scotland. For example, an ‘Assets Alliance’ held an inaugural session in Glasgow in December 2010; the LTCAS Annual Conference later this month is all about this theme, and the Scottish Government Health Directorate are busy drafting a supportive ‘Framework’.

But what can you do practically? Where to start if you’re not working within the assets approach already? If you’ve already identified local solutions for local problems what can you do with your list?

ALISS can help with asset gathering
One of the ALISS project‘s goals is to help by being a platform for innovation. So, we’re holding an event on April 11th to help asset-finders to compare notes. It’ll be at the Long Term Conditions Alliance Scotland Hub, 349 Bath Street, Glasgow.

We’ll be looking at the two key stages:

First, find your assets;

One of the first and energising things you can do is find and identify assets of all types in your community. When it comes to self management support, we reckon assets can take a variety of forms – care services, advice, exercise, emotional support or maybe a chat over a cup of tea.

Then, make sure they know each other…

Once you’ve made a list or drawn a map, don’t keep it to yourself. It’s most useful if assets can find each other, so the network goodness can spread around. ALISS is working at tapping into these lists and maps, making Self Management support more findable. While we’ve been developing this, people living with long term conditions have made it very clear that one of the most helpful things we could do would be to create better support for being in touch with each other – so they can be assets for one another.

  • From afar, we’re looking forward to hearing from the RSA’s Connected Communities project, and Tessy Britton with her amazing Travelling Pantry workshop format, where mapping is fun.
  • From near at hand we will be hearing from the Links project about local signposting in Primary Care. And Renfrewshire will be telling their story about what they took from the ALISS Open Innovation Process. And more…
  • The ALISS Engine will also be on hand, for excursion tours and trials for indexing and curating content. Bring an asset and add it to the Engine!

But we’d like to co-produce this event with you too. So we’ve booked extra space. If you have a project on this theme that you’d like to share notes about – please do let us know!

You can Register here!

Hope to see you on the 11th.

P.S.  If you’re feeling a bit light-hearted, the event is a Jamboree. If your manager will only let you out for serious-minded stuff, it’s also a Conference.

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A technical workshop on community curation of ALISS resources

Posted on March 14, 2011 by peter

One of the things that has had us thinking hard is the question of how communities of interest would ‘curate’ (i.e. sort and make sense of) the information on resources that was posted to the Engine by helpful members of the general Long-term Conditions community.

Of course curation is done now, by individuals who provide an information service for their group or organisation. But the Engine offers the opportunity to give this a collective help. That’s a bit new and unfamiliar.

So we ran a small technical workshop in mid February, to explore what needed to be in the design. We involved a selection of directory owners, and other individuals who have a lot of experience of sorting and classifying things. Thanks to the generosity of our friends in LTCAS, we were able to host this in the Hub – food and welcome as excellent as ever!

Here’s how the day went:

  • First we shared brief presentations on the general design principles on which the Engine is based, and on what sort of information we’re focused on in general. So we all caught up with where we’re at.
  • Then we started working together in small groups. First we sifted a mass of assorted materials for their suitability to be included in the Engine at all. What would people regard as a scam? Would there be differences of opinion over what should be included otherwise? Andy had assembled a fairly amazing mix of resources, including tweets, CDs, books, stories, pamphlets of all shapes and sizes, notes on research findings, as well as the more expected examples of clubs and groups. The one that triggered the most energetic discussion was a pamphlet on Tennis Elbow…don’t ask!
  • Then we ‘tagged’ selected items within the set that we’d OK’d for Engine inclusion, applying labels with a rainbow of coloured post-it notes. Different people took very varied approaches to tagging – some tagged almost every word on the resource, others just identified a few general concepts. Neither approach is ‘wrong’ – the important design point is to cater for both. Meantime we are also considering the use the machine’s capability to help with text scanning, to see if suggested tags can be offered automatically. We also realised that it would be important to include the identity of curators’ identities as tags. This would enable potential ‘tag teams’ to co-operate and share effort. This also opened up the potential for a form of peer-group QA.
  • Finally, we turned to the task of considering how curation should be processed, and fairly unsurprisingly took to the concept of a form of ‘shareable in-box’.

A few days later the project team met to debrief, along with John, our chosen lead designer/coder for this application, and he is now very busy coding a prototype for airing on the 11th. April. Fingers tightly X’d.

Meantime, very many thanks to all who participated on February 16th. Here’s very much hoping that you see the fruits of your labours in the design of the actual product.

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ALISS ‘at large’ in Renfrewshire

Posted on March 14, 2011 by peter

This is our affectionate name for a number of activities locally that spun out of our Open Innovation Process in spring 2010. We’re delighted that this has happened. A number of creative ideas were generated at an ALISS-style workshop at St Mirren’s stadium last summer. Some of these are progressing steadily, others less so – all part of life’s rich tapestry:

    Aliss Workshop in Renfrewshire. Jenny and Christine's group

Tools to Talk from wearesnook on Flickr

‘Tools to talk’ is a sort of workbook/diary/filofax for people with Long-Term Conditions. As the title suggests, it’s intended as a communication aid – for families, your GP, whoever. You can also store a note of resources you find useful. Snook worked with two people with LTCs to co-design a prototype, and have now worked this up into a form where it is ready for a trial run. There’s interest in this across a wide spectrum of people and practitioners.

Peter goes along to catch-up meetings on various projects. At the last one we talked about the arrival of ‘information pods’ sponsored by MacMillan, which would be a major improvement for the availability of information locally. Time-banking is another project that they are very keen on. This has good political support, but practical progress awaits the result of a re-organisation of the way the Local Authority relates generally to third sector organisations. Does this sound familiar? Patience is, as ever, a virtue.

Renfrewshire have also been good enough to contribute local information to the Engine already. Along with a substantial file from Grampian Care Data, this has really helped the further development of the data model within the Engine. Last month we had a useful meeting with the Local Authority IT staff – thanks to Cathy Gormal for brokering this. Derek contributed from afar, on ‘speakerphone’ (in practice, Andy’s mobile – this was rather like being able to Phone a Friend). After quizzing us about metadata standards…they declared themselves happy with the very open approach we were taking…and proceeded to spot the potential usefulness of Engine information for their LA-wide Customer Relationship Management staff. Well!!

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Finding and Working with Health Assets

Posted on January 26, 2011 by peter

There’s a new concept abroad in health policy circles – ‘health assets’. Senior health policy leads are developing ideas for an Assets Alliance, which may figure at a location near you any time quite soon. ALISS has been lucky enough (well we think so) to be party to some of the early, formative conversations around this topic.

What are ‘health assets’ and why might they be relevant for ALISS – and indeed why might ALISS be relevant for health assets?

Here’s the definition being used in the developing discourse on health assets:

“A health asset is any factor or resource which enhances the ability of individuals, communities and populations to maintain and sustain health and well-being. These assets can operate at the level of the individual, family or community as protective and promoting factors to buffer against life’s stresses.”

Anthony Morgan, 2009

Some have suggested that it’s basically community development. In this sense, perhaps the new language is the shiny armour a new generation feels the need to strap on when sallying forth to do battle with old and familiar wicked problems. And looked at with a digital hat on, there are new opportunities this time around to work with communities that are other than purely place-based.

Diagrammatically, the assets concept can be viewed like this (with thanks to ID&eA and its Glass Half-full paper):


Why might a health assets approach be relevant? Well, ALISS seeks to make it easier for people to find the local support they need. Looking at the diagram, you can see that existing institutional information – which we plan to work with to help get things started – provides quite reasonable coverage of the two outer circles, on the right of the central wedge, and has a moderate stab at the outer circle on the left. Which leaves a fairly substantial part of the landscape untouched.

And interestingly, it’s this part of the landscape that people with long-term conditions emphasised most in the ideas and plans that they co-designed with us in the Open Innovation process. Ideas like It’s About Time, First Things First, INCA, People helping People, and Plugged In are all based on the importance of people being assets for each other. What could be more central to the Assets Approach??

As the social movement promoting a health Assets Approach develops, it is likely to get practical. Can ALISS make a contribution? Here’s what we think we could offer

  • One among various possible practical foci for the necessary hunter-gathering – LTC-related assets of all types(most especially people, not just the usual ‘worthy organisations’ J)
  • A brilliant means (the Engine) for [collating and] presenting information on the assets back to the community concerned, and freeing up access to this info so it can pop up all over, via lots of intermediaries (as in ‘public services collate the data, make it available for the more fertile imagination of everybody else to make use of’);
  • A framework/scaffold/tools etc (service-design tools & students) for helping the assets do something to make things better (have ideas, visualise them, create plans & proposals, etc.)
  • A narrative for how this can work in one context (the Open Innovation process) – applicable to others?
  • A network of folk who more or less know what we’re on about (the ALISS Community generally)

Of course, there are likely to be all sorts of hurdles between where we are now and making this contribution. To name just a few: resources; the information governance questions around the identification and sharing of information about assets the closer they get to being individuals (but what about Facebook?); and by no means least the desire of communities to be assets for each other. But working with such challenges is what makes life interesting.

Currently, it seems that a Framework is under construction in policy circles. It looks as though this may contain – amongst other things – notes on projects and organisations that are putting variants on the assets approach into practice already (a network); further descriptive material about the concept (homework)(see an initial wee collection here); and perhaps some simple things for beginners to think of trying out. All this looks sensibly ‘preliminary’, and one can hope that developing it further will itself be an exercise in co-production. An early worked example would fit the concept quite nicely!

Posted in co-creation, Idea, intentions, maybe | Leave a comment

Joining the dots

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Andy

Back in the days when there was no web, Tim Berners-Lee wrote a memo about the possibilities of using hypertext links to name pieces of information that could be linked together on the internet. He saw that there was great benefit in surfacing the documents that sat on hard drives around the world so that we could all share and learn from each others’ experience. Later he learned that his boss had written ‘vague but exciting’ in the memo’s margin.

Today, as he points out in this video, there’s a similar feeling of untapped potential. Not from putting documents on the web, but by drilling down into the structure and content of documents, lists, databases, spreadsheets and websites and finding the raw data. And once you’ve got it, linking it up in useful ways.

This linking up of data lies at the very heart of the ALISS project – this is why we’re building the ALISS Engine.

Individual sites create silos of information about self management activities around the web: databases, documents and lists, scattered around Scotland. Whilst this is a great start, we have to know that these websites exist, visit them and then search for what we need. We can use the web a whole lot better to help people find self management resources nearby. The idea behind linking up this data is to get this information out of the silos and onto the web for all to see. For us, this means records of activities that can help us to live well – exercise classes, lifestyle management courses, walking groups and the like.

The ALISS engine will be an index of links to the records that great directory services around Scotland are already gathering – but it will be open to all and in one place. Of course, the key to making this kind of thing really useful is not just to make it available but to give the data some context and show the relationships between different types of data. So, we’ll join the dots and make links where it’s sensible to do so. For example, at the moment we might have access to a record that describes a class for people living with chronic pain. It might tell us where and when it happens. What we’re hoping to do is look around at other data sets that are available and see if there are any other useful services we can link to the record – such as which bus will take me there? What other activities take place close by? What have other people said about the class?

So, the Engine make will the information available much richer – and make it available to everybody, not just those that happen to search a particular database. In some cases, we’re likely to find duplications or different versions of the same information and here, the Engine can help to simplify things too, by providing a link to just one, correct place – the original source.

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ALISS Project Board: notes on the meeting in November 2010

Posted on January 10, 2011 by peter

We had a useful discussion back in November. All part & parcel of project governance. The papers we looked at are all linked to, below.

1. Welcome and Apologies

2. Minutes of Previous Meeting (Paper 11-1 Project_Board_Minutes_Sept 2010)

3. Action points from previous meeting (Paper 11-2 ALISS PB Action Points from 29-09-10)

4. Highlight Report (Paper 11-3 Highlight Report)

5. Communications

6. Future of ALISS (Paper 11-6 Options for ALISS Future base v2)

7. Any other business

8. Potential dates for next meeting:

For a note of the discussion of these business items, see the ALISS Project Board Minutes for November 2010 here.

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Post Natal Depression Support Network

Posted on December 20, 2010 by Andy

One of the common themes we hear time and again when talking with people about long term conditions is social isolation. When your health isn’t so good it can affect self confidence as well as making it difficult to get out and about. It’s easy to lose touch with people and it can be difficult to access those services you might rely on for local support.

Add looking after a young baby to the picture and life can become very difficult.

Post Natal Depression affects between 10 and 15% of new mothers and can occur days, weeks or months following birth. It often leads to anxiety, exhaustion, loss of appetite or over eating. A rural location, low income or a lack of accessible information can contribute to both emotional and physical isolation.

So when staff at The Aberdeen Signposting Project noticed that they were regularly being asked for support for mums with post natal depression across Aberdeenshire, they began to explore how they could provide a service for new mums over such a geographically dispersed area.

The answer was to use a range of technologies, as well as some face-to-face support, to get their message across and to connect with service users, providing information when and where they needed it. The Post Natal Depression Support Network, funded by the Long Term Conditions Alliance Scotland,  launched in October and is quickly growing with users accessing the online forum and making use of the email and text support services.

The central aim of the service is to help individuals to identify their needs, provide them with tools to better decide what’s right for them and to then develop their own self management strategies. A key aim for the online forum is to help them “… realise that what they are feeling is not abnormal and that the majority of feelings they have are common to those affected by PND, helping them to de-stigmatise the condition in their own minds”.

The signposting service is quickly establishing a presence on the web, using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Posted in Self Management, Services | Leave a comment