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News
Want to know what life is like for people facing exclusion and how to help?
Then read our news, complied by a team of people like you, from public service organisations in Devon. They select some of the most helpful news out there and combine it with user-friendly resources and exercises, to help you respond to vulnerable people's daily realities and work more inclusively.
Why not share what you know makes a difference and write an article for us! Just use our article writing guidance to help you get your message about social inclusion accross and enable readers to make a practical response.
If there are issues you'd like to suggest we cover, to help you learn more about tackling disadvantage, let us know!
To search our growing collection of articles on social exclusion visit our Library Page. For the latest, read on....!
Get the Green Feel-Good Factor!
Here's how plants could help you work better with your service users
Trees of green, Red roses too - I see ‘em bloom for me and for you…
And I think to myself… Most will know what Louis Armstrong thinks to himself in his most famous song. But, in our consumer driven and stressful lives, the power of nature to make people think “what a wonderful world!” can be easily forgotten.
Mental health charity Mind wants to remind all kinds of services to help make access to nature a Priority. At a recent conference, organisations and authorities were called upon to help improve people’s access to nature. The charity makes an impressive case for investment in so called ‘green’ activities; In their recent report it was found that:-
90% of service users who took part in a woodland walk reported increased self-esteem, whereas 44 % of service users who took part in a shopping centre walk experienced reduced self-esteem.
Finding ways for people to access to nature is a hot topic! One of the problems is that access is unequally distributed. Groups with particularly low participation rates include young people, low-income groups, Black and Minority Ethnic groups and people with physical disabilities.
From a growing chilli peppers to stoking a campfire, in this article we hear about just two projects – a 'house-plant haven' for school students, and a local project, which helps people to get back to nature.
Read on to discover more about a Devon initiative you can link up with and to access ideas and resources suitable for different client groups.
Can green fingers really help beat the blues? Thrive, the society for horticultural therapy, passionately believe so, and want to get the message across loud and clear. Nicola Caruthers, Chief Executive of Thrive, says:
"Gardening can boost endorphin levels and boost our mood – yet many people are unaware of this, and the many other benefits gardening can bring.”
To get the word out Thrive have produced a new booklet called Harnessing the Mood boosting Power of Gardening. Aimed at people who are going through a difficult period in their life or experiencing stress anxiety or depression, the guide offers top tips and ideas on how to use gardening to feel healthier happier and more confident. You can order free copies of the booklet from Thrive. 
You don't need a garden, or even a pair of wellies to participate!
One of the messages from Thrive is that benefiting from plants doesn’t necessarily mean allotment scale gardening. Windowsill, balcony or container gardening can offer great rewards and may be a more practical option for some people. Even tending to a single houseplant can lead to a sense of satisfaction; become a talking point, or even a meal…
One great idea to consider is a chilli con Carne project. Plant the chilli pepper seeds, watch them grow, harvest your crop, and cook a delicious meal to share! But a word of warning -some varieties are dangerously hot. See the resources page for a website which sells seeds of varying degrees of potency!
Using plants to communicate and create routine
Teacher /psychologist Graham Robertson, who works with students with emotional social or behavioural difficulties at the Thomas Tallis School Learning Support Unit has found working with houseplants very rewarding.
He explains how working with plants can even help to improve communication with the students he works with: As we chat about watering fertilising, pinching and potting, these activities can be used to build metaphors which help identify feelings and emotions.
Graham recalls a time when a baby ‘plantlet’ from a succulent had fallen from the parent plant and established itself all on its own in a neighbouring geranium pot. “Its a real go'er Sir. It does it on its own” one boy's commented. The boy’s empathy with the plant led on to a discussion about independence from parents, and what conditions people need to make the best start in their life. For many students, popping into the unit to water their plants and have a chat has become a routine and a positive point of contact with an adult.
Gardening is just one way of getting a green boost. A local project that aims to promote wellbeing through access to nature is a great example of the possibilities. The Greenwood Project is an innovative service-user led project operating on a small budget. The project offers a wide range of opportunities in diverse locations from the grounds of a stately home to North Devon woodland. Activities have included charcoal making, coppicing, rope making, walking, allotment gardening, foraging for food, searching for glow-worms, and, almost always, campfires.
Unlike many projects of this kind, people do not need to be referred by a doctor or social worker. Participants plan a timetable of activities receive text message reminders and then pick and choose which activities they attend. Even then not everyone participates in the same way, as project member Shelley explains:
“Some people don't like the creepy crawly element so they might just come and sit by the campfire, make tea and chat”. This fluid informal approach clearly works - “Its partly I social thing, but you don't feel awkward if its silent. Its almost as if your task for the day is just being there”.
The Greenwood Project may be open to arranging activities in new venues or entering into new partnerships. To contact them please write to them at the address below.
Emotional well-being is relevant in every context!
One in four people in England and Wales will experience a mental health problem. So, whatever context you work in, its relevant to consider what you could do to improve access to nature for your clients. Whether you plan to embark on a major gardening project, plan a bonfire, or just budget for some seeds and window boxes for next year’s chilli plants!
Further information
www.thrive.org.uk who also have a range of other useful publications and provide specialist training for organisations.
www.carryongardening.org.uk
www.gardeningfordisabledtrust.org.uk/
www.chilefarm.co.uk/seeds3.html
www.garden.org/urbangardening An American website for urban and small space gardeners
www.whi.org.uk/
www.mind.org.uk/mindweek2007/report/
The Greenwood Project
The Bridge Collective Community Interest Company
Unit 4 King Street Business Centre
7-9 King Street
Exeter
EX1 1BQ
Further information
Thrive is a national charity, which promotes the benefits of gardening for people with disabilities. They have a range of useful publications and provide specialist training for organisations.
www.thrive.org.uk
www.carryongardening.org.uk
Tel: 0118 988 5688, Email: info@thrive.org.uk
The Greenwood Project
The Bridge Collective Community Interest Company
Unit 4 King Street Business Centre
7-9 King Street
Exeter
EX1 1BQ
Other websites:
www.gardeningfordisabledtrust.org.uk/
www.chilefarm.co.uk/seeds3.html
www.garden.org/urbangardening
www.whi.org.uk/
Article Bibliography
Ecotherapy: the green agenda for mental health published by Mind in May 2007 using research carried out by Peacock,J, Hine, R and Pretty, J of the Centre for Environment and Society, University of Esssex and presented at conference in May 2008.
Thomas Tallis School, by Graham R, in Growth Point, Published by Thrive, Autumn 2007.
Photo Credit
Sourced from: istockphotos & Thrive
Open Hearts Open Minds Editor: Hannah Reeves.
Migrant Workers in Devon
How Devon PCT are working with BME and migrant communities to achieve stronger, healthier communities.
Devon has long been a multi-cultural landscape - as illustrated buy local research including Devon Racial Equality Council's Rural Handbook, which also revealed that two thirds of Devon's Black and Minority Ethnic population had experienced discrimination. It describes how Devon's demography is changing, and now the arrival of workers from Easter Europe is a key feature of that.
A new report out from the Charity MIND has warned that to avoid future tragedies, all services need to be culturally aware and prepared for supporting people to cope with the pressures they experience, appropriately. Too often, pressures mount to crisis point without any service intervention, unless services proactively work with communities to establish a good rapport and demonstrate their ability to offer the right help.
"Different communities have different ways of understanding and responding to mental health issues" says Diverse Mind Manager Marcel Vige, "and often mental health services simply aren’t equipped to deal with cultural differences. The problems aren’t just an issue of funding - a range of responses are needed. It's important that training equips staff to engage with diverse cultures, but what is sorely needed is fundamental change in how services are commissioned, configured and evaluated. This will only happen if such issues are prioritized at the highest levels within mental health services." In 2005 the Government issued a 5 year plan to deliver more training and raise a level of awareness of mental health issues in mainstream services. Devon is now showing a practical response.
8 Community Development specialists are now employed in Devon to work with the Black, Minority Ethnic and Travelling population on mental health and wellbeing. One of these is Magdalena Koscielak, from Poland who is working with eastern European migrant families.
The development workers’ role is to engage, help and support communities to build on their own capacity to address the issues they face, in a way that works for them. There have been a series of meetings to hear what these communities have to say and to support them in providing for their needs. This work is built on the ethos of a preventative approach, and looks specifically at the social and health well-being of users of this service.
Some of the challenges affecting mental health have been evidenced in the April 2008 report Housing Needs of Migrant Workers conducted by the Anglo Polish Association based in Mid Devon. The study of 121 migrant workers across Devon found that new migrants were often living in poor, crowded conditions; Newly arriving migrants are unable to provide the UK references required by Landlords and find it hard to navigate the private and social housing markets without a very high standard of English – even North American migrants were found to have difficulty with the language of the system.
Combined with the racial discrimination many migrants and their families face, these pressures often lead to mental health problems and homelessness. A number of initiatives are now being offered to try to help prevent migrants slipping into the vicious cycles of social exclusion.
Migrant Workers meet at St. Sidwells in Exeter every month. Magdalena encourages families to come together and to support each other. This prevents isolation, helps to identify where additional support is needed to prevent individuals and families from sliding into difficulties, and improves self-esteem and confidence. Magda has enabled parents to gain control of their lives so they are more able to deal with daily issues. Their children inevitably benefit from their parents’ new confidence:- 'confident parents, confident children'.
30 - 40 children of all ages, and their parents, meet for English Classes in Tiverton on Saturdays. They have a close working relationship with the English as a Second Language service (ESL) and St John's Primary School and Pre-school where their class is hosted. These links and the language support are helping to build up their social networks with each other and the wider community. The language benefits are two way: they are working to ensure that the children don't lose their mother tongue as fast as they learn English - a parent is providing books in Polish - and some of the school staff are picking up a bit of Polish too!
Paignton also has a Saturday school for their children and North Devon’s Multi Agency Migrant Workers’ Forum have provided an information bus that travels around places of work, offices, factories etc. with internet access and various leaflets. This enables people to seek help and advice in an environment they know.
The Development Workers are continuing their partnerships with other professionals and in particular providing training opportunities to include Equality and Diversity. They will continue to use their monitoring forms to improve their service and work closely with Children's Centres, G.P's, youth services, prisons and C.H.A.M's (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service).
To find out more about working inclusively with migrant and minority communities as an employer or service provider, contact:
Magda Koscielak +44 0776 581 9314 magdalena.koscielak@NHS.net
Caroline Nicholson – Tiverton Anglo Polish Group - dziendobrydevon@googlemail.com
The Exeter Polish School meets at St Sidwells every Saturday. Contact St Sidwells on Exeter 666222 to confirm
Useful Links:
Exeter Polish Community website – www.exeter.pl
Tiverton Anglo Polish Association and Involve report: Housing Needs of Migrant Workers.
Also:
http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/Documents/CRE/PDF/newmigrantcommunitiesresearch.pdf
http://www.bia.homeoffice.gov.uk/workingintheuk/
Open Hearts Open Minds Editor: Pat Cusa
Old and Alone at Night
Many of our efforts to deal with social exclusion are quite rightly directed at preventing young people and families from experiencing it. But at the other end of the spectrum of lifetime there is a form of isolation that we may not often think about – although chances are that we may all come to face it ourselves, and probably when we are no longer in a position to do anything much about it.
Good sleep at night is important – without rest we struggle. The night before can make or break the day ahead. This remains true as we get older, but with age, come a host of problems that can make the night a waking misery.
Picture and older person, increasingly confused by dementia, all the more disoriented at night when nothing looks and feels as it does in the daytime. There is no company in the long hours of the night, and your attention is drawn, for lack of distraction and the elusiveness of sleep, to your pain and the indignities of incontinence. You crave rest, but the care-caller systems pierce your ears and, the night-checkers, without speaking to you, turn on blinding lights as they come to fumble for signs of your needs.
Quality of life for older people at night can be very different to quality of life in the day, leaving them at their most vulnerable and isolated. A new action-research study out from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation looked at three care homes to examine the impact of this on older people and the practical measures that make a difference for them.
The report makes for thought-provoking reading, with quotes from older people, their families and night-staff giving a depressing insight into what our own future could feel like. But the report also identifies good practice measures that change this night terror into more pleasant dreaming. Whilst many of the actions suggested are directed at Care Home managers, can those of us with less direct contact with older people help too? Read on to see if some of the following points are things you could influence:
A range of service providers could draw lessons from the report or find motivation to look for ways to reduce older people’s isolation - for example: social workers advising families choosing homes; night sitters; health workers providing advice to family carers; nursing and care bank staff agencies; occupational therapists; schools; mental health projects – even electricians! - as well as: hospitals; private, voluntary and statutory care homes; commissioners of care and; government inspectors.
Might one of these angles be the approach to improving care for older people through your service? i.e. …
- Identifying how you could bring new care and attention into older people’s daily lives that helps build their sense of being valued and peace of mind
- Considering whether you can influence or contribute to the environment in which older people live and sleep
- Assessing the purchasing power you can exert over night time care and settings
- Reviewing whether you can help provide better training for night time care
- Re-considering the way you manage night staff and night environments
- Inspecting the quality of care at night as much as during the day
Option 1 is open to imagination – perhaps you are a pre-school and could do some artwork for a local home or invite some older people to come and tell stories to you. Maybe you could offer counselling to older people in care homes to help them cope with the experiences they face.
Option 2 may touch on your work on ways you hadn’t thought of - perhaps you run a training scheme for electricians, and could get them to research quiet technologies for care homes, so they are better prepared to offer advice.
Option 3 could apply to local government officers, care consortia, health insurance and pension providers, and to us all given the new arrangements for personal choice over spending our welfare benefits.
Option 4 is an issue for both those who should look to sending staff on training and for organizations who could more proactively offer to share skills.
Option 5 is clearly for hospitals, those providing care at home, and care homes.
Option 6 is not just for government inspectors, but also for health workers and families who visit care settings and whom older people need to help make their voices heard.
The Joseph Rowntree report makes a range of specific recommendations for action, having tested the benefits of these during the action-research:
Inspectors need training in night time care, especially with respect to dementia and continence, sleep, night nutrition and anxiety.
Budget holders and personnel managers – should ensure (no excuses) that training is budgeted for and provided to night-staff (and should cover both the costs of training and the overtime for the staff attending). This training must specifically include night care issues, and daytime staff should be aware of these too. The ratio of daytime to night-staff levels needs reviewing; there maybe more going on in the day, but night care is individual in nature and needs more one-to-one availability than night time.
Purchasers/ organizers of care – should provide consistency in staffing. Inconsistency makes older people anxious, frustrates permanent staff, and causes a reduction in care quality. Providers should also ensure that where staff from overseas are employed they have been supported to achieve adequate levels of English
Purchasers of contractors and equipment – Look for machinery, plumbing, electrical and call systems that are quiet at night, and provide low level lighting options, to reduce disturbance.
Home owners and Personnel Managers – make sure day and night managers feel they are working together as a team, with equal value.
Supervisors – make sure night staff have helpful de-briefing sessions and appraisal sessions, so they can share concerns and ask for support. Set up key worker systems with individualized night time care plans.
Providers of daytime care activities – consider what you can do through the activities you offer to help aid sleep.
To see the JRF report and its findings, look at Supporting older people in care homes at night
Perhaps you'd agree that the issue of night care of older people is a good example of situations where clients may feel powerless, even though the people involved directly or indirectly may not realise their relative power over the situation in comparison.
There are many other examples of situations where services could do more do enable clients to have influence in the service/provider relationship, just by being more aware of the power balance.
To use a quick tool to help you think through the power balances in your work relationships, download the Open Hearts Open Minds tool Working out the Links - Your role and how it can make a difference, and look at Exercise 4.2.
Open Hearts Open Minds Editor: Sam Magne