Can you help @Chill4usCarers?

 

 I have long been a supporter of the inspiring Wendy Maxwell (pictured) and Chill 4 Us Carers who provide a unique online community for carers which is run by carers all of whom contribute their time on a voluntary basis. The site has a 24-hour forum and chat room where members can post messages or reach out when they feel under pressure, there is an archive with games for members to play at all times of the day or night and issues can be discussed privately, without details being available to view online.

As Wendy says  “You can become a carer in an instant and when it happens to you, you can suddenly find yourself in a very difficult situation. You’ve got someone to look after who is ill, you need to find help and yet you’re stuck in your house. That’s when the internet can make all the difference.

“When you are a carer, it can be frightening and you can feel very alone – we are the only peer support group for carers in the UK and it’s vital that people have somewhere they can go to talk to other people: they may not have the chance to speak to anyone else at all, otherwise.”

Chill 4 Us Carers needs your help to survive because it is starved of funding. With hundreds of members across the country Wendy is passionate about bringing the outside world to those stuck inside four walls and has campaigned tirelessly to give computers to those who can’t afford them.

The innovative Computers for Carers scheme provides free laptops which are given to carers and offers a lifeline for those who need them most. Wendy is asking anyone who has a working laptop which they no longer need to donate it to the organisation so they can give it to a carer.

She is also hoping to raise the necessary £5,000 to turn Chill 4 Us into a registered charity which would make future fundraising and grant applications far simpler and is also looking towards a time when she could hand the reins to another member to run the sites. Charity status would mean the organisation could look to a future where a paid member of staff could run the site for a few hours every day, from home.

Read the full article here: Can you help to bring the outside world into the live of those unable to leave their home?

If you would like to make a donation, contact Wendy through the Chill 4 Us website or onTwitter or Facebook.

Reflecting on the movers and shakers interviewed for the Disruptive Social Care podcasts

The debate surrounding patient feedback prompted by the report from BBC Newsnight has reinforced for me the importance of an independent voice championing different ways of promoting new thinking about connected care across the care, health and housing sectors.

We started the Disruptive Social Care podcasts to showcase digital innovations and with thousands of downloads the popularity of the podcasts showed there was a market but sadly not the financial support or sponsorship to maintain our vision of connecting the worlds of care and technology innovation. I am proud of the platform we have created which has provided a voice especially for smaller and unique enterprises which are offering choices about how care and support can be provided differently in a digitally connected society.

I have to ask why so many care organisations still prefer to publish reports with few indications about their impact beyond publication rather than using digital technology to communicate and promote innovative thinking and debate ?  

We plan to produce at least two podcasts this year. If you are an innovative organisation who want to explore how to communicate with a wider audience and use the power of digital engagement to build more connected communities do get in touch!

A big thank you to all of our guests on the Disruptive Social Care podcasts. A roll call of movers and shakers passionate about improving care, health and housing services and exploring the potential of digital technology:  Dominic Campbell, Paul Taylor, Paul Burstow MP, Richard Humphries, Anthony Ribot, Mark Brown, Paul Hodgkin, Andrea Sutcliffe, Martyn Sibley, Murtz Abidi and Helen Keegan.

How to keep up to date with news. innovations and events in care – my online roladex system!

A great interview with Dominic Campbell inspirational founder of Future Gov that we did not want to edit it but decided to give it to you in two parts!

Follow Dominic on Twitter and check out FutureGov and their projects: http://wearefuturegov.com/

This show features an interview with the lovely Paul Taylor, Innovation Coach at Bromford Group.

Follow Paul on Twitter and read his blog: http://paulbromford.wordpress.com/

Paul Burstow was our special 2012 Xmas guest on the Disruptive Social Care podcast. Paul is the Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Sutton, Cheam and Worcester Park. Paul  was appointed as Minister of State for Health (Care Services) in May 2010 and lost this position in the Cabinet reshuffle of September 2012. Paul chaired the Joint Committee on the Draft Care and Support Bill. Twitter: @PaulBurstow

Richard Humphries is a Senior Fellow at the King’s Fund. He leads on social care and work across the NHS and local government. He is a recognised national commentator and writer on social care reform, the funding of long-term care and the integration of health and social care.  Twitter: @richardatkf

Antony Ribot is at the forefront of user-experience design, and founded the highly regarded “ideas lab” Ribot with his brother Jerome. Ribot created Threedom – the world’s simplest smartphone. Threedom is the first simple interface built to allow anyone to easily use a touchscreen mobile. Twitter: @RibotMaximus

Mark Brown has been described as one of the smartest thinkers in the worlds of social media and mental health. Mark edits One in Four, England’s only national mental health and wellbeing magazine written by people who experience mental health difficulties. Mark is a director of Social Spider a community interest company helping people to make change happen. Twitter: @markoneinfour

Paul Hodgkin is the founder and Chair of Patient Opinion and has now which was founded in 2005 and has grown to be the UK’s leading independent non-profit feedback platform for health services. Paul says his “eureka moment” about Patient Opinion came in 2004 while logged on to the buying and selling website eBay. Twitter @paulhodgkin

When we interviewed Andrea Sutcliffe she was the Chief Executive of the Social Care Institute for Excellence. She is now the Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care at the Care Quality Commission. Twitter: @Crouchendtiger7

Martyn Sibley is a blogger, social entrepreneur, founder of the lifestyle magazine Disability Horizons and he creates Webinars, eCourses and eConferences. He works as a consultant on social media, new media and marketing. Martyn is disabled, and living with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) which means that he can’t walk or lift anything heavier than a book. Twitter: @martynsibley

Murtz Abidi was one of the founders of the Casserole Club a food sharing network, bringing local communities together around home-cooked food. He has now moved on but it is good to see Casserole being adopted by a growing number of local authorities as a great way for communities to tackle social isolation. Twitter: @Casserole_Club

Helen Keegan is a specialist consultant in mobile marketing, advertising and media who develops mobile strategies and creates products and services. She produces the Heroes of the Mobile Screen conference and runs the mobile networking event Swedish Beers in London and Barcelona. Twitter: @technokitten

You can follow us on Twitter @shirleyayres and @mindingsstu. Add #deukcare to add your comments to the debates about care, technology and innovations.

If you would like to discuss recording the Disruptive Social Care podcast at your event or conference contact Stu Arnott to discuss the cost and logistics.

Website: http://www.disruptivesocialcare.com/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/DisruptiveSocialCare

YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/disruptivesocialcare

 

Guest post @markoneinfour: social media and public professionals #expo14NHS

 

 

 

Mark Brown who tweets as @markoneinfour is exploring “What is the role of social media in health and care?“at the Health and Care Innovation Expo 2014 along with @AgencyNurse and @VictoriaBetton. Mark is Development Director of Social Spider CIC and editor of “One in Four” magazine  

This is a transcript of Mark’s rather excellent presentation today. 

Hello! I’m Mark Brown.  I mostly do mental health stuff. My work comes from my own experience of mental health difficulty. I don’t work for the NHS but I do spend lots of time effing about on twitter.

At a time when the NHS is experiencing it’s biggest challenges for at least a generation, I want to talk to you about the way in which social media can help to root the NHS in the fabric of communities. I want to talk to you about the ways that social media creates an opportunity for a whole new generation of ‘public professionals’, professionals doing their jobs while maintaining social media enabled relationships with a whole range of people..

But first I want to take you on a little journey…

It’s Sunday evening. The house is filled with the smell of ironing and leftovers and the sound of grumbling kids and grumbling adults all counting down the hours to Monday morning.  You and the family settle down to watch something comforting and gentle on the television.

It’ll be set in some time between about 1920 and about 1963-ish.  If it isn’t set then it’ll be set in a rural community somewhere as if it were 1920 to 1963-ish.  It’ll feature an affable public servant. It might be a police officer.  Or a doctor.  Or a midwife.  Or a district nurse. Or a coastguard.  They’ll spend each episode doing their job but also being involved in a whole variety of shenanigans.  The message will be they are a valued part of this particular, peculiar community of people.  Occasionally they’ll come to blows with someone from The Ministry or similar, someone who represents the far-distant bureaucracy ‘who don’t understand our local ways’.

What these Sunday night comforts all share is the nostalgic appeal of a world where public services were explicable, knowable and human sized.  It’s the fantasy of the local GP having a few pints in the snug of the local pub or the beat bobby who slurps tea in the local cafe.  Its a yearning for the days when public services felt like they grew from communities, rather than being distant, complex structures that lurk at the edges of everyday life. It’s the c wish to feel like there’s someone who is part of our world that can also help to understand the world of public services.

Social media is in some ways the latest village square or local cafe.  It’s a place where people check in to hear the latest news, catch up with friends, debate, flirt, ferment revolution and/or swap dirty jokes.  In short, it’s a place where people do people stuff.  Social media is where people are.

It’s very easy to underestimate how much of how the NHS works is opaque to the public. It’s like a big castle with high walls.   It’s very easy to underestimate how much of how the NHS works and what the NHS does is opaque to the people actually working for the NHS.

There’s a difference between giving health advice and discussing health issues, just as there is a vast difference between individual treatments and the service which delivers them. The NHS isn’t staffed by robots.  In fact we’re so scared that the NHS might be losing its human touch that we’re talking about training people in compassion and empathy.

So, what’s this got to do with public professionals and social media?

Public professionals talk about their job via social media.  They combine two things: they appear in the public realm talking about their job in way that used to only be possible if a journalist thought you interesting enough to interview. They talk about the pleasures, they talk about the joys, they talk about the difficulties, they talk about the issues that arise from doing it.  They put a human face and a human voice to what otherwise might seem a semi-robotic function.  They help the public to understand the process, the practice and the limitations of healthcare.

Public professionals inform the public of their practice and in turn have their practice informed by the public.  This is the second thing public professionals do: Public professionals talk to each other, they talk to non-professionals, they carry information into areas where it isn’t usually found.  Using social media they get ‘out and about’. Public professionals learn from the blogs, tweets, videos and discussions that they find themselves in and carry this understanding into their work.  It’s easy to forget just how much taxpayer funded knowledge and wisdom is currently sitting within the staff of the NHS.  It’s awesome but it also ends up hidden from the people who paid for it.  Public professionals jailbreak that knowledge and carry it out into the community via social media.

In a Nominet Trust paper published in 2011, Charities’ use of the internet – Current Activities and Future Opportunities: A state of the art review, Dr Eleanor Burt and Professor John Taylor talk about the emerging norm of social media becoming the medium for information-rich reciprocal relationships between organisations and those who use their services.  Their point is that in social media, information doesn’t just flow outward from providers, it’s a two way traffic.  And they’re right.  People increasingly expect that organisations will speak back to them and listen to them.

It’s hilarious to me that the NHS has a challenge with engagement and involvement.  Public professionals mix with people via social media (and often in real life too): they’re the person you talk to who is also a nurse, or a the person whose blog you read who is also a doctor.  Public professionals are engagers and connectors by nature.  You can’t do social media well without connecting with people.  For people like me, who aren’t in the NHS, public professionals are a point of entry, a way into understanding it better and a guide to navigating the complicated flows of information, misinformation, spin and rumour.

If we trust people to make life or death decisions over others we can trust them to have opinions.  If we’re battling for hearts and minds, which I think we are with the NHS, then public professionals are the best ambassadors there are.

But, you’re saying, surely we have comms departments and strategic communications plans?  Comms is about broadcast.  It’s a press office with bells and whistles.  A vital function, yes.  But Comms is about controlling the message, not growing the relationships a modern NHS needs to be part of the communities that it serves.  Does your comms team know how to deal with feedback? Does your comms team know inside and out the issues involved in the day to day of healthcare?

I’ll bet they don’t even have a licence to converse. And I’ll bet you they aren’t experts on healthcare. NHS staff are, though.  And when was the last time that your comms team spoke to people who use services and brought back some useful information about how things are ‘on the ground?’

In contrast, public professionals are a two-way conduit.  They take information out of its NHS castle and while they’re outside, in the bustling town square of social media they learn, and talk, and listen and they take information back into the castle, too.

And, being part of a social media communities and relationships means public professionals stick around through the good times and the bad times because they’re a person relating to other people.  You can’t be all ‘share our good messages, retweet our opportunities, big us up’ and then lock down your twitter account when a scandal breaks, as a Foundation Trust did last week.

Doing social media isn’t a separate job from doing a ‘proper job’. Public professionals fit in blogging, podcasting, tweeting around the rest of their work.  You don’t need to be a social media expert to do social media. You just need to know your subject and just need to be really, really passionate about discussing it.

The rules for being a public professional via social media are really the rules for any healthcare professional: Listen, speak with respect and care, know your subject, don’t talk about the benefits of your work without discussing its limitations, don’t think you know everything, be proud of your job but not blind to its failings and be an advocate for the best of possible worlds by understanding where things are worst.

If you come and find me on twitter, I’ll point you toward some of my favourite public professionals.  I’m sure the rest of the #nhssm community on twitter will do the same.

I’ll just leave you with this:

While social media isn’t the be all and end all of things: The public sector sometimes only gets the urge to engage with people when it wants something.  How do you expect to engage the community, care for the community and be supported by the community if you’re not part of the community? That’s what public professionals do. And that’s why I love ‘em.

Thank you!

Mark Brown (@markoneinfour), Shirley Ayres (@shirleyayres) and Paul Taylor (@paulbromford) will be discussing “what can social media do to make social good better?” on the 29th April in Central London. You can book a ticket for the event here