How healing and trust play a part in health improvement

I now realise the most important thing that had come out of a year of weekly meetings for the Family Voices Big Room – an initiative bringing together multidisciplinary staff along the care pathway with the community to focus on the patient experience – was the trust built between the hospital and the community.

Through listening with curiosity, being physically present, and in co-producing improvement ideas, the community was now happy to participate in our Experience Day idea and to welcome 39 international delegates for a day of storytelling and shared learning.

We started in Bay 20, a community space built in direct response to the Grenfell Fire disaster in 2017. Delegates heard about the history of North Kensington. They heard how, within a 0.3 mile distance, life expectancy can decrease by 18 years and how, since the arrival of the Windrush generation in the 1950s, it has been an area attracting migrants that is now home to a vibrant community including Sudanese, Moroccan and Eritrean families. They also heard about the trauma of the Grenfell Fire on 14th June 2017.

Delegates heard how, out of tragedy, comes hope and renewal, such as in the Latimer Community Art Therapy initiative, and through culturally competent counselling services provided through the local Al-Manaar mosque.

Taking a community walk

We were so lucky the sun was shining and cherry blossoms in bloom as we took delegates on a community walk. We visited the Men’s Shed, where carpentry and tinkering combats loneliness and social isolation. Then we stopped at a blood pressure stall on Portobello Road run by the Golborne Medical Practice and the Museum of Brands, formerly the London Lighthouse HIV Hospice.

Lunch was at the Venture Community Centre, where we held our Big Room meetings last year. Delegates were treated to the Venture Community Lunch experience, where every Wednesday the centre cooks a delicious and healthy lunch, available free of charge to anybody and everybody. Roasted sweet potato, chicken stew, chick pea stew, and a selection of salads and fruit definitely beat the usual “sad sandwich” event lunch conference delegates are used to! Local community members wandered in with babies in prams and sat amongst us, sharing food and chat.

I was nearly brought to tears as two of the maternity champion volunteers I had come to know well in the preceding year had prepared speeches describing their journey from being born and raised in Golborne, to becoming maternity champion volunteers and subsequently taking on apprenticeships and then paid employment in the Champions programme.

They spoke of how the physical presence of their primary care practitioner within the community, as well as the midwives and hospital staff working with them last year, has had a lasting impact.

They explained how listening and discussion leads to agency and action.

After lunch, the group visited the community midwifery clinic in nearby Holmefield House and the new premises of the Golborne Medical Centre in Kelso Cochrane House.

We re-convened as it started raining, in the polytunnels of Meanwhile Gardens, for some hot herbal tea and a group reflection at the end of the day.

What were our highlights?

One delegate from Scotland said she loved having lunch, and that it was so special feeling welcomed into the community.

Another delegate from Canada said he loved how he observed, as we were walking around the community, that our organising crew would be greeted by local community members, sometimes in embrace. I realised he was right.

The time I had spent with the monthly in-person Big Rooms at Venture last year meant I was on ‘hugging’ basis with many of the champions, link workers, and other community health workers.

Not many secondary care workers could lay this claim, I reflected.

Connecting with community

It reinforced my belief that feeling connected to the community we serve, in person and in place, is essential for empathy and provision of trauma-informed care.

A few months ago, I treated a young woman with severe pre-eclampsia in the hospital. Her sister told me, terrified, as I wheeled her into theatre for an emergency Caesarean, ‘Please save my sister. I cannot lose her too.’ I realised they must have both been only children when their mother died in the Grenfell fire seven years ago.

I do not live locally and travel to work each day, but I feel honoured to be able to serve this community that has suffered so much.

We are all healers

Mary, the Head Gardener for Meanwhile Gardens closed the day, ‘You are all healers. The trees and the plants and the flowers are all healers too. When you are walking through these gardens you can feel healing taking place.’

Healing comes in many forms – art, carpentry, cooking, playing, talking and laughing. As we design and improve our healthcare services we must maximise the opportunities for healing. This was our message for the day.

How do healing and trust play a part in health and care improvement for you? I’d love to hear your comments below.