Monday, January 28, 2019

Singing can seriously enhance your health, happiness and wellbeing......Taunton Deane Male Voice Choir

Since June 2019 I have been Chairman of Taunton Deane Male Voice Choir. The 70+ men are a joyful, enthusiastic and really very good band of singers. We perform for charity and raise many thousands of pounds a year.

Apart from the charitable function the choir performs another equally, and in some ways more important, role. Singing enhances the health and wellbeing in many ways.

I was invited by Charlie Taylor of BBC Radio Somerset to talk about the social prescribing aspects of singing, and choir singing in particular.

Here is the link.............




Friday, January 18, 2019

Doteveryone

Attended a really interesting and well run workshop on Better Care run by Doteveryone.

Doteveryone describe themselves as an independent think tank that explores how technology is changing society and build communities to improve the way technology shapes our world.
Founded by Martha Lane Fox in 2015 their work spans a range of important issues for society and in particular for me BetterCare.

https://doteveryone.org.uk/project/better-care-systems/

Its always good to meet like minded people, but even better when they are brought together in a well thought through and effective manner. Lydia Nicholas and Jacob Ohrvik-Stott with assistance from seemingly many others behind the scenes did a fantastic job of curating a really effective day of creative thinking. Those in need of care, their carers, practitioners and techmology professionals all worked together to build models of a better future.

Well worth signing up to keep up to date with what they develop.

Care for anyone in need in the community is a massive challenge already and will only get more a part of our society's top priorities with an ageing population, reducing budgets throughout the public sector and a legion of unpaid and hard pressed family members and other carers who are stretched to breaking point.

The Long Term Plan for the NHS does not address Social Care. The long awaited green / white paper on a way to improve and support care is still behind the Brexit eight-ball. In 2010 when I stood for Parliament (and lost) in East Devon my losing speech was all about how the political parties had to put aside their differences and work together on the most pressing problem of the era - social care and funding to keep people well, support those with with physical and mental disability and relieve the massive pressure on health and well being sectors.

Some of the key outputs of the day for me were the acceptance that work is not what you get paid for by the hour, its what value you deliver - and unless the value of caring, volunteering, running a family is recognisable and can be used to reflect the contribution individuals make to society then we continue to live in a GDP driven world of business not a human world of mutual respect. Reminders of the Transit project in Barcelona in the early 1990s that I was also very privileged to have been part of.

Examples of how technology could help - from robots to a commercial agency to vet and connect carers to potential clients in Oxfordshire were raised, along with Universal Basic Income, low level technology that tracks and highlights changes in key personal functions and the lack of a clear way forward without engagement at national, local and personal level with committed involvement from technology providers who cannot just throw technology out there and stand back - there must be a support capability for the digital care line that fails because of a power cut at 3 in the morning, or the partner who suddenly cannot access their home finances because their partner has had a stroke and cannot articulate their passwords!

I will be keeping a close eye on what Lydia and her colleagues are doing because it plays directly to the issues we all face, in our own village and in our families. You should too.

Monday, December 04, 2017

UWE presentation December 2017

Link to my presentation to students at UWE on December 5th 2017

PDF presentation on DropBox

Saturday, September 23, 2017



A lovely day at South Petherton Hospital where we unveiled a bench in memory of Dorothy Hudson, who sadly died not long ago.

Dorothy and Mary Robertson worked tirelessly side by side at the old hospital before it fell down (or some of the ceilings did), and were a constant thorn in the side of the authorities to make sure a new hospital replaced the old one. Since then they have been an inspiration to many in the hospital and in the local community.

We will miss Dorothy, and of course so will Mary. We all said a few words, Sister Heather Ancill assisted in cutting the ribbon, and I was very pleased to meet more of Mary's family who came for this really moving occasion.


Thursday, September 14, 2017

South Petherton Hospital League of Friends

An article for local newsletter about our League of Friends

South Petherton Hospital League of Friends

The League is a small dynamic charity that is run entirely by volunteers who are passionate about the hospital and its local community. Our members support The League through their annual subscriptions and are kept up to date with the League’s valuable activities through our website, newsletters and events.


  
The old hospital that many (if not most) of us have had reason to be grateful for was replaced by a wonderful new facility after structural failures. It had served the community well for over 40 years.

The new hospital has 24 inpatient beds of which 16 are dedicated to specialist stroke rehabilitation. The hospital has one ward, The Mary Robertson Ward. As well as inpatients the hospital caters for outpatients with 100 people or so every day receiving treatment in from a range of specialist units, or being taken through diagnostic tests.

The matron since 1975 was Mary Robertson, who is a legend. Her dedication and passion for the hospital was recognised when a ward was named after her not just in the old hospital but the new one as well.

Mary was for many years the Chair of the League of Friends and we are so grateful for the inspirational way she worked on linking the hospital with the community at large. This is work that we wish to continue and it is a delight to be able to share our plans with Mary and get her advice.

The league has a charitable intent that spreads wider than just the inpatients or the hospital itself. Our object is ‘to relieve patients and former patients of the Hospital and other invalids in the community who are sick, convalescent, disabled, handicapped, infirm or in need of financial assistance and generallto support the charitable work of the Hospital.’ This is a wide remit and we approach each of its aspects very seriously;  a committee elected by the members at our Annual General Meeting works very hard to generate funds to pass on for the good of patients, staff and the community at large.




The League of Friends of South Petherton Hospital has donated £25,000 towards a second CT scanner for Yeovil Hospital. The new scanner ensures that Yeovil Hospital always has a scanner available – particularly important for anyone who has had a stroke, as an immediate diagnosis is vital to delivering appropriate treatment and ensuring as full a recovery as possible. The scanner will also be used for other emergencies such as head and chest injuries, and in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients. Chief executive of Yeovil Hospital’s NHS Trust, Paul Mears, said: “The second scanner will dramatically improve the service we are able to offer to the 10,000 local patients who require a CT scan each year, including many South Petherton residents. “We were delighted to hear of this very generous donation from the League of Friends of South Petherton Hospital towards this vital piece of equipment and I would like to offer my sincere thanks on behalf of all at Yeovil Hospital.”


The League of Friends funded many enhancements to the new hospital and continues to support the health and wellbeing of patients in the local community through a variety of initiatives.
  • Research into stroke rehabilitation to provide an evidence base upon which future best practice can be developed
  • Tai Chi and Yoga classes.
  • Tilt-in-space shower chair
  • WiFi for patients and visitors
  • Expressive Movement Therapy  (innovative research unique to the hospital)
  • Transport bursary for Life After Stroke Club attenders.
Most recently and thanks to your donations, the X-ray department now has a “Simple Up” step – a sturdy, adjustable platform with supporting bars and remote control.    
The Simple Up has a smooth up and down movement and supports patients safely, leaving the radiographer free to take the x-ray without having to worry about the patient falling.
It also enables the radiographer to work comfortably and safely, reducing the possibility of back and other problems.
Susan Hartnell-Beavis has written a booklet that offers helpful and practical insights for those caring for loved ones in Somerset.
 It has proven so popular with Carers that the League of Friends of South Petherton Hospital were delighted to fund the re-printing of the booklet when the first edition ran out.
The ‘If Only I’d Known That’ booklet is given to patients and their families when leaving hospital. The contents are written in an extremely kind and informativeway,by a lady who, unexpectedly, became a carer for her beloved husband.
As well as our donations and funding of innovative research the League of Friends is very aware of the changes going on in the health and care communities across the country.

In Somerset we are closely engaged with the Clinical Commissioning Group who are the body responsible for the Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP) which is working with providers such as Somerset Partnership Trust (who run our hospital). To make sure the widest audience were able to hear at first hand what is going on with the STP South Petherton League of Friends organised a public meeting in January 2017 were a packed house heard from Dr Nick Broughton, Chief Executive of Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and Geoff Barr, member of ‘Keep our NHS Public’.

We have followed up that public meeting by attending the Annual General Meeting of the Clinical Commissioning Group to ensure that our strong desire is recognised to be active participants in the planning for Somerset as a whole and our hospital in particular. We will vigorously pursue engagement with consultations as they begin in earnest later this year and will keep members up to date on future plans as they emerge.

We are now working closely with the South Petherton Community Partnership (SPCP), and look forward to developing responses to issues in the local community in partnership with others in the SPCP.

Each year we run Christmas coffee mornings and participate in the hospital’s annual fete. We are now working closely with the South Petherton Community Partnership to support local health and wellbeing. Look out for our lovely new shopping bags, pens and of course our famous Christmas Cards…..
The League of Friends is run entirely by volunteers, so apart from expenses such as postage and stationery, all donations to the League are used to help the hospital and its community.
All donations are well used and much appreciated! You can donate for free (to you and to us) at
https://mydonate.bt.com/charities/leagueoffriendsofsouthpethertonhospital

Thank you for reading about us – why not join the League of Friends as we spread our wings and get even more involved in the health and wellbeing of our local community. You can contact us through email chair@lofsph.org.uk or via our website www.lofsph.org.uk

Paull Robathan

Chair, South Petherton Hospital League of Friends

South Petherton Care Cooperative hits the press

http://www.ehospice.com/ArticleView/tabid/10697/ArticleId/22272/View.aspx

http://www.chardandilminsternews.co.uk/news/village_news/15394030.South_Somerset_village_forms_new__army_of_helpers__to_help_fill_care_gap/


Monday, November 28, 2016

Monday, March 30, 2015

Healthy Affordable Housing by Design


AFFORDABLE HOUSING HAS A BAD IMAGE......



The  Royal  Institution  of  Chartered Surveyors has said this week that we are experiencing the lowest level  of housebuilding in England since the 1920's and that today's children face a lifetime of renting cramped accommodation in an increasingly unaffordable market.

Around 2.5 million children live in homes that are damp.
Around 1.5 million children live in households that cannot afford to heat their home.

Housing is not one of our most successful services compared with our European neighbours. 16th out of 34 in OECD analysis, it nevertheless ranks way above education, skills, work-life balance and wellbeing - all of them in many ways affected by quality and quantity of housing.

100 years ago many millions of people who would have died early in their lives from infectious diseases due to, or exacerbated by poor housing, sanitation, lack of food and limited access to medical care survived and flourished due to a partnership between health and planning for housing and communities. Housing was a function of the Ministry of Health.

Post 2nd world war house building was a numbers game – successfully allowing MacMillan to build over 300,000 homes in 1955.

Housing completions these days neither reach the heady numbers of the 1950s, nor do  they respond to the health and well being imperatives as they did in the 1920's.

 There is currently no effective mechanism to engage affordable housing providers in the planning and delivery of homes that are not just a roof – but afford positive benefits. There is concern in the public health realm that it is not possible to get the right houses built in the right place for the right families.

In recent decades the health priorities have become cardiovascular disease, stroke, respiratory disease and mental and physical health. November 2014 Town and Country Planning journal in a joint issue with Public Health England focuses on the  need for better understanding of both the influence of the built environment on health and the role of spatial planning in shaping places that maintain good health.

Across a range of societal factors the home environment has a massive influence on child and young adult development. As MIND, the Mental Health Charity suggest, well designed home environments need to respond to the needs of occupiers – delivering positive assistive, uplifting home environments can often be as easy as building the wrong house.

Not a cost issue but a DESIGN issue.

Research from Finland confirms  the improved development of children that can be afforded by communal space that is well designed, engaging and safe.

Affordable Housing was always intended for the most vulnerable – by enhancing life and earning chances through positive design of supportive environments the future opportunities for the less advantaged can be improved.

We are uniquely placed to influence the lives of millions of people who live in our affordable  homes...

- affording children’s perceptive capability through good environmental design,

- affording cheap warmth by high grade insulation,

- affording old age community engagement through interactive technology.

43% of adults over state pension age are disabled. Based on responses from 222 English and Wales housing authorities, the charity found that a third of councils (32%) either did not mention disability at all in their housing plan, or mentioned it only in passing.

How many homes are capable of receiving a disabled person for short term remedial care?? The Lifetime Homes standard promotes a 1 in 10 policy for new homes – but there is a massive gulf between actual accessibility and the need. The cost of bed blocking from older patients unable to return to their own home because they cannot care for themselves, but also unable to be discharged to their family's home due to lack of facilities is significant.

It is considered axiomatic by many that health and housing are linked in that poor housing results in negative health issues. But evidence suggests that housing built to address health concerns could dramatically improve health outcomes, reduce burdens of the health services and social care and not cost much, if anything, extra to build if the homes are designed right in the first place.

The space standards for UK dwellings is significantly less than that for our European neighbours. Housing Associations either have to buy land at commercial prices, or buy ready built houses also at commercial prices. 1/3 of the price of a property is taken up in profit for the land owner or developer while huge tracts of public land are classed as developable brownfield but are not being released.

Housing Associations are facing both an identity and a structural crisis. The are not delivering for the least well off, they are not working with health agencies to provide sympathetic environments in which to grow develop and retire in supportive communities, and they are now being threatened by the double threat of profit making private businesses accessing government grants and loan guarantees to build one bedroom starter homes for sale or private rent on the one hand and a promised 'right to buy' for Housing Association tenants promoted as part of a successful Conservative  Party if they win the May 7th General Election.

The strong desire of the health and wellbeing community is for lifetime homes with low energy use and cost,  high utility,   permanent low cost to access and low maintenance and service charges

A focus on affordance – what the home can do for its occupants - together with a restructuring of tenure models so that low land cost can allow lower density with higher utility could transform both the lives of social tenants but also release higher residual income to be spent in the community to support economic growth without resort to payday loans just to buy food at the end of the week. Community Land Trusts offer one route to this uprated provision.

My research will be extending and integrating the many situational aspects of affordance, drawing from human computer interaction, social psychology, design, child development and ageing amongst others to develop a framework of affordances that might allow a translation or a correspondence between required outcomes and specific characteristics of the environment. This framework will be piloted in a Health and Wellbeing context.

We need is a mechanism to relate health issues that might stem from housing deficiencies and the solutions that are possible in the housing world.

A specific case might be the need to retrofit houses with electrical sockets higher on the wall so that wheelchair users can access them – this was a solution, and it cost money to retrofit. Now with wireless technology plugs that use existing sockets that can be controlled by mobile phone or tablet, allow disabled people to live in their own home but also (given other physical factors)  during a period of recuperation in their family's home without restrictions on their use of electrical devices. No cost to the built environment, huge savings in the hospital and care  sector due to reduced bed blocking (estimated to impact 61% of days lost due to wait for discharge to nursing home or care home).

Just this month government has begun to work in this cross cutting way, recognising the value of warmth on prescription piloted in Sunderland: joint funding from health and housing leading to a reduction in unplanned admissions. This initiative builds on the Decent Homes and Affordable Warmth initiatives that have seen a major improvement in air tightness and levels of warmth at lower cost that have made significant improvements in family health.

However,  increasing air tightness creates its own problems; In a 2014 study the high prevalence of asthma in UK compared with the rest of the world was considered in relation to improved energy efficiency measures in houses. The study authors concluded that energy efficiency may increase the risk of asthma in adults residing in social housing and that a multidisciplinary approach is needed to understand the interaction between energy efficiency and fuel poverty. The risk of asthma was doubled in houses where mould was present. Tightly sealed houses with double glazing have been reported to increase the incidence of damp and mould when their SAP rating rises above 71.

Tobacco is itself a significant housing issue not only degrading the housing stock of tenants who smoke but causing a third of all household fires and resulting in a third of all domestic fire deaths resulting from cigarette smoking. Yet increasing constraints on smoking in public places and the workplace result in the domestic house becoming the last – and as we’ve seen above sadly for some the final –refuge of the smoker.

Housing designed to address health concerns can dramatically improve health outcomes and reduce burdens on health, social care and housing budgets. The annual cost of falls of people over 60 in the UK is £2billion, and at one year follow up 20% of frequent fallers are in hospital, full time care or dead. Homes designed to minimise the likelihood of falls could make a significant inroads in to this major public health focus area.

But where is the conversation being had between health and housing at this level of design solutions that impact health and housing – there is little evidence that these conversations are happening at all. One reason is that there is no common language.

And thats what my research is about …... creating a mechanism – an algebra of affordances and appropriations - that allows health professionals to describe their hopes in their language, for housing providers to express their design options in their own language and for there to be a coming together of the two  that results in the  design of houses and neighbourhoods that contribute to greatly improved well being and health with little or no direct cost.

March 27th 2015
uk.linkedin.com/in/paullrobathan/