Well actually I don’t – at the moment I need to get out less, but you don’t want to know about my overgrown allotment! At work I do need to get out more. I want to reach more people.
As the Good Practice Mentor for the Time to Shine programme this year is my chance to make sure everyone knows all about what we and our delivery partners tried and what we learned about reaching out to potentially lonely older people. I want to make sure people don’t have to reinvent the wheel because the information is all trapped on our website waiting for someone to have time to trawl the net. I want to put it where they can see it, take it to where they can hear it.
I’m pretty certain that the delivery partners we worked with have embedded what they were doing into their practice, because they told us that’s what they were doing as the funded projects drew to a close. But I’m also sure there are lots of other people out there who are at first base.
The amount we have to share is enormous; not just our own learning but also learning from the naational Ageing Better programme. Yesterday I went to a Campaign to End Loneliness workshop with Professor Andrea Wigfield from the Centre for Loneliness Studies – we wanted to share how the evaluation of Time to Shine had been done. You can look at our programme evaluation on our website now, and for this session with particular reference to the report on evaluation methods.
It was the usual positive and pragmatic mix of information and tips – what you might aim for as the gold standard and what you might need to do in real life with a small budget. There was a lovely mix of people, some interested and observing, some people doing more or less what they always had, but thinking about how they might measure the impact of what they were doing to show to commissioners; and others just trying to learn. We spoke briefly in groups but didn’t have time to answer questions there and so we went back to the Tackling Loneliness Hub to follow up. I added the reports from Yorkshire Dance on Dementia Care mapping as someone was interested in work in a care home. I shared some templates for story gathering, then I answered some questions, and finally this morning I remembered I ‘d said to a colleague I’d add the evaluation methods report mentioned above.
This morning after a team meeting I sent someone reports on the work the Sage LGBT+ project did, and then shared the LGBT+ learning from the whole Ageing Better programme.
The point of my story: thIs week I have reached – briefly – probably 15, maybe 16, people with this learning. I’m not sure who I am going to reach next week but I want it to be more!
So if you think It would be helpful for you or your colleagues to know more about what we learned – whether that’s the best way to reach people, how to advertise your activities or reach new members, using coproduction to set up activities or how to encourage people to go online than ask me. If we didn’t do it we know someone who did. I can come to you online or in real life
Get in touch – jessica@opforum.org.uk
Jessica Duffy
Good Practice Mentor