The Waiting Game of Being at a Loss

We are looking into ways that voluntary groups like Norton [Men’s]Shed  can help with hospital patient support.

Writing this because Sheds are a flat structure internally and it is difficult to talk to everyone about these matters. It is a variant of the Social Prescriber Primary Care support for individuals that Norton Shed has been part of since before it started!  The Whitby Sheds were part of it (through NYC Living Well team) since SAMS started in 2016.

There is a difference, in that the new programmes are coming from the NHS “Hospital” level not the GP surgery level.

Whitby Town Shed has just been given an NHS Micro Grant recently to extend the work of the Whitby Doing Project, a kind of non-Shed doing project involving the “Library of Things”.  It involves Whitby Town Shed and the Krampus Arts project providing an environment in which hospital patients can occupy their time and receive mutual; support whilst waiting for procedures of one kind or another.

Norton Shed has recently been contacted by County Durham Community Foundation who are supporting  matters in NE. There is a programme recently advertised called “Waiting Well” for patients living with the uncertainty of “when”. It is to support people needy some community activity to distract from “the wait”.

We will be engaging with appropriate local Waiting Well leaders about this shortly to see how our type of voluntary can fit with the NHS model of services.

Shedders, if you want to know ask Graham.

It is a response to the urgent need the NHS has to cope with the demands on their “normal” services.

You may have heard on the news for a long time about the delays and the challenges. Our relationship with the Social Prescribing Link Workers in Stockton has been greatly rewarding as most of you will know.  No reason for us not to help the main NHS in a small way.  The context of the Shed will be respected but if you’d like to be a part of a small working party on this, please email Graham.

The latest news (10/8/23), from the NHS Prescribers organisations web site.

NHS Providers responds to record-high waiting list of 7.57 million

Responding to the NHS performance statistics published today, which show the waiting list for planned care has reached a record high of 7.57 million, Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive at NHS Providers said:

“A perfect storm of squeezed funding in the NHS, the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, workforce shortages and now industrial action has pushed the waiting list to its highest point at 7.57 million.

“This will ring alarm bells for trust leaders up and down the country as mounting care backlogs inevitably pile more pressure onto an already overstretched NHS. Amid ongoing strikes, this is an extremely busy summer for A&E while ambulance services also face very high demand and more urgent calls.

“Trusts leaders’ priority is delivering timely, high-quality patient care. They have made vital progress on this despite tough circumstances, including delivering a record number of tests and checks in June and seeing cancer patient referrals more quickly.

“However, the pressure on urgent and emergency care is relentless. This is felt across the whole system in hospital, ambulance, mental health and community services.

“Trust leaders’ efforts to recover urgent and emergency care – and to bring down the waiting list – must be backed nationally with proper support. This includes better government funding in workforce and capital, including beds and vital equipment, and a solution for the challenges in social care.

“The strikes divert trusts’ resources from bearing down on backlogs to managing the disruption they cause. It’s vital the government and unions talk to find a resolution to the pay dispute. There can be no delay.”

Graham is putting together a position/ideas paper on this for discussions. He’d welcome a couple of Shedders  being involved in this too. Contact him. No dangerous tools involved and no skill required other than common sense!

Went to a secret nuclear bunker yesterday, but cannot tell you where . . . .

3 levels (possibly more!); under an unassuming farmhouse style building; main walls 3m thick apparently; housing 300 in emergency; it would make a great hard to find Shed.

A little bit of Shed caring can have a big implications

A Shedder in transit has sent his greetings. Success is not about keeping people where they are (in a Shed!) but letting people fly free . ..

Hi Graham,

I have found a job in education which I will be starting soon. Thanks for your support during my brief tenure with the Shed.

I have been away for a while and going to job interviews in between. You and the other Shedders will be in my prayers each day as I move forward.

Keep up the excellent work and inspiration.

Herbie the Hedgehog has a great new home

Take a look at these comments made in an Age Concern report on Men in Sheds in Cheshire

(Sent with other things by Rachel Meadows of UKMSA helping Graham wrt the current NHS “consultations”. Thanks RM.

he self-reported qualitative findings illustrated that the men perceived the Sheds as having a positive impact on their physical health through giving them somewhere to go to and being active, rather than being sedentary at home watching the television. Many of them spoke about watching too much television prior to attending the Sheds recognising that that this was unhealthy behaviour:

 “A fair majority of the guys live on their own and so it is a big benefit, particularly in the winter where they would just be sitting in their house watching tele, vegetating.” (CR1)

 “well keeping my mind active you know, you know I was sitting there watching the bloody telly which would drive me round the bend in the end and it keeps your mind active, keeps your body active keeps me active I’ve got artificial joints in my hip, in this leg, they failed, I’ve got two dodgy hips, another knee that’s waiting for replacement and a lower what do they call it your lumbar spine, I’ve got a problem with that so it keeps me mobile when I sat in the house all these problems I’ve got would probably seize up and make them a damn site worse.” (CH2)

 The Sheds provided a space for physical activity through working in and walking around the Shed. The Ellesmere Port Shed has a small gym. Although most of the men travelled to the Sheds by car, several of them used public transport or cycled and kept active through moving around the Sheds:  

 “Some of them come on a bike, they cycle, some of them walk to use, they got the actual physical activity when they are there as well so they are not sat in an armchair all day they are actually, if they had a whats it that counted their steps they would probably be amazed at how much movement they do during the course of the day so.” (FG1)