Celebrating what small, local organisations (not just Norton Men’s Shed) can do for our community – the people!
We begin with the same reminder we often provide that we are part of a community jigsaw, already connected but with need to deepen connections. Fit for the Future is a big NHS one in the news.
Fit for the Future: NHS 10 Year Health Plan for England
Open this link to read the Government Executive Summary https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/10-year-health-plan-for-england-fit-for-the-future/fit-for-the-future-10-year-health-plan-for-england
The picture presented by the report is not a pretty one. It is a picture that says change must happen because the health sector is at a crisis point and that has not happened over months, but over years and decades. Maybe we have been promised services that are great on paper but the scope of change impacting people (not least patients) to achieve what we believe are “guarantees” is huge. All against the backdrop of the long term challenge of national finances.
No man is an island and similarly no service. Just this morning on the Today Programme a GP spoke about the challenge of sickness notes/fitness notes and how to get people into the frame of mind of working again. Much of what was suggested has in fact been going on for years and not least in the voluntary sector. Graham was one of 3 volunteers 15 years ago in the South who started a Job Club for people who wanted to prepare for work.
Wanted is the operative word because it was voluntary, of course, to attend. And those who came had to work at it! The problem pointed out this morning on Radio 4 is that we seem to be a very unhealthy country. That is complex and covers many kinds of un-healthiness.
Any connection to the voluntary sector seems missing in the Executive Summary at least. Yet a lot of it has always gone on – called compassion – and the voluntary led the way for centuries on “helping our neighbour” in small community settings until becoming “statutory” to meet the needs of towns, cities and national efforts.
The Shed exists at the local community interface, facilitated by different peoples’ efforts to help one another. It costs people’s time and effort but little financially to run and truly empowers those with a mindset to do – even if physically or mentally they cannot. It is so simple in principle and has been proven over 4 decades in Australia and one-and-a-half in UK.
We fill a hole in “services” for men who are not well provided for in social contexts. The Shed motivates and helps people reinvent themselves through doing of different sorts.
FaithAction (https://www.faithaction.net/about/) is a small organisation that has acted as the secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Faith and Society (
All-Party Parliamentary Group on Faith and Society) It’s in Dagenham (Fords!!) and not far from where Graham attended senior school. Graham for some years interacted with FaithAction and attended some sessions hosted in Westminster. Graham, at least, trusts their judgment! What do they say in summary about the 10 Year NHS Plan?
START
Last Thursday (3/7/25) the Government published the new “Fit for the Future: 10 Year Health Plan for England”. This was a much-anticipated document, comprising 168 pages and no shortage of new policy ideas. It sets the template for the next 10 years of the development of the NHS, calling for a fundamental shift in how care is delivered.
The plan paints a stark picture, describing a health system at an “existential brink” and in “critical condition”.
The narrative is that the NHS must “reform or die”, with the proposals and ideas set out charting a route to a more sustainable healthcare landscape, one in which technology takes its place in driving efficiency and putting power in the hands of patients, in which bureaucracy and duplication is reduced, and in which the focus is on care closer to home and upstream prevention rather than reactive treatment of sickness.
This is all encapsulated by the “three shifts” which sit at the heart of the plan: a shift from hospital-to community-based care, a shift from analogue to digital, and a shift from treatment to prevention. These are worthy aims, and have already been recurring themes within Government’s messaging about health and care over the past year, but they will take time and careful implementation to be realised successfully.
Crucially, all of society, not just Government and our NHS services, will need to play a role in making this a reality. The VCFSE (Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise) sector has a key responsibility in supporting these aims, but our statutory services will need to proactively engage with the sector as a trusted partner, helping create space for long-term partnership.
The NHS must begin to think about “community” not just in terms of out-of-hospital clinics, but as the people and social infrastructure that hold our neighbourhoods together. There must be recognition of the tireless, bread-and-butter work of charities, community groups and faith-based organisations in contributing to the prevention of sickness, and a better integration of this work into strategic planning for the future, backed up by appropriate resourcing. There must be care taken so that, as we rightly modernise systems and embrace the power of AI to streamline and improve care, no one is left behind, whether those with digital literacy challenges, digital poverty or language barriers – all of which are challenges well-addressed by the voluntary and faith-based sector.
There are clues within the plan that steps are being taken to involve the VCFSE as a strategic, rather than tokenistic partner, but it’s disappointing that it doesn’t go into further detail, particularly with respect to the huge potential in harnessing the grassroots power of the VCFSE in gathering community voice, building trust between people and services, reaching those facing the starkest inequalities. We must continue to reiterate these messages, whether that’s at a national level, within Integrated Care Systems, or simply with your local NHS services.
As the 10 Year Plan brings with it sweeping structural changes and reduced budgets, including the abolishment of NHS England and Healthwatch, there is a risk that collective, grassroots community voice gets lost in the noise. We can’t allow this to happen.
There will be further opportunity over the next 8 months to get involved in our national policy work as focus shifts to implementation of the plan. If you’d like to get involved, do please get in touch.
[In the immediate, we would love to hear your thoughts:
Have you read the 10 Year Health Plan, or thought about any of the policy proposals it contains?
Graham’s mind response: No! Just the Executive Summary. Policies are intentions, not necessarily active actions. Good on paper and necessary but not the “how” of it. As we know from the Shed, people are important to people. Live people that interact and react. People are expensive – NHS is the largest employer in Europe (I believe). Doing more for people in the community, rather than in emergency hospital admissions, makes sense to free up beds but there need to be the medical/care packages to keep people safe. Social care and medical care overlap a lot and arguably it is more efficient to do that in one place with a group of patients.
What do you think about it, does it fill you with a sense of hope and possibility, or disappointment?
It’s very good to put things in writing. That shifts me to the hope side because it allows wider, focused discussions. Keeping up with change is difficult if you are not in the swim and moving a little with it. It’s easy to get left behind and “time and tide waits for no man (or woman)”. Working life requires us to keep up to date. Retirement does not. However, not keeping up awareness can lead to the chasm there often is with those “who don’t need to change” (or want to) when others are not around to fill in with ready help. The Shed and activity requiring the mind provide some of the motivation to continue to learn and adapt.
When it comes to cost, rolling out new ideas nationally from top to bottom (patients!)once they are developed (by a small team) is extremely expensive. It is possibly where there could be a stronger input from volunteers alongside people learning about the new tools and aids. Learning with others as opposed to more formal teaching. Who taught us Zoom in the Lockdown? The driver was the public need for a solution and the secret was not mass training but learning from others already doing it. The germ of knowledge spreading. The experience Norton Men’s Shed has had with “our” social prescribing link workers” has been itself a bit of a game changer already because there has been a joint commitment to patients introduced that is “professional” but voluntary. Yes, the big unsaid word is compassion. It may sound wishy-washy but as the Shed family has matured we have all learnt about caring about each other and caring about the communities we are a part of.
What do you see as the central issues for the next 10 years of the NHS?
Delivering the best service across the board using the best people, the best motivation (returning maybe to the days when health, education and even engineering were professions and vocations!), the best tools under people’s control and most importantly to be innovative – allow for some experimentation and flexibility regionally. There is a major challenge facing us as citizens – to be participants, not just recipients. To be respectful of those with more knowledge than we have (medics in this case) and indeed of the long legacy of “helping our neighbour” typified by most Sheds an their amateur professionalism. To join forces with those appointed in charge but to have a “critical friend” voice too.
It will require what FaithAction pointed out on behalf of the VCFSE sector that “The NHS must begin to think about “community” not just in terms of out-of-hospital clinics, but as the people and social infrastructure that hold our neighbourhoods together.” It may require “change management” and change managers not only centrally in the NHS machine but also at the perimeter cogs that engage with things voluntary. The sector is not just free labour to be directed but a valuable resource of active goodwill and motivated brain power!
What role can faith-based communities play in supporting and shaping this change, how might you play a part?
From personal experience the roles are many. Having held quite a few “positions” in churches in different places, my experience is that work in the wider community is really a faith calling for individuals. Individuals joining up with other individuals in other churches maybe, and with those of other faiths and none (as is so often said). Churches then should take note, take interest, hopefully encourage, see for themselves the outcomes. A very good role for any church body having premises is to let them be used in creative ways. Our first Shed in Whitby was in a Methodist back room (not big enough to be called a hall!). That brought men (and some women) together and shaped a decade of Shed creation up the Whitby coastline before getting lost in Norton!! Building Sheds of people is much the same as building churches of people. Both are about purpose and thankfully the two domains are not mutually exclusive. Best thing I can do is to continue to be compassionate (which is about steps into the unknown with people). I believe this past 3 years and more, the Shed has allowed me, personally, to exercise compassion “in my way” but I discover others doing compassion without using the word. Our NHS connection has certainly provided us with a “heap of purpose”. ]
END
Well, that [the FaithAction piece] seems to suggest there are clues but no intentions yet. However we are a million miles below the higher echelons of the NHS and Government (though we had both of our local MPs – one red and one blue – come to the Shed to see it in the flesh, as it were). Thankfully, in Norton area there are Social Prescribing Link Workers who need our help to help patients back into community. The lonely and isolated for whatever reason. We are part of a community of organisations in Norton and district who work grass roots up to meet need. To some degree tailoring to changing needs, interests, patterns and future hopes.
Norton Shed depends on the compassion of those who come. It generates by example in a few weeks for most Shedders. It becomes a bigger Give and a smaller Take. It’s not money that makes for “success” but compassionate hearts undergirding the banter! Top down, the NHS very much depends on national budgets. Bottom up, the NHS depends on compassionate citizens in a compassionate society (the latter can be hard). Somewhere the two meet. For us it seems to meet at the level of top down people meeting bottom up people. The Social Prescribing Link Workers meeting the Shed community. A need to have places to signpost men to relieve isolation, loneliness and loss, meeting a “volunteer” family comprised of beneficiaries who become appreciative doers.
Carry on Shedding!
Dennis with his tender behind
Steve’s “View from coal house on a dark night”
Ray’s take on a welcome gate
Raspberry Dave has been busy working on some principles of push-button technology with his Pi
Actually it is very creative – coming up with ideas of uses. This is part of our technology push!
The woodland folk and a Hobbit House destined this week for St. Joseph’s school
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Introducing New Shedder Gordon
Well known to the UK Men’s Sheds movement is Chris Fisher, the Blind Woodturner. His is an amazing story and some of us could not believe he is blind because his whole body movement is one of confidence, even with a chisel in his hand and a rotating lathe with object mounted in front of him. Look at his website for some of his story https://theblindwoodturner.co.uk/
Here is a video of him at work https://youtu.be/jwDq8MzJVO8
He is a delightful guy to meet.
Norton Shed has such a man too, Gordon. He recently joined the Shed on a “referral”. Thankfully he does not want to use the lathe because his main interest is supporting his independence, including through technology. A white stick with golf ball (old but very current technology), but also a command of new, digital technology.
Gordon is blind from birth so has no memory of seeing but he still sees “in his brain”! He maps everything in his mind and, like Chris Fisher, does what he does with confidence.
We have programmed him like Alexa, to respond when he hears the cue word “Gordon” or someone touches his hand or arm. He then focuses on what is being said to him rather than the rabble around him.
It is a training experience for us from him as we learn that being blind is a bit like hearing impairment in a crowd!
Does Gordon want to be treated differently because of his blindness? No. He has a very agile brain and can talk about everyday life with a bit of humour too. He is joining our growing band of Digital Shedders (Paul, Derrick, Aiden (in Whitby) and Graham). Others are taking interest too.
Gordon keeps saying sorry. We’ve told him he will be sorry if he keeps on saying it! We hope to soon have him in his own space at the Shed – but not tied to it.
He brings a wealth of practical IT awareness and knowledge to our Shed table (he has been a trainer too), including about digital aids of many types for the blind.
We decided to record a short introductory video of him explaining a device he brought to show us. A satnav for the blind – no screen, of course.
And finally, a newsletter from the Australian Men’s Sheds Association
I love the laidbackness of Aussies and that is a feature of Sheds too. They get on with work and take on challenges but they also portray the “G’day mate” attitude. They seem to be a little more relaxed about life in their country towns. They are also very volunteering attuned. What people do in retirement to contribute to community life is a matter of everyday conversation. It is a badge of honour. Have a read.
PS Nobody wears hats with corks except tourists!
And ending this blog, at last (!), with some more photos of things nearly completed
Hobbit House painting ready for delivery Wednesday at 11
Pleased with it
Fitting the superstructure
Almost there. Few bits to do on Friday and then ready to take the stage. Train and carriages will sit on mock rails also made.