What a difference a day makes

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It hasn’t been a particularly good couple of weeks in the land of CCGS.. nothing big really but lots of hassle that makes doing the job difficult and  increases stress… no amount of zumba can take away the stresses of not being able to get on with the job because we don’t have phones or emails  and it is amazing how much time you can lose trying to retrieve lost diaries…

But.. then we had Tuesday and an “open  space” event… about care for older people.. I have never been to one of these before and  it was new to most of us and a bit daunting… no sitting  quietly in the back of the meeting planning quietly what you are going to cook for tea.. no this was all about full on participation .. listening and contributing…It was part of a piece of public engagement we are running called “fit 4 the future” and  involved all our local stakeholders.. public.. private ..voluntary… it was great . 70 people came and there was so much energy and  positivity in the room. And I thought that I wish our  public could see this.. see how passionate the people  who work in our many services are. How much they want to make things better, that despite cut backs  and staff shortages and  so much negative coverage in the media about older peoples services these people really care.

People had lots of ideas…some new…some a little off the wall…So much  of what we talked about was about how we work together  across the organisational boundaries that divide us to do the right things and make it better…accepting that there will always been boundaries somewhere and  it is easy to use these as excuses to do nothing…

And we talked about how many times we have all been here before.. said the same things before… can it really be different this time?

Well.. yes I hope so.. and I told my  story about the patient who came to see me for help giving up smoking.. they said sheepishly… well I have tried 4 times before and FAILED… and my reply was as it always is.. they were not failures they were rehearsals…. So lets hope that just like the smoker desperate to give up… we desperate to get it right this time can learn from all those many rehearsals we have all participated in before. .learn from why they didn’t work and  get it right ( or at least most of  it) this time…

So I went away from that day feeling tired but so much more positive.. buoyed by the commitment of so many people who just want to get it right and who despite everything care so much…