Bringing people together to create new conversations

Jo Odell, FoNS Practice Development Facilitator

As part of a charitable organisation, we at FoNS pride ourselves on putting people at the centre of everything we do and taking an enabling and collaborative approach. So imagine my excitement and great interest when back in July last year I discovered Kaleidoscope Health on Twitter and saw that they were advertising a two day event called the Super Melting Pot: Creating a Better Conversation.

Skip forward six months and I will be attending this event on Thursday/ Friday this week. What first attracted me was the creativity it offered in terms of doing things differently, providing a structure for people from diverse roles and organisations to come together and learn from people who traditionally sit outside health and social care; to look at how they have developed, changed and innovated ‘the way things are done round here’.

Having read all the blogs from people who have posed their thoughts and ideas for this event, I can see there is a lot to challenge our thinking in whatever role or organisation we find ourselves:

• Rich Taunt poses questions about ‘the lack of cognitive diversity in the NHS what can be learnt from the history of the CIA’.
• Nick Black talks about ‘how we could do things differently by encouraging staff to be more questioning and engaging them better in finding the solutions’.
• Charlotte Williams talks about ‘the cultural unacceptability of needing care and the imbalance of health and social care staffing and funding’.

So, what are my hopes and fears for this event: How camaraderie brings a source of friendship, community, purpose and pride at the Lister Care Home.

Well I hope to meet people from diverse backgrounds and roles, I hope and want to spend time with these people in conversation and work with them collaboratively to challenge the ‘status quo’ in healthcare as we currently define it. My fears are that we will spend all this time together and nothing will change. However, this is balanced with expectations of developing new and exciting relationships with people who can and do make a difference every day.

So finally watch out for my next blog, where I will share my reflections on the Super Melting Pot, its methods, outcomes and what this might mean for the people FoNS traditionally supports and who we can support in the future. In the meantime, I would encourage you to read the blogs I have sign posted you to, it really does start you thinking!