Rachel Corrie.
The Community Hub.
A speculative look into the future of the NHS.
This was a speculative future project with a focus on service design.
Our group's focus is on the community, specifically how future communities can grow and help their member's health and wellbeing using holistic measures. This project aimed to create a thought-provoking picture of the future, challenging our current attitudes of care in the global west.
Process.
During this project a huge emphasis was put on collaboration. We worked together with practitioners within both the NHS (National Health Service) and the 3rd sector to gain insight into what the current approaches are used to tackle issues of wellbeing, as well as what their ideal solutions would look like. When working with the stakeholders we carried out interviews but also got them involved in the design process during a co-design session where we created a persona andlooked at their journey pre covid and how it could be improved in a future journey.
Insight.
From the insights that came from our own research and the codesign session we found that there is a large disconnect between the NHS and the 3rd sector. we felt this connection could become a lot stronger and benefit everyone involved.
To connect the sectors we decided that in our future the NHS will be split into two services; the NHS will still be available but will be more focus on more serious emergency health care and the new CHC (Community Health Care) service will focus on preventing illness and supporting people with non-emergency healthcare needs. The CHC will focus on services such as GP (General Practitioner) practices and social care becoming more connected to the third sector organisations that are already in place in the community. by having more connection to the third sector the health care system will become more integrated into the community and can then implement more holistic and preventative care methods.
these methods will help at the community level and thus help to decrease pressure on the NHS by helping to treating non-emergency health care within the services and in the long term prevent serious illness.
Idea.
The CHC is proposing to introduce “Community Hubs” into communities in Scotland. These hubs are localised neighbourhood community centres. This hub will not take up physical space but instead, be a community of people with the same aim This aim is to preventative and holistic health care methods to better the community. The hub will run different workshops and groups based on the community needs, so, for example, if a community has a high rate of obesity the hub might set a walking group run by volunteers or a workshop run by a health professional be to help educate people on better eating habits. The hub will not just be used to just bring the community together it will also be used to bring the sectors within that community together. The different sectors that choose to join the hub will all be equal and will work together as one unit to help the community. This means the hub will run on a referral scheme if one of the team notice someone in their workshops is suffering from hearing loss, they can then let a health care professional know who can then contact the person and ask them for a meeting to discuss it and help them get the right help.
Drawing by Vilhelm Thoresson
Personas.
The first persona we looked at was our CHC ambassador
The CHC ambassador is a kind of social worker that will help to establish Community hubs within the community.
The CHC Ambassadors move into or already live in, the neighbourhood they’re working with. This is key as the ambassador needs to have the same stakes in the improvement of the neighbourhood as the rest of the community.
Early ambassadors also have a key role in developing the language used regarding holistic care as a lot of the language used today, although not negative in nature, might be something a lot of people would not want to identify themselves with - “Charity” “3rd Sector” etc.
Drawing by Vilhelm Thoresson
The second persona we looked at Heather’s. We looked at heathers journey from a social and a health perspective to give an idea of how the Community Hub will help her and how she could use it.
Heather's journey occurs in 2032 when the Hub is established and is functioning and self-sufficient within the Community.
Drawing by Vilhelm Thoresson
Conclusion.
The community hub would be the core of the community bringing people together, everyone’s needs are cared about and it’s understood that sometimes there’s not just a simple solution to fix a problem. We are wishing to create not just a system but an environment that everyone is able to be a part of, the workshops and groups that will be in place will allow individuals to be in control of what they do, sharing their lives, interests and worries with others creating connections, seeking and offering help to each other.
At the end of this project we gave a presentation to the staff NHS Airshire and Arran and other 3rd party companies that were involved in the project. We got some amazing feedback and they all felt our idea hit a lot of the problems that face the NHS, we were also invited to present our designs at a NHS conference in the summer which will be a great opportunity to get further input for stakeholders.