Category: Charity Insights 2014

Week Two with BHF

BHFSo having finished my second week with BHF it is safe to say I know a few things about IV diuretics and Integrated Care!

Feeling settled in (worked out how to get the boiling water from the tap for tea) I was less nervous about the week approaching. Friendly faces always greeted me in the morning and I now had a better understanding of some of the NHS terminology which was making reading government policies and strategies quite tough last week! My Aim for the week was to get through 2 evaluation reports, one about IV diuretics within the home and the other about Integrated Care schemes taking place in England, Wales and Scotland. Each of the projects carried out has been funded by BHF and the aim is to understand the process required to set up such schemes and have feedback from patients, carers and HCPs (Health care professional) to see whether the scheme was beneficial.

My role is to then link the results from these evaluations to existing Government Policies and create a document that can be published and branded as BHF to be taken to conferences to prove why these projects should be undertaken at a national level.

Throughout the week I have been creating extensive cross referencing tables for each of the following projects: IV Diuretics within the home (England), Integrated care projects (England, Wales, Scotland). Each country within the United Kingdom has has its own set of government policies (quite alot of reading!). During the week I had allocated time slots with the various members of different departments who were able to enlighten me as to their roles within BHF.

 

Week 2 – Derbyshire Wildlife trust

Week 2 has produced some new challenges, I’ve been involved in a few different activities in comparison to last week and have also grown in confidence enough to lead a few of the activities I’ve become more comfortable with.

On Tuesday I spent the day with the rangers getting an experience of what they do, I spent most the day doing weeding, although this probably wasn’t the most exciting activity to be involved in,  they did promise me that next time I’m with them it’ll be in a more interesting line of work. I’ve also arranged a meeting to speak with a ranger who had a large involvement in the production of the water cycle exhibition which will be really useful for my project, he will be able to give me more information about the planning and production of the display.thA2LRB8Y1

 This week I was trusted in taking the responsibility of a mini beasting activity, which was  nerve racking at first but after seeing how much the first group children enjoyed it, I felt a lot more confident for the next groups later that day. Working with various different wildlife trust staff, I find it interesting to watch all their different teaching styles and observe the way they deal with different situations.

On Friday I had probably one of my biggest challenges so far, having to do a water filtration activity with a group of children, all with learning difficulties; trying to help them to maintain their interest, while also paying extra special attention to ensure they were supervised in order to perform safe practise was a lot more difficult than I expected.

Tomorrow I look forward to getting involved in a family event in small mammal trapping, to monitor the numbers of small mammals in the Carsington area – early morning start, have to be at work at 7:30am!

So to sum it all up its been another productive week and I’ve been working hard on planning my project, I cant believe its already the end of the second week, I’ll be sad to leave at the end of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Setting up Web Servers, HOT meet-ups and learning data visualisation (British Red Cross GIS)

I started my first week with the Red Cross on Tuesday (wonderfully detailed information about the team here by Helena) . After being set-up with my desk and all the IT services I was told that they had a (sort of urgent) task for me already! The mapping team is closely linked with the Phillipines Red Cross team who are working on resheltering after the recent typhoon. In order to do this, the Red Cross decided to set-up a survey downloadable on smart phones to assess the damage in each household.  Unfortunately some of the open source software behind this is facing downtime due to increased global usage and lack of personnel etc. This meant that the Red Cross could not rely on the relevant servers and had to set up its own instance using Amazon’s Cloud Computing Services. This was important as the next set of surveys was due in a week and this would be an essential part of a multi-million dollar project.

So that became an interesting and rapid way to join the team. After following some tutorials and Googling around for more specific settings for the server I managed to get most of it out of the way by the end of the day. That evening, I joined the team at a Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) meet-up and we were taught to map developing countries (from satellite imagery) so that local volunteers and charities could help with greater ease. This was fun and I recommend it if you would like to do good whilst on your laptop. More information here.

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Humanitarian Open Street Map Meetup

 

I had completed setting up the (Formhub) instance by the end of the next day and had also had the chance to start several courses on data visualisation and web programming on lynda and Codecademy. Although I am familiar with Python, by the end of the internship I would like to understand and be able to work with modules such as d3.js. This would mean I can create great info graphics such as these. I have been doing these courses for the last couple of days and exploring the world of open data and initiatives such as Crisis.net paired with helping the team out with smaller programming related tasks.

It has been an insightful week which has provided the opportunities to learn explore and apply just as I had hoped.

The pieces of the Mental Health Puzzle are coming together

Shocking news – I can now no longer go without at least a cup of tea every two hours. I am also adapting to working in an office – I no longer find it odd to share information with people sitting in the same room by email! Having said that, I have had countless very constructive conversations about general issues in the mental health sector, as well as more specific ones about my project. Everybody on the Campaigns team that I am part of has been incredibly supportive and always prepared to provide me with feedback on my work.

I can hardly believe that my second week at Rethink is almost over. It is a bit frightening to watch the days fly by, but at the same time incredible how much I have already learned and done.

This week, I have worked a lot on the survey that we and other mental health organisations will be sending out through our networks. The questionnaire is targeted at people affected by mental health problems or their carers. It includes a whole spectrum of illnesses, ranging from Schizophrenia to Anxiety Disorder. I have fiddled around a lot with the phrasing and emphasis of the questions, to make sure that the data we collect will provide us with information on the issue we are trying to address – what practical changes in primary mental health care would be most useful, and how can we implement these?

We are now in contact with the organisations we intend to work hand in hand with: Mind, NSUN, The Mental Health Foundation and the London Strategic Clinical Network (who hosted the primary care conference I attended what feels like years ago). I expect to receive some input from them, and will make final changes to the survey according to their feedback – and then the questionnaire is ready to be sent out.

In addition to this, I have been working on another primary mental health care-related piece. Rethink is, in collaboration with others, working towards something called a CQUIN (Commissioning for Quality and Innovation). This is a payment which service providers receive if they can show that their patients have received a particular treatment outlined in the CQUIN.

In the case of the 2014/2015 Mental Health CQUIN, there are two objectives to be met by service providers in order to qualify for the payment. One is that they need to make sure that mental health patients receive regular physical health checks (because antipsychotic medication causes significant weight gain, diabetes, high cholesterol and hence heart disease – these people die on average 15-20 years younger than the rest of the population) and then treat those risk factors. The other objective is to improve communication with the patient’s GP and share information with them, in order to avoid a duplication of work, and make sure all professionals involved in the person’s care are aware of important details.

At the moment, I am designing an information sheet for health professionals, outlining the content of this programme, why it can make a massive difference to patients, and generally encouraging the staff to realise these improvements. This leaflet will be distributed around mental health services.

Next week, I will attend a conference around physical health of people with mental health problems, where exactly these issues will be discussed.

I am starting to see how all these different aspects of mental health care – the role of the GP, physical health problems, communication between primary and secondary care providers, etc – are interconnected and make up a bigger picture. The different parts of the puzzle are slowly coming together, and it is a great feeling to see how my work fits in there.

Week 2: Content and development of TF Willetts social media campaign

After my first week of extensive research and planning, we’ve now developed the campaign in the second week starting with our slogan ‘life in the light’ (it was originally ‘light up a life’ but sadly this was already taken for a hospice campaign) and filming a video in Hyde Park. The aim of the video is to introduce me and my colleague Theo, talk about what we’re going to be doing on the Facebook pages in the next couple of weeks, what the charity itself does and how people can get involved with our campaign. We weren’t aware we we’re doing this until Tuesday when the CEO of the company, Brian Willetts, told us he wanted us to do a video by Thursday, consequently we had to work at an extremely fast pace and in our own time to create content to deliver. This was definitely testing on my time management and creativity skills, but I’ve had an extremely valuable day of filming. We organised filming time with an experienced camera man who has worked for paramount studios, Sam Parsons, to film our campaign; he has kindly offered to edit it for us by Monday to post on the T F Willetts Facebook page to start the campaign next week.

Since Friday I have expanded my role within the charity, not only am I social media campaign officer but I have also taken on a more personal assistant role too. This has involved aiding the organisation of ‘The Light Project’ day event in October. I have compiled a list of celebrities Brian knows, in order to contact them and request to film videos in which they talk about why the arts are important to them. The idea is to post these videos each week in a build up to the ‘The Light Project’ event in October. In addition we’ve looked at a potential venue for this event and investigated companies to host a wifi donating segment. To further this, Theo and I have completed a thorough analysis of the website and are currently discussing updates with the web designer to create a clearer and easier to navigate web page. My attention has also been directed towards setting up a PayPal account for the charity which links to their website and then conducting an international transaction over email into the account.

Tomorrow we give our weekly presentation and plan out our aims for next week.

Week 1 on the Beautifully Wild Heath

WaHH logo full colour (compressed)

            

1ST WEEK !!!!      30/06/14 – 4/07/14

WILD About HAMPSTEAD HEATH is a reaaaaalllllllly dynamic, exciting and fulfilling project going on at the moment. There really is sooooo much to be wild about the Heath from all its wildlife, habitats, people and the events going on there.

What a really cool week – have learnt so much and completed so much in a week.  It was a brilliant start – meeting the team and the wildlife on the Heath and I happened to start the same week that was a training week for an education officer role so it was perfect timing. The team well basically it is the best team to work with –

 

Here is a summary diary of the main activities day to day I was involved in the 1st week.

30th June 2014 – MONDAY

  • Housekeeping and building tour
  • Introduction to the project and partnership as well as overview of the project
  • Walk around the Heath
  • Introduction to outdoor learning: educational benefits; working with groups, learning styles; health and safety considerations, lesson planning and curricula.
  • The educational officer showed us additional activities, covering adult learners and teacher training for the group activities that take place on the Heath for the public.

 

1st July 2014 – TUESDAY

Hedgehog prints collected from the Hedgehog Trap set on the Heath.
  • Discovering the Heath – so looking at the wildlife and habitats present there, the ponds, streams, gardens, trees etc.
  • Snake walks, crayfish, hedgehog traps to try to attract them so can track them for surveying.
  • Checking out the wildlife cameras installed on the Heath.
  • So looking at the Outdoor areas available both to public when they are lead by groups and also the parts of the Heath that are left only for wildlife to encourage more diversity on the Heath.
  • Understanding how the ecologists on the Heath keep track of the vast diversity of the heath – with all its habitats and wildlife. As well as how improvements can me made in the future to make it more efficient and less costly.

 

2nd July 2014 – WEDNESDAY

  • Office work. Learning more about the coordinator role in terms of the managing side of it and the outreach role – where the main task is to try to encourage more volunteering on the WAHH project.
  • Learnt about the general procedure for volunteering – looking at cribs sheets for getting volunteers via email, phone and face to face. So the procedure needed for this – how to speak and what content to mention.
  • Also maintained the databases for all the volunteers at present – being the way they found out about the project so can invest more time and effort in doing more advertising in this way – if a particular way i.e. a website seems to be a very popular way people are finding out about the project.
  • So need to think about visual representation i.e. pie charts, graphs to show the number of volunteers that are fixed, not as regular ones and ones that have never actually volunteered but are on the email databases. And the visual representation of the means that the volunteers found out about the project.
  • Thinking up new ideas about attracting volunteers on the Heath.
  • Also looking at the structure and order needed to run a successful and efficient project for the long term after the 3 years. So looking at the different roles needed, the amount of volunteers needed and so on.
  • Used trello, excel and word as well as emailed few groups to spread the word about the Heath.

 

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Creative session coming up with educational group activities

3rd July 2014 – THURSDAY

  • Introduction to volunteering offer of WAHH.
  • Introduction to interpretation
  • Testing out a guerrilla interpretation event
  • Listening and observing about what makes volunteers happy and want to volunteer.
  • Creative session for the bike.
  • Come up with ideas for a toolkit and make it – putting them into action at the weekend.
  • Introduction to the community outreach programme.

 

4th July 2014 – FRIDAY

  • Statistical analysis of the volunteer numbers – job roles and the ways they found about the project. Pie chart and Graph analysis representation to Rachel – project manager.
  • Looking at Do-it org and environment jobs website which seem to be popularly used by the volunteers.
  • Also contacting the volunteers who haven’t stated how they found out about the project.
  • Designing a volunteer flyer leaflet – new layout- colours and message so researching styles and layout on the internet.
  • Carried out Volunteer interviews.
  • Setting up the bike for the weekend – so preparing all the activities and putting them together for the volunteers to be using.
  • Emailed volunteers with info – and forms to fill in.

 

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Out and about on the Heath

 

 

Week 1 – Derbyshire Wildlife Trust

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The Derbyshire Wildlife Trust is one of 47 local trusts around the UK working to promote and protect local wildlife. The trust manages 42 nature reserves (when in Derbyshire you are never more than 9 miles away from one), including moorland, wetland, woodland and wildflower meadows. The trust works with a range of different establishments such as schools, communities, local authorities and landowners to promote and protect the natural environment. I was interested in the work of the Trust because I am from the local area so obviously its protection should be important to me, but also as a biologist I thought the work I’d be involved in witvery relevant to my course.

I’ve been working in the education department of the Trust, and seeing as it’s summer time I’ve had a very large involvement in hands-on outdoorsy activities such as pond dipping. You’d think it would get boring the third day in a row, but it’s amazing how everyday you somehow manage to find a new creature you’ve not yet seen. Working with children has been really enjoyable, but they keep you on your toes, I got thrown in the deep end on my first day when a child somehow managed to fall into the pond.

As well as pond dipping I’ve also bee helping in various other activities such as an owl pellets activity, where you basically dissect owl pellets (which are the indigestible parts of an owls prey) to analyse their diet to see how the activities of humans can indirectly affect owl populations by limiting their food resources. Also a very interesting subject.

Over the course of my first week the plan for my project has changed slightly, I originally was going to make a activity booklet for school children to take home with them after a field trip to the wildlife discovery room. However upon speaking to various teachers and my colleagues, I’ve decided to instead make 2 different activity work books, to go with the water cycle and wildlife exhibitions at the Carsington water centre. I have spent several  hours of my free time after working going around each exhibition and briefly planning what each booklet should include to get across the main information the activity centre aims families and school groups to take home with them.

Upon reflection, I don’t think I could have asked for a better first week. It has absolutely flown by; the work is really interesting, I spend most my time outside in the sun, in a gorgeous area (as seen from the picture), and to top it all off my colleague’s are really friendly and couldn’t have been more welcoming to me. I really look forward to what might happen in the weeks to come.

 

 

 

 

Fight for every Heartbeat

BHF

 

First week completed working for British Heart Foundation with the Healthcare and Innovations team!

Each day this week has brought something a little different meaning time has flown by. Monday started with a tour of the office in North London (attempting to remember everyone’s name!) and a presentation from the Chief Executive of BHF to all members of staff to summarise what BHF has been doing over the last 2 years and where it hopes to go in the future. I then spent a few hours getting to grips with the NHS terminology and acronyms in some of the evaluations I would be tackling later in the week. The afternoon consisted of a meeting with an external charity to see if BHF could  benefit from some of their work and resources.

Tuesday mornings task challenged my ability to speed read. I consumed 150 pages of detailed evaluations of projects undertaken by BHF. It was fascinating stuff but at this stage I wasn’t quite clear how to use this information so made my own judgements. Team building lunch at Prezzo was very enjoyable and gave me the opportunity to integrate into the team. We then headed off to a meeting about a current pilot study that appeared to going really well and would give some useful results.

On Wednesday I was allocated time to clarify my role with Eleanor and Sarah (members of Healthcare and Innovations team) and things started to come together and make sense. At this point my diary was filled with meetings with various people from different departments which will give me a brilliant over view of how the charity works. With a more focussed and targeted view I could rethink my analysis of the evaluations I had read earlier in the week and start cross referencing to government policies.

Thursday morning I was a bit tired having moved out of my flat the night before so was a bit slow to start. I then had a meeting with a member of Children and Young People Team who explained the need for their resources and support for young people suffering with heart conditions. A trip to a Mexican place just down the road for Amy’s Birthday was another great chance to talk to people and understand what paths they had taken to reach their position in BHF. In the afternoon I had a meeting with a fellow scientist, Matt, who worked in the resources team. Matt had also studied biochemistry at university so we had quite a lot in common! He explained the work he had done for his PhD and how his science background was crucial to his role now within the BHF.

Friday consisted of a meeting with Jess, Health at Work team and Eleanor who is involved in the translational grants. Both of these meetings were very interesting and helpful for me to think about possible paths I might take in the future.

As I stood on the 5.49 train home, I reflected about the week and couldn’t help but get excited about what the next three weeks had in store!

Week one – Getting started

Regeneration of communities through performing arts is at the heart of the Thomas Frederick Willetts Foundation. Their current aim is to launch ‘The Light Project’ in October, a project which focuses on building an arts centre in Treharris, a disadvantaged community, to bring revenue back into the community as well as a providing a place where the community can come together to carry out performing arts projects. To sustain this they are opening ice cream cafes, art exhibitons from the Tate Britain and even manufacturing their own regional beer the ‘Taf-Valley’. The regeneration of Treharris will hopefully act as a microcosm to apply to other disadvantaged communities in the UK and across the world.

This is the part where my internship begins; we want to create a social media campaign which builds up to this launch day, bringing forward the idea of passing on the tools for regenerating communities using performing arts. As this is the first week, the concept is still in its early developments, but an initial idea is ‘passing on the light’ or ‘passing on the lantern’ using a physical tag which can be passed throughout social media. Obviously trying to get something to go viral is a mean feat, and is the core of any marketing campaign, but we can try!

With regards to the internship itself, I have moved well and truly out of my comfort zone. First of all, my team consists of me and one other intern Theo, neither of us has extensive prior knowledge in social media campaigns nor knows the charity in depth. And secondly, we have been left with the open ended project of ‘a social media campaign which builds up to a day and encompasses The Light Project’. This does provide us with a wide scope for creativity and leaves us to explore whichever avenue we wish the direction of the campaign to go, but does make narrowing down what we want to do a challenge. Therefore research was our key aim this week; I compiled a portfolio of successful social media campaigns, such as the #nomakeupselfie and movember, highlighting why they were successful, what they perhaps could have done to improve, and what we can draw from them to apply to our own campaign. Further research was required on the charity itself to help us establish what they’ve done, what they’re going to do and what specific values they want us to portray in the campaign.

Finally, today was the compilation of all the research into a power point presentation which Theo and I pitched to the CEO of the charity along with the brief aims of the campaign as a whole and our action plan for next week.

I am looking forward executing our action plan for next week and hopefully bringing the light project social media campaign to fruition.

Rethinking Mental Illness

Here I am, sitting at my desk in the Vauxhall office of Rethink Mental Illness, after months of anticipation and preparation! It is my fourth day today, and after the strange feeling that overcomes oneself when entering unknown terrain, I am beginning to settle in. The occasional tea break allows me to enjoy the sensational view out of the 15th floor windows, with MI6 to one side of the building, and Big Ben, the London Eye and the City of London to the other. Having a chat over a cup of tea also really helps getting to know the team (and so did a 5-hour post-work picnic in the park yesterday!).

Of course, they don’t just consume hot drinks here, but they’re engaged in some fantastic projects. Rethink is a mental health charity, focusing mainly on severe mental health issues such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and psychosis in general. They play a two-fold role in this field; they are both the direct providers of mental healthcare services such as recovery homes and psychiatric wards, and also run campaigns, work on policies, increase awareness and reduce stigma around mental illness.

This week so far was characterised mainly by briefings about projects which the Campaigns and Policy team are currently running, one of which will be my main undertaking during the next month. My main project will be looking at mental healthcare provision in the primary care setting. The first thing most people do when they feel unwell, and that includes mental health issues, is that they go see their GP. There are a number of problems associated with this.

Firstly, it often takes many weeks to even get an appointment, and if you’re in an acute crisis, immediate care is crucial. Of course you can go to A&E, but the staff there are mainly trained and prepared to deal with physical health problems, and in most cases patients presenting with a mental illness are not treated appropriately.

Secondly, if the patient finally manages to see their GP, the clinician’s knowledge of mental health is often so limited that they misdiagnose and mistreat the condition. If a mental health condition is not recognised, that obviously makes it less likely that they will be referred to appropriate specialist services, too.

Since mental illness is not a short term problem, but will often have to be monitored and treated for a lifetime, specialist secondary services are often overwhelmed by the amount of work, and when they discharge a patient after an acute crisis, they are rarely able to follow them up. They are also constantly experiencing budget cuts, and therefore not always as accessible to patients as they would be in an ideal world. Therefore, primary care provided by the GP should play a crucial role in the form of regular follow-ups. It would massively improve the experience of patients with mental health problems if GPs received better mental healthcare training.

My project will involve gathering data on the satisfaction of such patients with primary healthcare, most likely in the form of a survey, to support this argument. Eventually this will be used to write a report and bring forward a campaign regarding concrete advice on how to improve primary care of mental illness.

I started gathering some ideas for this project at a conference on primary care which I attended today. Some GPs with an interest in mental health spoke about policies they implemented in their local area to improve primary care mental health, and passed on their experiences. One idea I found particularly promising was one put forward by Dr Sheila Hardy from UCLPartners, who led a project where mental health nurses received training workshops and then in turn trained community nurses. These mental health-trained community nurses were then able to provide some basic services to patients, thus relieving the burden on the secondary healthcare system. This training system appears to be a cost-effective, efficient way to reach and train many professionals in a sort of pyramid-model, whilst meeting the patients’ needs and centring services on their expectations.

Generally speaking, there is increasing awareness of mental illness in our society, and people are realising the scale of the problem. It was fantastic to see how many different positions were represented at the conference today (clinicians, the voluntary sector, service users, police staff, and more) since that illustrates the diversity of people thinking about these issues and trying to address them. Seeing so many people who are passionate about improving mental healthcare makes me very hopeful that my project will contribute to a positive change in the long run, and I am really excited to see where the next few weeks will lead!