For too long we have allowed the build up of over-complicated, expert led interventions which focus on difference and deficit not sameness and asset. Our language of ‘pathways’, ‘models’ and ‘interventions’ would give the impression that the work we are involved with is a science...it is not a science it is an art. Why is it so much easier for us ‘experts’ to advise others rather than ourselves? Why is it so hard to professionalise our services and approaches while maintaining our humanity? Why do services that have retained their humanity so often appear shabby and second rate, poor relations to the lovely new premises funded by large capital improvement programmes (that are, conversely, so often joyless and miserable)?
The gang at Timber Wharf are on to something. If we fund services to provide support what else can we ask them to be doing, how can we make their assets work harder and if we do then what further benefits would we also be unlocking? Our best services have been trying to ‘mainstream’ our respective client groups for an age. However, these attempts have often been overshadowed by a ‘poor us’ mentality. Good old school philanthropy, ‘please can you help’. No more.
What do we mean by community and what do we want from it? People often say community is ‘broken’. How wrong. Our communities are actually made up of circles of trust e.g. family, work, pub, church, playground, crack house.....what makes them ‘thick’ communities is not that everyone in them is ok and all rather jolly but rather everyone in them knows the spoken and unspoken rules. They have a track record and joint history and so we know who is ok and who isn’t. We actually feel just as ‘safe’ and enabled if we know who we can’t trust as well as who we can. We no longer have two TV channels where we all watch the Morecambe & Wise Christmas show and all have something to share on Boxing Day. The world wasn’t better then, we simply have more choice now. More choice can make us unsure and anxious; more choice can seem hard and cold. We need more Morecambe & Wise; we need to build community memory.
So how do we do it? We stop building over-specialised interventions, where people are removed from opportunity and community and rather use the skills that we have developed in our work for the greater community good. We open up our centres and resources so that everyone in our neighbourhoods can be included and benefit from what they have to offer. We stop trying to ‘mainstream’ our respective client groups and instead mainstream ourselves taking some of the most marginalised with us.
Sam Hopley
CEO Timebanking UK
No comments:
Post a Comment