Daryl Harris and Linda Tremain
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board
“Implicit in a prudent approach to health is the need to redraw the relationship between citizen and the state, so that professionals and the public can work together as equal partners; co-producing new services that best fit their needs and empowering people to gain greater control over their own lives”. This is the vision set out by the Bevan Commission in 2016. Now more than ever we need to make this vision a reality.
The miners’ institutes of the last century provided for the wellbeing of Wales’ industrial communities. They focussed on self-improvement, peer support, and co-operation. Our project seeks to reinvent contemporary healthcare in the image of the old ‘stiwts’. It replaces the current emphasis on therapeutic interventions for sick people, with a focus on self-management, wellbeing, and community capacity. It also softens current boundaries between service providers and recipients. We have named our service the Niwrostiwt.
Our aim is to evaluate the social and wellbeing impacts of the Stiwt, and explore the scalability and wider scope for this way of working. To do this we will develop a coherent evaluation strategy, and test the applicability of the model to at least one other condition (scope) and across at least one other health board (scale).
The Niwrostiwt is codesigned and co-delivered by experts by training and experts by experience. Converting the latter from passive patients to valued collaborators and inspiring peers. The anticipated benefits of this shift are:
- People affected by neurological/health conditions will experience a sense of empathy, purpose, control, connection, and achievement through recognition of the value of their hopes, skills, relationships, and life experience.
- Staff will experience an enhanced sense of purpose and creativity from working in new and innovative ways alongside people with living experience.
- Services will experience reduced burden through awareness and utilisation of the full range of available resources and assets – including the wisdom of life experience.
