Participle

“Human beings are social creatures. We are social not just in the trivial sense that we like company, and not just in the obvious sense that we each depend on others. We are social in a more elemental way: simply to exist as a normal human being requires interaction with other people.”

So opens Atul Gawande’s recent article in the New Yorker, an exploration of social isolation in relation to the tens of thousands of US prisoners currently held in solitary confinement.  The article goes on to explore the effect of social isolation on the human beings and their brains. Many of the stories resonate with what we heard and saw working with socially isolated older people living in Westminster during the Meetup project.  Here are a few choice snippets from a fascinating article…

A U.S. military study of almost a hundred and fifty naval aviators returned from imprisonment in Vietnam, many of whom were treated even worse than McCain, reported that they found social isolation to be as torturous and agonizing as any physical abuse they suffered.

In 1992, fifty-seven prisoners of war, released after an average of six months in detention camps in the former Yugoslavia, were examined using EEG-like tests. The recordings revealed brain abnormalities months afterward; the most severe were found in prisoners who had endured either head trauma sufficient to render them unconscious or, yes, solitary confinement. Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury.

According to the Navy P.O.W. researchers, the instinct to fight back against the enemy constituted the most important coping mechanism for the prisoners they studied. Resistance was often their sole means of maintaining a sense of purpose, and so their sanity. Yet resistance is precisely what we wish to destroy in our supermax prisoners.

Read the full article here in the New Yorker

David Cameron has championed Southwark Circle in his Spring Conference speech.

‘In the London Borough of Southwark, a new social enterprise called Southwark Circle is delivering vastly improved care services for less money designed by elderly people for elderly people using local social networks to bring real improvements to people’s lives..’

See the video of the full speech here

“If you dump people in a roomful of strangers they retreat into their shells,” said Hilary Cottam, founding director of Participle. “The insight was to help them to form their own groups of like-minded people. We prototyped MeetUp for six months, and have proved that it works and that it can save a significant amount of money on health care and social services.”

To view the full article click here

“Transportation has been described as the ‘glue’ that holds together all the activities that we call life. Ready access to family, friends, social activities, health care, and goods and services are vital to full participation in daily life. Without such mobility, many older persons report a sense of loss and feelings of isolation from the world of their younger years.”

Research on the transportation of older person has traditionally focused on daily trip-making behavior: how often they travel, what mode of transport they use, and the purposes for they travel. But despite all the quantitative data regarding trip-making by older persons, little research has been conducted to determine the perceptions and preferences among this group about their transportation choices and trip-making activity. This information is important to gather because it can guide policy makers and program managers towards policies and programs likely to enhance the ongoing mobility of older persons.

— from the Executive Summary of the AARP Public Policy Institute focus group report in which Joseph Coughlin of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Transportation Studies and Age Lab tells how drivers and non-drivers age 75 and older regard their transportation options and how they stay connected to their communities. (20 pages)
For more detail, click the link: http://assets.aarp.org/rgcenter/il/2001_05_transport.pdf

Barack Obama’s campaign has succeeded in harnessing untapped resources in thousands of local communities. Here’s a micro-level look at their “New Organizers” and what happens when you give citizens a compelling opportunity to participate: Neighbourhood Teams

Notice the progression of defined roles (field organizer, neighbourhood team leader, etc.), how each is inbued with a clear sense of purpose and the responsibility to pass on the torch to others. We’ve designed the neighbourhood teams in Southwark Circle with the same attention to detail and a similar determination to activate local resources for the benefit of the community.

Here’s Jennifer from the Obama Campaign’s local team in Kansas City, talking about how she has changed after six weeks of volunteering: “Now, I’m really asking: how can I be most effective in my community? I’ve realized that these things I’ve been doing as a volunteer organizer—well, I’m really good at them, I have a passion for this. I want to continue to find ways to actively make this place, my community, a better place. There’s so much more than a regular job in this—and once you’ve had this, it’s hard to go back to a regular job. I’m asking now: Can I look for permanent work as an organizer in service of my community? And that’s a question I had not asked myself before the campaign. It never occurred to me that I could even ask that question.”

Who was the last person I called sweetie? I don’t think I’ve ever called anyone that, nor have I really thought much about it when someone has called me sweetie.

But according to researchers like Dr. Becca Levy of Yale University, for older people these “little insults can lead to more negative images of aging,” Dr. Levy said. “And those who have more negative images of aging have worse functional health over time, including lower rates of survival.”

The article continues: “In a long-term survey of 660 people over age 50 in a small Ohio town, published in 2002, Dr. Levy and her fellow researchers found that those who had positive perceptions of aging lived an average of 7.5 years longer, a bigger increase than that associated with exercising or not smoking. The findings held up even when the researchers controlled for differences in the participants’ health conditions. In her forthcoming study, Dr. Levy found that older people exposed to negative images of aging, including words like “forgetful,” “feeble” and “shaky,” performed significantly worse on memory and balance tests; in previous experiments, they also showed higher levels of stress.”

We would happen if our language reflected participation instead of dependance? If we started from a position of strength, replacing needs with capabilities? What’s the opposite of ‘sweetie’?

Here’s the full article: Sweetie and Dear

Taking care of a parent in their old age can be a testing experience for adult children, both in terms of accessing care and the relationship between child and parent. This is compounded if there is a distance between parent and child.

However this article in the Guardian shows that relationships between siblings can too be put under strain when looking after ageing parents.  Siblings can have different ideas about what is right for mum or dad and problems can occur when one child feels they are doing more to help than the other. Rotas and job division depending on how close or far you are from a parent are identified in the article as methods to help adult children help their parents and maintain their relationships with their brothers and sisters at the same time. How else can we help support sibling relationships to help sons and daughters to support their parents? Arguments between siblings whilst caring for their parents can continue long after the parent’s death - there are examples of this in the article. In some cases parents have a strong role in keeping a family unit together and in some families the death of a parent can result in family relationships breaking down. An intervention which strengthens and eases relationships between siblings whilst caring for their parent could bring something positive out of this situation -closer sibling relationships lasting beyond the lifetime of the parent. What’s more, it could make caring for a parent that much easier.

This film is from The ‘Saying Hello’ project, a three and half year project, funded by the Big Lottery, to investigate ways in which older people manage potential or actual loneliness and isolation, promote successful coping strategies and influence local, regional and national policies and practices with respect to the aspirations of older people.

Completed in July 2007, it was a joint project conducted by Age Concern Wigan Borough and the Institute of Health and Social Care Research at the University of Salford together with a group of older volunteer co-researchers. A range of methods, including individual and group interviews and personally written narratives was drawn upon to produce rich data from 149 respondents. The resulting analysis was disseminated as a DVD and Talking Play, alongside reports and presentations.

Participle has developed Southwark Circle a membership organisation that helps older people take care of household tasks and keep on top of the little things that crop up at home, forge social connections and take advantage of new opportunities. It is a local organisation enhancing local resources through older people themselves and their neighbours.

Southwark Circle is being launched throughout Southwark in early 2009, and will be piloted in two areas, most likely Peckham and Dulwich East in autumn 2008. If you live in either of these areas, have a parent or relative living in these areas or live locally and want to get involved, then we would like to hear from you…

• Perhaps you are looking for some help for your parent or relative living in Southwark and would like to find out more about the help that Southwark Circle can offer?
• Perhaps you are someone, young or old, who lives in one of these areas and would like to help your neighbours in a voluntary, flexible way?
• Perhaps you are someone who would be interested in the flexible paid roles that Southwark Circle is looking to fill in these areas, roles that allow you to work as little as a couple of hours a week, as and when you can?
• Or perhaps you are someone who would like some help yourself.