Updates

Plan P Prototypathon

On Friday 14th March, we (Fiona and Vivien) spent the day with students from the Masters in Service Design Programme at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art. These students are completing a Prototyping module. This involves a short period of intensive learning about a topic, in this case, preventing social isolation and loneliness in older people. They then work in groups to rapidly prototype solutions to address the issue.  This is called a ‘prototypathon’!

 The task for the students is to design a set of  ‘prompt cards’ for those whose work involves supporting older people within the community.  The prompt cards could highlight principles such as ‘working in equal partnership’ or  ‘supporting carers’. They could include examples of interventions or activities or could identify key points when extra support might be needed by an older person in order to maintain or develop social connections. The students will also design how the cards will look. Their brief is to produce a design that is attractive and engaging with clear accessible messages.

To help the students with this task, we provided some background reading materials and gave an overview of Plan P. The students then worked with a set of personas of older people, giving them the opportunity to think in more detail about the challenges an older person might face, the strengths they might bring and the kind of solutions they might be seeking.

exploring the issues
exploring the issues

 In the afternoon we were joined by Jackie Doe, Project lead and Ann Campbell, a volunteer (and older person) from Perth and Kinross Healthy Communities Collaborative. Jackie and Ann described the work of the collaborative and some of the challenges, for example in trying to set up a lunch club and successes like establishing an indoor Kurling club for older people in Coupar Angus.  They also spent some time chatting with students in smaller groups to really inform some of their thinking about their prototyping  task.

students build a model during their discussion with Jackie and Ann
students build a model during their discussion with Jackie and Ann

There was lots of enthusiasm, interest and insightful questioning from the students and we look forward to working with them over the next couple of weeks as they develop their ideas for prompt cards. We plan to use the cards within Plan P and to share them widely through our IRISS network.  We hope they will be a useful resource for a wide range of practitioners in health and social care.

 Huge thanks to Fraser Bruce (Module Lead) and Selina Law (Service Designer) for setting up the workshop, to Jackie and Ann for giving their time and of course to the students for bringing a new slant to our way of thinking about prevention.

 

Better than a cure

You’ve probably heard this story: There once was a man who lived next to a deep, fast river. One day saw a child struggling, caught in the current. Without hesitation, he dived in and after much effort pulled the child ashore. Exhausted, they lay on the bank recovering, and he felt happy he had been able to save the child. However, the next day the same thing happened, and the next day again. As this continued the man, gradually became more and more worn out and frustrated. Then one day it stopped. The man walked upstream and came across a farmer who was finishing mending the fence between the river and the school. From then on children no longer needed to be rescued and the man, who still wanted to help, spent his time checking the fences remained in place and teaching the children to swim.

What this story, rather bluntly, illustrates is that our time and energy can often be more usefully be spent further upstream, addressing issues where they are still manageable and helping people to use their own assets to remain in a place where they have little need of ‘rescuing’.

This principle of prevention is gaining increasing traction in Scotland and the Scottish Government’s response to the Christie Commission (2011) has defined a ‘decisive shift towards prevention’ as one of the four key pillars of public sector reform.

At IRISS, prevention is a key theme of our work. So welcome to our blog about our new project Plan P: new approaches to prevention with older people, which looks at preventing isolation and loneliness in older people. Isolation and loneliness have been shown to have significant detrimental effects on health and wellbeing. In fact, one study suggests this is comparable to the impact of smoking 15 cigarettes a day (Holt-Lunstad and colleagues, 2010).  Other adverse effects include increased blood pressure, abnormal stress response, heart disease and poor sleep (Luanaigh and Lawlor, 2008). Additionally, several studies indicate a very strong association with depression (Cacioppo, Hughes and Waite, 2006; Golden and colleagues, 2009). Older people who are lonely or isolated also have substantially increased chances of developing dementia (Fratiglioni, Wang, Ericsson, Maytan and Winblad, 2000) or Alzheimer’s disease (Valtorta and Hanratty, 2012), compared to their better-connected counterparts.

Clearly the preventative impact of enhancing older people’s connections to their communities, families and each other and ensuring we remain involved and valued as we age, must not be underestimated.

Please keep up to date with our work on the project through this blog. We’d love to hear your thoughts and comments. For now, why not check out our first group discussion, What does prevention mean in an ageing population, recorded by the project advisory group for Iriss.fm.

References

Cacioppo JT, Hughes ME and Waite LJ (2006) Loneliness as a specific risk factor for depressive symptoms: Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. Psychology and Aging 21(1) pp 140-151

Christie C (2011) Commission on the future delivery of public services. Scottish Government: Edinburgh
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/publications/2011/06/27154527/18

Fratiglioni L, Wang HX, Ericsson K, Maytan M and Winblad B (2000) Influence of social network on occurrence of dementia: a community-based longitudinal study. Lancet 355 pp 1315-1319

Golden J, Conroy RM, Bruce I, Denihan A, Green E, Kirby M and Lawlor BA (2009) Loneliness, social supports, mood and wellbeing in community-dwelling elderly. International Journal of Geriatric Psychaiatry 24 pp 694-700

Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB, Layton JB (2010) Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review. PLoS Med 7(7): e1000316. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000316

Luanaigh C and Lawlor BA (2008) Loneliness and the health of older people. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. 23 pp 1213-1221

Valtorta N and Hanratty B (2012) Loneliness, isolation and the health of older adults: Do we need a research agenda? Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 105, p518-522.