Time to turn on the Oven

This month I have read seven (no sorry another one popped up on my feed this morning), Eight reports all in regard to employment issues within the health and social care sector. The reports are well written, however have I actually learnt anything from them or do they offer any solutions to the issues discussed? I would potentially argue that they do not and we are going over the same old ground.. 

If you are on the front line dealing with people in these areas of work, talking to them and listening to them, you spot patterns and question the need for the reports. The issues in question are things people and staff have been saying for years. Will a report make it better? Who do you send these reports to? The Government? Do they respond? what happens next?

Over time, I have learnt that it is not enough to just say, you need to do, Take action. This lesson probably came to me through some of my darkest moments. Having gone through a difficult part in my life, it was suggested that I try cognitive behaviour therapy. I have discussed this with a lot of my friends and many who have counselling have said that their instructor is qualified or they are going through the process. After discussion, I am a bit surprised as it does not seem to be the same as what I did  or went through. (perhaps I was lucky with a good councillor). The key thing I learnt was that it is not enough to talk, action needs to be taken (this is the bit where people tend to say to me that it seems hard work). You start with your issues, write them down, talk, and then you go away with instructions that every-time you get those thoughts you say stop. Then you come back, you talk some more, go away and after stop, write down what the issues were, the next week its feelings you get from those issues, finally how could you think differently about those issues, after talking there is thinking, doing, the implementing. For me this really helped. It was slow, broken in to steps and had clear actions.

Two years a go I was lucky enough to do a great course to become a Peer Leader for the NHS. This course involved learning about change management techniques. I enjoyed it so much that I read up on the subject after. The most simple and most effective seemed to be freeze, unfreeze. So you have a square block of ice that you want to turn into a cone. How do you do it? Simply unfreeze the block and refreeze it into the shape you want. What bothered me about this and niggled my brain was great. You can see the change, but what was its cause, you have to unfreeze it. Applying heat 'moves' it from one state to another, saying it is not going to do it. It is the action of heating which causes movement to reshape it and settle again in what you want.

spirituality is important to me, not just for comfort, but what it teaches . The story I have is from my religion. A man was running to prayer, jumped off his camel and went to join the congregation. The prophet Mohammed (PBUH) saw this, and shouted to him, trust in God but tie your camel. Even with faith it is not enough to just believe, you still have to take actions.

Having gone through these reports, each one calls for more money to be invested to improve things. Money is just one part of the solution, if you look deeper into the reports you can also see the need to value and nurture people. Something that can be done without money. My personal thought is that: yes you can throw money at it, but is it ever enough? I know from experience that the more money you have, your personal standard of living goes up to and therefore costs more. similarly the more money you throw at a service, the more things you find to spend it on. There should obviously be enough money to survive, and I know care workers are not even getting that. So yes there needs to be an injection of money but there is still a lot of other things that can be done too; such as streamlining processes which are costly in time and effort.

For me at the moment, it feels the health and care industry has prepared a great dinner, you have made a list, you have bought the shopping, you have prepared it all. Now you need to turn on the oven and apply the heat. Until you turn the oven on, the meal wont cook, you will never get fed or enjoy the fruits of your labour.