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How can we keep the spark of innovation going for unpaid carers?
Andrew, after 35 years in leadership roles in health and care, including Director of Social Services, chairing a major social enterprise and advising government, now supports innovators in care. Suzanne and Andrew talk about changing the narrative so that we don't have to put up with 'the way things are'.
Andrew, after 35 years in leadership roles in health and care, including Director of Social Services, chairing a major social enterprise and advising government, now supports innovators in care. Suzanne and Andrew talk about changing the narrative so that we don't have to put up with 'the way things are'.
"Find a place where you can do something different, and that could be a pilot.
"That could be an experiment that could be a trial supported by an academic institution.
"It could be, a grant to, a regeneration scheme that has got some care or carers elements built into it.
"Make sure that you keep lots and lots of your peers really well informed about it, because, this is in my experience, public sector systems can discourage the initial spark of innovation.
"But once it's going, it's quite hard to stamp it out because people will just spontaneously start doing things.
"And suddenly it becomes the norm."
- (00:00) - Welcome to Carer Catalysts
- (00:51) - What's coming up in this episode?
- (01:28) - Introducing Andrew Webster: Can you tell us about your career in social care?
- (03:25) - Why can't we talk about social care without including unpaid carers?
- (04:55) - How do we keep unpaid carers top of the agenda? What are some tangible things we can do?
- (08:03) - When you're in the thick of it, how do you keep your energy up to keep that drive going forward?
- (10:42) - What does the most successful change in public services come from?
- (11:26) - How do you choose what opportunities and innovation to focus on?
- (15:36) - How do you navigate all the challenges of navigating change in a big organisation or a complex system?
- (17:43) - How can you keep the spark of innovation going?
- (20:50) - Tell us another example of innovation you've been involved in: Transforming services for people with learning disabilities
- (25:22) - Any final tips on how people can make stuff happen? Check in with yourself and keep things in balance
- (27:36) - Key takeaways from our chat with Andrew
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The views of guests participating in this podcast are their own and may not represent the views of any affiliated organisation. The content is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute financial, medical or legal advice.
Creators & Guests
Host
Host
What is Carer Catalysts?
Tune in to Carer Catalysts - a podcast connecting innovators for unpaid carers.
There's a sense of hope bubbling away in the world of carer support. There's a hope that right now we're bringing new, exciting, innovative solutions that could be truly transformative - helping us all to care, and thrive.
But innovation is no mean feat. That's why we've been speaking with the people who are catalysing the change. These are leaders in carer support whose journeys and experiences have brought them to the forefront of innovation for the UK's 10.6 million unpaid carers. They're here, on this podcast, to help share a bold vision. And to hopefully inspire you too.
Carer Catalysts is brought to you by Suzanne Bourne and James Townsend - Co-Founders of Mobilise, an innovative digital service that reaches and supports hundreds of thousands of unpaid carers.
0:01
Hello and welcome to Carer Catalysts.
0:04
A podcast that connects innovators for unpaid carers.
0:07
I'm Suzanne Co-founder and Head of Carer Support at Mobilise.
0:11
I'm also caring for my husband, Matt, who has young onset Parkinson's.
0:15
And I'm James CEO and Co-founder of Mobilise.
0:19
But perhaps more importantly, I'm son to my mum, who has MS and at Mobilise we believe that with innovation, technology and a bold vision, we can help carers to thrive.
0:29
And we're bringing the same energy to this podcast hearing from inspiring leaders in adult social care from across the country listening to their stories about making transformational change for unpaid carers.
0:40
So sit back, grab a cup of tea and join us for Carer Catalysts brought to you by Mobilise.
0:49
Wow.
0:50
OK, so back for another episode.
0:51
Suzanne, you've been on the other side of the big, fluffy microphone this time.
0:56
Who have you been talking to about innovation in carer support?
1:01
Oh, huge treat.
1:02
I got to chat to Andrew Webster.
1:04
He's a big friend of Mobilise.
1:06
We love having him around, and chatting to the team with him.
1:10
He's got a great background in social care, health and local government.
1:14
So awesome to talk to.
1:16
Yeah, brilliant.
1:17
And what I love about this interview is so many practical examples of things we can do, to help make a difference.
1:24
So let's roll the tape.
1:26
Absolutely good.
1:28
So, Andrew, first of all, thank you so much for joining us.
1:31
Lovely to have you with us.
1:32
Can you tell us a bit about your career in social care?
1:35
What have been those real key roles along the way?
1:38
Well, I started off in a kind of analysis community work role.
1:43
So I was there kind of just sent out to try and make things better without any money.
1:48
I described the job as the only rule was you couldn't spend any money.
1:52
The only tool you had was a notebook, which I'm sort of back to now.
1:56
Except I'm in a digital version of that, and I think because I was pretty disruptive, I got promoted quite quickly.
2:04
So I went into my first really big role.
2:08
Was managing resettlement from Long stay hospitals.
2:11
Which I did in Cambridge and in Edinburgh and in Glasgow.
2:16
I then ran a hospital in Edinburgh for a while, which was a bit of a diversion.
2:21
Then I went back into social care.
2:23
My key roles, I guess, were I was Director in Lambeth.
2:28
Then I was Director of Families in Surrey, so I had a bigger set of responsibilities there.
2:34
And then I was director of adult social care for three boroughs in London for Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham.
2:42
And then I moved on from that into more national roles.
2:45
So I was the lead for the local government association on care and health.
2:50
And I did quite a bit of work for the government on policy and integration of health and social care.
2:58
So, and I'm now retired from all those formal jobs, and I'm back being an advisor and disruptor, which is much more fun.
3:09
We'll circle back to disruptor, though I imagine disruptor has been a common thing.
3:13
A common theme throughout
3:15
Less welcoming in the director, though.
3:19
No, you know, so real breadth of experience there depth of experience, too.
3:25
So when we talk about social care, we can't talk about social care without including our unpaid carers.
3:31
Why would you say that?
3:33
Unpaid carers are an important part of social care.
3:35
Well, for them to kick off, they do nearly all the work.
3:39
I mean, if they weren't there looking after people, we'd be even more overwhelmed than we are now.
3:46
Secondly, they do it mostly voluntarily and for free.
3:53
And so it's an incredibly generous social commitment.
3:57
It's not just a transaction that a council undertakes.
4:01
It's a transformative thing for them and for their families and the people they care for and the communities in which they live.
4:09
And thirdly, they've got immense knowledge and expertise.
4:13
It staggers me that I spent my life sending people to do assessments who were supposed to be the professional experts when actually, the carers and the mostly lowest paid staff who actually did the care knew far more about what was needed and what would make a difference to those people's lives.
4:34
So I think they are.
4:36
They're a source of, you know, huge effort, huge compassion, huge inspiration and knowledge.
4:43
Lovely.
4:43
Yeah, well, we share that opinion definitely so really, really great to hear that and that's been threaded throughout your career.
4:50
So how do we keep that?
4:52
You know, these carers are such a valuable part of social care.
4:55
How do we keep them at the top of the agenda, for everything we're doing with social care?
5:00
Are there some practical or tangible things we can do to make a difference there?
5:04
Well, I think my experience and I think mobilise is addressing this is that most people who are carers don't think they're carers.
5:12
My mum spent the best part of 15 years caring almost on her own for my dad.
5:18
And if you said to her she was a carer, she said, No, no, no, I'm not, and and and so actually getting the idea of being a carer and the identity of being a carer and supporting that positively is a hugely important thing, because otherwise people won't recognise it in themselves, and they won't do things to help themselves.
5:40
I think the other thing that we can do and which I did a lot of when I was in care, is actually analyse the impact that carers have on the health and social care system.
5:51
So, for example, lots of people who end up in hospital for 6 to 8 weeks because they've fallen over, fall over, at a weekend when the car is busy doing something else, or at a time when the car is not very well and can't look after them as well as they might do otherwise.
6:12
And, again, it happened with my own experience.
6:16
My father was in and out of hospital often for six or eight weeks at a time.
6:20
The only benefit of that was it gave my mom a break.
6:23
He came out worse than when he went in.
6:25
Usually, it was a miserable time for everybody, but she did at least get a break from it.
6:32
So if you reverse that equation and say, actually, those people who are carers are preventing a massive amount of work for the NHS and social care, making lives much better for people who otherwise be much more vulnerable and being really tough about it, they're saving a vast amount of money.
6:53
I mean, each of those hospital episodes is £20-£25,000, that's money that could support somebody for a year at home.
7:03
And it's just blown on something that doesn't even make the person any better.
7:07
So I think in terms of quality of life and in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, they're making a massive contribution.
7:14
And that should be recognised.
7:17
Yeah, definitely.
7:18
So just bringing that data to the forefront and holding that sense of value and impact?
7:23
Yeah, really important.
7:24
Really good one.
7:25
And my sense is that there are lots of people and teams that focus, particularly on carers, but it's really good, as you say, to keep them on the agenda at the broader level as well.
7:34
Not just the people who think about carers thinking about carers, just making sure it's included everywhere.
7:39
So, yeah, in that example of kind of how that hits the hospital situation really impactful.
7:44
So when we're trying to drive things forward and create change and you know the normal everyday life of social care is, you know we're balancing urgent needs and in health care as well that need to be focused on can take a lot of energy, but keeping that forward momentum when there might be resistance from different directions.
8:03
When you're in the thick of it doing that, how do you keep your energy up to keep that drive going forward?
8:08
Well, in all the roles I had in so I started out in a job where it was my job to go out and meet people who were doing this sort of thing.
8:16
And I always found them very inspiring and very insightful.
8:22
And where they were struggling, I always found their difficulties and their anger motivating.
8:32
So I've kept that through my entire job whatever I was doing.
8:37
I always made sure I saw people who were carers or service users.
8:42
Yeah, I had a sort of a little thing in my diary.
8:44
Had I seen one this week?
8:46
Because I think if you don't talk to the people that it matters to and hear from them directly, , you don't do as good a job and you lose that you lose energy, particularly the more senior you are, the more senior you are, the the more you only hear about things that go wrong, and it gets incredibly depressing so to go out and buy things that have gone right and talk to people who've got positive things to say or posit important messages to give you is fine.
9:14
So number one keep talking to the people who who need the service use the service value the service secondly, secondly, don't become a winger.
9:27
Big organisations and local government and NHS are no exception. They are full of people who have got ground down to the point that their main conversation is whinging about the way the organisations run or the fact that hasn't got enough money or nobody respects them or the office is rubbish or the IT doesn't work.
9:46
All those things might be true, but you won't change them if you whinge about them.
9:52
You will change them if you engage positive energy, to try and do something about it.
9:58
So I think sustaining a conversation that is optimistic is a very important thing to do.
10:05
And I think the thing that I did to do that was to find like minded people.
10:10
So I was always in networks of people across councils, across organisations across communities, I was often in voluntary roles where I came into contact with people who had something different to contribute.
10:23
And I think those things are different today because it's much easier to do online.
10:29
But for a lot of my career it was quite hard to do online, and so you had to make a really positive effort to free time to go and meet people, talk to people, have a cup of coffee with them, find out what was working for them.
10:42
And I think most successful change is probably in all sectors, but particularly in the public services comes from networks of people.
10:53
You do need money and you do need patronage, and you do need a bit of luck and you need persistence.
10:59
But if you haven't got a network of people, you're not gonna get there on your own.
11:04
So I think that that's an absolutely critical thing to do, to sustain yourself and your energy.
11:11
Yeah, fantastic, yeah, so there's those networks of people and you're kind of spending time with people who are, you know, at the sharp end of things who are experiencing life and having different experiences.
11:22
So I guess being in that place, having that contact with people.
11:26
There's ideas for innovation popping up all the time.
11:29
That inspirational sort of motivation is there and different opportunities arise.
11:34
And, you know, we can't do everything but these different things that come up.
11:38
How do you choose what to focus on?
11:41
When you're looking to innovate?
11:42
Are there particular hallmarks that are likely to lead to success?
11:46
So we're focusing on the right things.
11:48
I guess, yes, there are.
11:51
Though.
11:51
They're gonna differ from sector to sector at first.
11:54
I think the first is that you are solving somebody's problem.
12:01
If you're going to the top of an organisation or to a group of politicians and wanting their support blessing patronage money.
12:12
If you go along and say this is all a disaster, something must be done about it.
12:18
They might agree with you, but they probably won't want to hear you again very often.
12:23
Whereas if you go along and say, there's this problem, but this is how we could solve it.
12:29
They're likely to be very interested.
12:33
And that could be as simple a problem as they lost.
12:37
They've lost confidence in the people who currently deliver the service, and they want some new people to come in.
12:43
Or it could be as complicated a problem as there's a politically intractable dispute, and the whole thing needs to be framed in a different way.
12:51
So let me give you a little example of that from outside social care because I did do some other roles in local government.
12:56
So one council I was working in, we had lots and lots of libraries that the public loved but were absolutely hopeless.
13:08
They were in buildings that were falling down.
13:10
They couldn't couldn't get staff to work in them.
13:13
They were, you know, they were just not fit for purpose in any way at all.
13:19
If you ran a proposal which said we must close these rubbish old libraries, the public would rebel in huge numbers.
13:27
The councillors would back down straight away, you'd never get anywhere, and that had been going on for years.
13:32
So we got the Youth Parliament and the Youth Council to make a secret customer video of every library which demonstrated that they were all deeply unfriendly to young people and hopeless for people trying to learn.
13:49
And that transformed the conversation because the councillors have got some clear evidence that here was the vital part of the community that the libraries were most meant to support kids on their way home from school so they could do their homework.
14:02
They didn't have anywhere at home to do it.
14:03
They wouldn't go in because the places were really unfriendly and the staff didn't like them.
14:08
Change that narrative and suddenly you can talk about developing a decent library service rather than closing down the old one.
14:17
And you can do that in lots of different spaces.
14:20
You could do that about changing the nature of social care, changing the way carers are supported, changing the way foster carers are paid to do things.
14:29
If you think about a lot of radical changes that have happened in care, it's because people have come up with a proposal, which is we could do this better if, rather than the stage before, which is unacceptable because, so I think I think that would be my touchstone.
14:46
How can you reframe this issue in a way that makes it a win.
14:51
And I love that those sort of videos from the young people was it's tangible evidence no one can argue with but also really focus from a certain point, very different, perhaps from maybe a set of data or something like that that we might also be looking at.
15:05
And I think you need both.
15:07
I mean, some people can only deal with stories.
15:10
I mean, the caricature would be, social workers need stories.
15:15
Doctors need data.
15:17
That's true.
15:18
So get stories and get data.
15:23
Because then you'll take both with you.
15:27
True True.
15:28
Love it.
15:28
Yeah, I like that.
15:29
Yeah.
15:29
Putting those two together, it's not one or the other.
15:31
The two together, brilliant.
15:33
And so these innovations are popping up.
15:36
We're getting on and things are happening, but I guess the sense is and maybe there's a challenge here, but the big organisations like, local government, like, you know, NHS and hospitals.
15:51
But also it's complex systems as well that we're working in here.
15:54
But it's not just one organisation.
15:56
It's a complexity of systems.
15:57
So it's not always straightforward to make something happen to drive things through.
16:02
If something proves successful to go on to the next stage, of kind of making it more kind of business as usual and things, what are the tips there?
16:10
How do you navigate all those challenges in a big organisation or a complex system?
16:15
I think it depends where you're located.
16:18
If you're a director, you can do that by reframing the conversation and giving people permission to challenge the system.
16:28
So, I mean, at a simple level, quite a lot of places in the past were characterised by a fairly deep suspicion and rivalry between the council and the NHS.
16:41
About, you know, essentially about whose fault it was that the system wasn't working or who got the benefits if somebody fixed it.
16:50
And, so, as a senior person, you can change that by demonstrably having a different conversation with your peers and showing people that you're doing that.
17:02
So I always went out of my way to be very supportive and friendly towards health service people in the patches.
17:10
I was working in because I knew that we needed to collaborate with them.
17:15
And any suggestion that I was about to become a tribal opponent of them would be deeply dysfunctional.
17:23
If you're within those systems and you've not got senior people who are doing that or, more likely, you've got people who are pretending they're doing that but actually aren't really then I don't think you shouldn't take on the whole system because you'll just bash your head against it and it will become totally dispiriting.
17:43
The thing is to find a place where you can do something different, and that could be a pilot.
17:51
That could be an experiment that could be a trial supported by an academic institution.
17:59
It could be, a grant to, a regeneration scheme that has got some care or carers elements built into it.
18:10
And then when you do that, make sure that you keep lots and lots of your peers really well informed about it, because, this is in my experience, public sector systems can discourage the initial spark of innovation.
18:31
But once it's going, it's quite hard to stamp it out because people will just spontaneously start doing things.
18:39
And suddenly it becomes the norm.
18:42
I mean, I think the most striking example of that in my career has been individual budgets for people with long term disabilities.
18:51
I mean that started as a direct payments campaign by very angry and dissatisfied disabled people who said, You know, we could do so much better with this huge amount of money you spend if you just gave it to us and let us get on with it.
19:05
And a few enlightened councils did that, most councils were deeply suspicious of it and had every possible objection lined up.
19:16
The people who waste the money.
19:18
There are no proper controls.
19:19
There'll be fraud.
19:20
It'll be used for inappropriate things.
19:22
They'll be going to football and porn sites and ‘da da da da da da’, now it's in the law that you must be offered one, because it became the norm once people saw it working and we didn't have it, didn't that wasn't on the Internet.
19:39
That was people going and talking to conferences and writing papers and getting involved in campaigns. But once people saw that it worked, it spread very quickly.
19:50
So I think it's about having that demonstrable evidence that it's working both stories and data, which are clearly there for individual budgets and you could do the same.
20:03
The carers benefits if you If you If you demonstrate that carers are making a greater contribution and feel better supported in this way, then for all the scepticism they might be at the top of organisations, it will go through sideways because, care staff, social care staff professionals, are, you know, are are well motivated people.
20:26
And when they see something that makes things better, by and large they'll try.
20:30
They'll try and adopt it and bring it into their practice if they can.
20:34
And it's really powerful, isn't it?
20:35
The impact, the data to the story when things are working, you know, that's a much more exciting picture to be looking at because, yeah, we know the reasons why not.
20:43
We know the reasons why we haven't done it so far and what the challenges are and focusing on that doesn't always give us.
20:48
Give us the breakthrough.
20:50
So tell us what other great examples of innovation you've been involved in.
20:55
You'd like to highlight what made it successful.
20:59
So I'm gonna pick one from across health and social care that has some similarities.
21:08
When I was working on transforming services for people with learning disabilities, we had lots of people who were living in institutions and a huge amount of anxiety about how would they be able to survive outside institutions?
21:27
Not least from their own carers, who had often struggled and been told that the best thing for them was to live in institutional life.
21:38
And we found that conventional ways of involving those people in the decisions really didn't work because they weren't skilled at meetings they couldn't write, you know, well, argued papers, they were intimidated by authority.
22:02
And so we did a ridiculously simple thing, which is that we gave lots of people with learning disabilities disposable cameras and told them to go out and take pictures of what they thought their life would be like if it was better.
22:23
And the pictures they came back with were staggeringly straightforward.
22:29
It was things like a front door, a room with a bed that was made up for them.
22:35
Bag of fish and chips, a pint of beer, a bus.
22:40
You know, not nothing revolutionary, but all things that they couldn't get.
22:45
And we assembled this into a very simple kind of strategy and pictures document.
22:51
Which we did a very short run off because it was pictures, and it was quite expensive.
22:57
And it went like hotcakes, and we had to keep reprinting it.
23:03
And it worked because all the people, however, you know, however senior and clever, were all the people who had had lots of well thought through anxieties about this just couldn't really argue with these amazingly simple pictures of ordinary life.
23:19
So I think you know, that's that for me.
23:24
That was a great innovation because it involved the people themselves using their expertise to say what the change needed to be.
23:34
It was well within their capabilities, and they did it incredibly well.
23:39
It changed the narrative very quickly, and it enabled us to win the confidence of the people who needed to invest in making a big change.
23:50
And they did as a consequence of that.
23:53
I mean, we this was in Scotland, and on the back of that strategy, we secured a large chunk of the money that was available to help move people out of institutions.
24:04
So I think that, finding ways in which the people themselves can speak directly to the world and to power, is a very effective, very effective thing to do.
24:23
And you'll find examples of that in the mental health world, a lot where people use art and creativity to express their contribution to society or horticulture or all kinds of other things.
24:37
And you could find that with older people, if we were better able to to find ways of, of, of having a more kind of equal dialogue with people who have become more frail in their old age.
24:53
And it strikes me that people probably really enjoyed getting involved in making that contribution.
24:58
Absolutely.
24:58
Yeah, it was.
24:59
It was a much more interesting thing to do than going on your usual bus trip or out to the day centre.
25:04
Wasn't it brilliant?
25:06
Well, thank you.
25:07
And I wonder there's lots of people listening.
25:09
I'm really hopeful there are lots of people listening and they're thinking about innovation.
25:13
And maybe they're at earlier stages in their career and thinking about how they can make a difference and make things happen.
25:20
And you've shared lots of things ready to draw on, I think.
25:22
But any final top tips on how people can make stuff happen.
25:28
I offer one more particular one, which is: it's if you're engaged in a challenging job in the middle of an organisation, I think it's the most difficult time because you've probably got people to manage.
25:48
So you gotta be looking downwards.
25:51
You've probably got to keep a lot of support from your superiors, so you gotta be looking out upwards as well.
25:58
You need to bring lots of peers and friends and colleagues along with you.
26:03
So you gotta be looking sideways.
26:06
I think it's easy to forget to look after yourself.
26:11
I think you know, if you can have a sort of rule If you got five days a week. You know, one day looking down, one day looking up, one day looking sideways, one day to deal with stuff that just comes along because there are always things going wrong, one day to look after yourself.
26:31
Because if you don't sustain your own knowledge, creativity, energy, then all those other things start to get more and more difficult.
26:40
And as they get more difficult, you find it harder to free the time and you can get into a spiral that burns you out.
26:48
I've done that myself.
26:49
I think if you can, if you can just have a way of either checking in with yourself or having someone else that you check in with who can make sure that you're keeping things in balance and that you're not and you're not and you're not over cooking it, then you're much more likely to succeed.
27:10
Definitely, lovely.
27:11
Oh, that avoiding that burnout and for those people to be able to continue, I think that's that's huge.
27:16
Thank you, Andrew.
27:18
It's been a pleasure to chat and just thanks so much for giving us the time today.
27:22
And I know those that are listening that are working hard to innovate from they're really gonna value what you shared.
27:27
So thanks so much for that.
27:29
I feel it's a way of handing on the battle as well.
27:31
For all the work that you've done, it will continue its brilliant, thank you very much.
27:36
Wow, Suzanne, so much in there that I want to unpack and and just the sort of the first, thing that really comes to mind from what Andrew was saying is that idea of changing the narrative shifting, the perception all the different ways that we can that we don't have to put up with the way things are and change things.
27:59
So just that example he uses of how back in the day direct payments seemed like such a long way away from reality and yet actually through a bit of persistence, lots of campaigning, but some really kind of careful thinking from professionals around the country.
28:18
Direct payments are now the standard, and he also mentioned how exhausting it can get.
28:26
What a fantastic way of reenergizing ourselves when by just thinking of the possibilities that that could mean for carers.
28:36
I love that just to start small somewhere, you know, get going on something and dive in.
28:44
And just that inspiration that something quite small.
28:46
A small start of something could change to something that's nationwide and just changes the scene for people.
28:52
So that's huge and I absolutely love it.
28:55
It was born out of changing the narrative.
28:58
Let's not just sit around and moan about all the problems and all the things and why we can't. Let's just try something and see what emerges from that.
29:05
I love that bit.
29:06
What else do you like out of that?
29:08
Oh, so much so just looking back at the top of the interview, Andrew was talking about how we need to look at data and really see the impact of what care is doing.
29:21
And for me, this really resonates because, policy both central government and local government decisions are made around evidence.
29:31
Particularly when we're asking politicians to take a risk on them.
29:35
So, the more data we can have about what carers actually need and the impact that carers have, I don't think it's always helpful to say, you know, we're saving money by being carers and so on.
29:49
But there is something really valuable about me looking after the person in my family who needs a bit of care, which I want to do anyway. So I'm not doing it because I'm saving the NHS money, but it does have that effect.
30:03
So when I'm supported better we know that the system can really benefit from that.
30:09
The more data we can have on that, the more strong decisions we can expect to be made.
30:13
And just another really interesting point.
30:16
Suzanne, joining up some of the threads from the other conversations we've had, in this series.
30:22
The first conversation we had with Sarah McClinton.
30:24
She talked about meeting real people who are actually drawing on social care all the time and interesting that Andrew mentioned that as well, keeping something in his diary, to check whether or not he's done that.
30:36
And then also, a resonance with Debbie's comment about, Debbie Hustings, about like minded folk keeping people around you who think the same way who have the same positive energy and want to make things happen.
30:49
Mhm, definitely.
30:51
And drawing those two things, that thing about the data and impact and how powerful that was and that, you know, spending time with the right people and learning from them and understanding people's challenges.
31:03
He brought it into the room, didn't he?
31:05
With those videos, that was a great example.
31:08
And with the photos, people have taken just finding a way to bring those experiences into the room, Not not secondhand through us, I thought that was really powerful as well.
31:17
People, absolutely.
31:18
People love data and people love stories, and I think finding new ways to kind of present that in a way you can imagine it's powerful.
31:25
It's succinct as well.
31:26
People didn't have to read a big report or look through loads of things to get that it just was right there in front of them, so that feels like it's quick and fast moving as well those sorts of things.
31:36
And people want to get involved in that kind of.
31:39
We talk about co-production, but that's probably the sort of co-production people like to get involved in.
31:43
It sounds fun, creative.
31:45
It's easy to do and might be a bit different to some approaches that we've seen as well.
31:49
Yeah, some great stuff there.
31:51
Such a great way of breaking out of the existing conversations and hearing from people that we don't don't hear from enough.
31:57
Gosh, a great bunch of practical suggestions.
32:01
What an exciting moment.
32:03
So really good to hear them from Andrew.
32:05
It's been good to have everybody with us.
32:08
Thank you very much, Suzanne.
32:09
See you next time.
32:10
Thank you.
32:11
See you next time.
32:11
Thanks for joining us with Carer Catalysts brought to you by Mobilise.
32:16
Do subscribe to this podcast wherever you normally get them from, and look forward to the next episode.