The Church's Impact on Health and Care 2017-18
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The Church’s Impact on Health and Care 2017-18 David Simmons, May 2018 The Church’s Impact on Health and Care. Page 1 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 3 Chapter One – Introduction 4 Methods 7 Chapter Two – Literature Review 13 Obesity and Diabetes 13 Loneliness and Isolation 17 Mental Health 20 Dementia 23 A&E 24 Chapter Three - Health Areas 28 General Health and Wellbeing 29 Intentional Health 28 Parish Nursing 34 Mega Fitness 45 The Pain Exchange 50 Loneliness and Isolation 55 Care Home Friends 55 Linking Lives UK 59 Dementia 63 Lyrics and Lunch 63 Mental Health 66 Peaced Together 66 Renew Wellbeing 72 Perinatal 75 Baby Basics 75 A&E 79 ED Pastors 79 Chapter Four – Themes 82 Value for Money 82 Giving the Gift of Time 88 Holistic Health Care 90 Creating Community 94 Chapter Five – Discussion 97 Discussion 101 Recommendations 103 Forming Strategic Partnerships 103 Practice Conferences 107 Incubate Further Health CRPs 107 A Consultation Group 108 Conclusion 108 References 110 Appendix One - Quotes from beneficiaries 116 Appendix Two - Research Information Sheet 119 Appendix Three - Topic Guide 121 Appendix Four - Other Faith Initiatives 123 The Church’s Impact on Health and Care. Page 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank all members of the steering group: Amanda Bindon, Marcus Chilaka, Jeremy Cooper, John Drew, Diana Gwyn, Fiona Hibberts, Sandie Keene CBE, Professor Paul McCrone, Dr Phil Moore, Jeremy Noles, Dr. Sue Protheroe, John Rouse, Professor Doug Simkiss. All research participants: Tina English (Care Home Friends), Ben Woollard (ED Pastors), Hannah Peck (Baby Basics), Ros Moore (Parish Nursing), Claire Gillett (Parish Nursing, Cambridgeshire), Ruth McDonald (Parish Nursing, Morecambe Bay), Dr James Morrow (Granta Medical Practice, Cambridgeshire), Ruth Rice (Renew Wellbeing), Jeanette Main (Lyrics and Lunch), Niky Dix (Intentional Health), Sharon Morgans and Retha Welding (The Pain Exchange), Tina Riando and Matt Wisdom (Simply Limitless and Mega Fitness), Jeremy Sharpe (Linking Lives UK), Heidi Singleton (Peaced Together). From the Cinnamon team: Mark Kitson, Matt Bird, Amanda Bindon, Danni Malone, Mike Royal. From FaithAction: Rodie Garland. Finally, the author would like to thank Allchurches Trust for their generous support of this research. The Church’s Impact on Health and Care. Page 3 Chapter One. Introduction. 1.1 Introduction This paper follows on from an early discussion document which looked at current financial pressures which affect health authorities, and in particular, faith and community-based strategies which have been developed which help to offset those pressures. Some aspects of that discussion paper have been replicated and developed further here. It also follows on from Cinnamon's previous research, “Police and Church Partnership Working” (Simmons, 2016) which highlighted best practice social action which helped to achieve the outcomes of local police authorities. That research has, in turn, led to many fruitful church and police partnerships across the UK, which has enabled churches to start social action projects from the list of Cinnamon Recognised Projects. The important message is that of cost effectiveness; delivering a health-focused community project can save health authorities considerable amount of money as they focus particularly on creating an environment in which health messages (such as the importance of regular exercise, good diet, personal responsibility for health care and developing healthy relationships) can be effectively communicated. This paper is written in five chapters. They cover the introductory elements (overview, methods, inclusion criteria), an analysis of some of the background literature to many of the chosen health issues, particularly when evaluating the cost of those issues to the NHS, a breakdown of the Cinnamon Recognised Projects by health category, the qualitative themes which were drawn from the data, and finally a chapter which focuses on recommendations, further research and closes this report. 1.2 Steering Group This research was funded by Allchurches Trust. Oversight was provided by the Cinnamon Health Research Steering Group, the members of which were as follows (in alphabetical order): Amanda Bindon, Executive Director of Communications, Cinnamon Network; Marcus Chilaka, Health consultant, GHEM Consultants; The Church’s Impact on Health and Care. Page 4 Jeremy Cooper, Group Chair, Impower; John Drew, Partner, McKinsey Consultants; Diana Gwyn, Secretariat and Group Coordinator, Cinnamon Network; Fiona Hibberts, Senior Nurse, St Guy's and St Thomas's Trust Sandie Keene CBE, Independent Consultant; Professor Paul McCrone, Professor of Health Economics, King's College, London; Dr Phil Moore, Deputy Chair, NHS Clinical Commissioners; Jeremy Noles, Allchurches Trust; Dr. Sue Protheroe, Clinical Lead for Mental Health, Lincolnshire West CCG; John Rouse, Chief Officer, Greater Manchester Health & Social Care Partnership; Professor Doug Simkiss, Senior Lead (Children), Birmingham & Solihull STP; Dr David Simmons, Researcher, Cinnamon Network. 1.3 Aims of the Research The aims of this research were to determine answers to the following questions: 1. What impact do faith and specifically, church communities currently have on health and social care? 2. What potential is there for them to be scalable and replicable, in order to have more impact? Given the rather broad nature of the questions, in this paper I have concentrated my research mainly on Cinnamon Recognised Projects (which, from now on in this paper will be referred to by their acronym: CRPs), and in particular, upon explicitly health-based projects. The answer to the second question comes within the purview of the recommendations. This also stems from the objectives set out by Cinnamon in their paper with Allchurches Trust: “Cinnamon Network & Allchurches Trust - ‘Health & Church Partnership Working’ ”. In that paper, the key research outcomes for this paper were: 1. To increase the confidence of health services to partner with local churches; 2. To increase the confidence of local churches to respond to the health and well-being needs they see in their community; The Church’s Impact on Health and Care. Page 5 3. To increase innovation and to inspire churches to develop new church- led projects. This paper therefore bears all those aims and objectives in mind. 1.4 A Note About the Projects As outlined in Weir (2015), this paper specifically examines the work of Christian church-led social action projects, specifically those which are either recognised by Cinnamon Network, or affiliated in some way. Most of the projects selected here are CRPs (Cinnamon Recognised Projects); that is, projects which have been recognised and supported by the Cinnamon Network as having a clear vision to expand their reach nationally, through local churches. At the time of writing, three of the projects are in the process of being incubated by Cinnamon, six are officially recognised by Cinnamon, and two have been selected for this research owing to their innovative work, and desire to replicate through local churches. The CRPs featured here are Baby Basics, Parish Nursing, Intentional Health, Mega Fitness, Linking Lives UK, and Peaced Together. The projects in the process of incubation are Care Home Friends, Renew Wellbeing, and Lyrics and Lunch. The two other projects are ED Pastors and The Pain Exchange. All case study data has been anonymised. 1.5 Referring to Local Health Authorities Throughout this paper, it is tempting to refer to local health authorities in a variety of ways, as “local NHS services”, “local authority hubs”, or “GP surgeries and local health services”. For the purpose of this research, I shall limit all generic health authority references to “local health partnerships”, since many of the locations featured in the research had a combination of local authority hubs, local NHS services, hospitals, treatment centres, and so on. Where specific health partnerships are discussed, they will be referred to as such. The Church’s Impact on Health and Care. Page 6 1.6 Methods This section covers the methods used in this research. As a researcher, I visited the founder or key representative of each CRP which is featured here. All of the qualitative research was interview-based. This enabled me to ask questions about the project in question in terms of its record keeping, and what data was being collected (quantitative data), as well as to glean both quantitative and qualitative data from the interview itself. As expected, the projects were all at different stages of measuring their effectiveness. Each one was however, fully aware of the need not only to collect substantive evidence, but also to improve their data gathering methods, to improve the effectiveness of the process, both in terms of demonstrating outcomes, but also in terms of making it less onerous for the beneficiaries (particularly where mental health is concerned). The interviews were conducted over a six-week period in the Autumn of 2017. Date Project Town Project State 18-Oct Care Home Friends Twickenham Incubation 26-Oct ED Pastors Sheffield Not CRP 26-Oct Baby Basics Sheffield CRP 01-Nov Parish Nursing Peterborough CRP 07-Nov Renew Wellbeing Nottingham Incubation 13-Nov Lyrics and Lunch Lancaster Incubation 17-Nov Intentional Health Wadebridge CRP 20-Nov The Pain Exchange East Acton Not CRP 22-Nov Mega Fitness Kidderminster CRP 23-Nov Linking Lives UK Wokingham CRP 29-Nov Peaced Together Dagenham CRP Table 1. Interview Schedule Quantitative Approaches All of the participant projects recognised the importance of measuring the effectiveness of their work, particularly with regard to prospective partnerships. Given that they all had replication strategies and the desire to expand the reach of their programmes through local churches, they all understood the need to provide robust evidence of their effectiveness. The Church’s Impact on Health and Care. Page 7 That being said, many were also acutely aware that data can be misleading. This will be dealt with later in this report (see Chapter Three, I - Renew Wellbeing), since some measures can, in fact, illustrate the opposite of what they were trying to communicate.