Hiya, I'm Vicky from the Commons Marketing and Engagement Team, and welcome to a festive handover.
In this special short episode of The Handover, we're handing over a few quick updates to see you through to the new year.
This time on The Handover, fine artist Carl Rowe talks about his installation at the Willow Therapy Unit, and we have a Christmas message from our Chief Exec, Matthew Winn.
First though, we were absolutely delighted that our Urgent Community Response Team was featured in a national news feature last week.
The piece was aimed at showing the different ways the NHS is helping people keep well and out of hospital, particularly over the festive period.
Interventions from UCR teams based in local neighbourhoods mean hundreds of thousands of people will get the support they need at home during winter and avoid turning up at the front doors of A&E at the busiest time of year.
Community nurses Zetzer and Laura were filmed with a patient who's been kept well at home and out of hospital thanks to this responsive service.
Working with East Coast Community Health to provide Urgent Community Response services to patients across Northam Waverley, last year we helped to keep 10,000 patients from having to go into hospital.
We currently get over 1650 referrals each month for the service and provide 30,812 hours of care.
You can watch the Channel 5 news piece on our YouTube channel via weekly messages.
A huge thank you to our colleagues who took part in this national media opportunity.
It was an amazing chance to show the crucial role our community teams play in the delivery of an effective NHS.
A big shout out to our community nurses Zetzer and Laura, head of UCR NCH&C Tracy, and clinical operations manager Suzanne for taking part in this filming.
This was a big ask at any time of the year.
Whilst we're on the subject, if you know anyone or you yourself have ever thought about working in our UCR or virtual ward teams, we're recruiting for a number of roles in these services.
Please help us share these vacancies by visiting www.wearenchc.nhs.uk for all the jobs available at the moment in these teams.
More details are also available on the web page for this podcast.
Over to Willow now.
So as the build nears completion, we've been able to install the new artwork in the unit.
We've been working with Carl Rowe, an artist and academic with vast experience of creating thought-provoking and interesting artwork for hospital settings.
In 2018, he was commissioned by Hospital Rooms to make work for Woodlands Mental Health Unit at Ipswich Hospital.
Earlier this year, Carl held a series of art workshops with NCH&C patients, staff, and volunteers, encouraging the participants to explore balance through abstract design.
Elements of what was created at these workshops has been included in the final designs for the commission.
The commission is centred around the theme of balance and titled Gravity.
The art references the invisible force that acts upon all objects on earth, making them fall and less balanced.
The art's been designed to encourage patients to move around the new unit, in order to explore it in full, and so will provide a backdrop to the therapy that will be provided at Willow.
The range of shapes, colors, and words, and the way they're arranged have been created to ensure that they're interesting and challenge the viewer and don't just fade into the background.
We spoke to Carl at Willow as he undertook the week-long installation process.
My name's Carl Rowe.
I'm a practicing artist.
I also work at part time at Norwich University of the Arts as a senior research fellow.
All of the research work that I'm doing at the moment is into arts in healthcare, predominantly arts in mental healthcare, but also dementia care.
And we've worked with groups of people that are sort of vulnerable and with lived experience.
So my studio practice is very different.
It's abstract art, it's surreal to a certain extent, and it sort of challenges the viewer to enter into perplexing worlds visually.
But some of that then I have applied into the research that I'm doing as well to give service users, service providers with different sort of experiences, a new approach, a new encounter with art.
And I found that actual art is something that is universally exciting.
Absolutely.
And really important in healthcare.
Really important in healthcare.
And it might be that from my experience, some people might not have thought about art since school, and then they're in a position where their life is turned upside down, and art suddenly is one of those wonderful things that is just entirely uplifting, and brings about change in thinking.
We know a lot about the encounter with nature, walks in forests and gardening, and certain physical activities, but art, I don't have to promote it.
I mean, most people know that their creativity, creative work is wonderful for people that have found themselves in a slightly challenged, different sort of state of mind.
It depicts these different ways that objects balance, and the forces that might be upon them to put them off balance.
So the whole purpose here is to represent balance as an important part of our physiological and mental state, which ties in obviously with the whole thing of physiotherapy.
Definitely.
So it's really different to the kind of art that we've seen in our other service locations.
Why is it important to have something interesting for people to look at when they're in a facility like this?
Well, I think there's this whole thing of dwell time.
So I think something that's perhaps is a little unusual.
Abstract art still seems to be a little bit unusual.
But anything that jumps out or catches the eye might make somebody spend more time looking at it.
That's important.
I tend to try to shy away from things that people might expect to see, in which case they probably don't even look at them.
They just accept that they're there or don't even register that they're there.
It's contentious to say it, but I prefer somebody who didn't like what I'm doing, because at least they've seen it.
But hopefully, just installing, a lot of the guys here that are the contractors have said they feel it's quite bright and cheerful.
I don't know what else they think about it, but bright and cheerful, it certainly should be, and hopefully it is.
I think it's really important to be challenged with art, isn't it, and I think the feedback from patients was they didn't want to see more photographs of Norfolk landscapes, so this is definitely not that, is it?
No, it isn't.
No, I mean, I've lived in Norfolk for 25 years, so hopefully some of the colors might have bleached from my experience of the landscape.
But no, it's not conventional landscape imagery, it's not photographic.
Yes, I got some interesting feedback from the workshops that I did, and I think actually people do like to be challenged a little bit.
Maybe they were being polite in the workshop, but that's not the sense that.
No, I think people wanted something different.
So how many installations are there?
Sorry, I missed that at the beginning.
There are seven.
Going right at the length of the corridor, and the text that goes with them, this unfolds as a narrative.
I mean, we start with a question in a way about balance, then we end up with achieving balance.
The idea is obviously to get patients out and about and looking at this art because the theory is for Willow that it's not bed-based.
That's right.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's a sort of a development.
You can follow each individual image.
That hopefully would promote walking, active therapy, people going out and thinking, what's so wrong on this?
There are more of these paintings.
Let's have a look at a whole lot of them.
So yeah, I mean, if it works, then people will walk to the end of the corridor and back again and sort of try to work out what's going on.
And they without even thinking, they would have got out and done some exercise.
And it might be that they're in a physical condition that means that even a few paces is a way forward, an improvement.
I'm very aware of that.
If people are having to relearn to walk, they need an incentive to do it.
And maybe just a blank corridor is not the best incentive.
So some strange artwork and some text that needs some working out maybe would be the way to get people to investigate it a bit further.
Festive spirit is well under way at NCH&C, and on the 18th of December, we held a carol service in our Mulberry Gardens at Norwich Community Hospital.
Staff, patients and their families, volunteers and local residents all gathered to sing some carols and enjoy a mince pie.
Whilst at the carol service, we caught up with CEO Matthew Winn to ask him for a few words for staff this Christmas.
Matthew Winn, introduce yourself and tell us what you want to say to our staff.
Victoria, hello.
Are we going to include that?
No, we're not.
It's Matthew.
Hello, our chief exec, your chief exec, my chief exec, I am the chief exec.
That's all going wrong, isn't it?
Shall I start again?
It's like I've got alcohol in it.
Whatever you're doing, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas.
Thank you to those that are working over the Christmas period and New Year.
I know it's very pressurised.
It can be pressurised at home.
It can be pressurised with families and friends, and people have so many responsibilities.
Thank you for all that you're doing.
Enjoy a lovely time off for those that are having a rest, and I look forward to seeing you all about in the New Year.
Happy Christmas.
So thanks for joining us for a very quick update as we hurtle towards the end of 2024.
A genuine thank you to all colleagues for everything you've done this year.
A big special thank you to everyone who's working over Christmas and New Year.
We know that the year ends with our services being as busy as when it began, and you have all done your absolute best to ensure patients receive safe and compassionate care in often difficult circumstances.
We are really grateful and proud when we see the way colleagues continue to support each other to deliver brilliant care to our patients.
We really appreciate everyone who's provided input into all of our communications this year, and we hope that you've found all that we've talked about interesting and useful.
Further information about everything we've featured on this episode can be found on the webpage for this podcast.
So don't forget to send us your ideas and thoughts about The Handover.
If you have an idea for a feature for next year, or would like to host a segment, then please do get in touch.
We hope you join us again for The Handover soon.
Merry Christmas, and we'll see you in the new year.
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