For me it feels like it has been a dark couple of weeks. Looking with optimism has led me to look more closely at family, nature and good friends. I think, however, Anne Frank was a wise young woman when she said “I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains’ (The Diary of a Young Girl).
Acting on these words, this blog is dedicated to all those who continue to inspire me and give me hope. What do I mean when I say ‘inspires’? This is my personal list of reasons people might inspire me:
- Passion – they are themselves inspired
- Tenacity – in the face of adversity
- Imagination – They engage my imagination
- Optimistic – They make me feel optimistic
- Togetherness – They make me want to join in
- Purpose – They work on things that I think matter
- Moral compass – they have a clear moral compass that they operate from
The list below is not an exhaustive list – there are many people who inspire me – these were the first examples that came tumbling out:
Night Scout – #wearenotwaiting @nightscout
I find the story of Night Scout inspiring because it took the tenacity and togetherness of a group of parents whose children have T1 Diabetes to do this. Can you imagine being told that your child has a serious, potentially life threatening condition? Wouldn’t you want to do as much as you could to help them to secure a healthy and fulfilling life? That’s exactly how I think the parents who set up the Night Scout Foundation must have felt and the system just couldn’t keep up with them. Waiting for technical solutions that might help takes an age in health systems, decades sometimes. This group of parents decided that #wearenotwaiting and have gone on to develop some technical systems that help the monitoring of blood glucose for children despite of the system. I love their slogan ‘Be Impatient’. I love that they used their collective skills and did it anyway, despite being told, I suspect, they shouldn’t.
Read more about the Night Scout Foundation
The power of community and the drive of wanting to make things better is inspiring.
The Hen Power Project – @equal_arts
Sometimes things are so simple they have a beauty that comes from that very simplicity. We know that social isolation and loneliness can lead to poor health
Dealing with loneliness is a complex social issue, as my personal experience tells me. This is why I think the Hen Power project is so inspiring. It is creative and optimistic and make me want to join in and indeed one day I might!
The Hen Power project is a project from Equal Arts, a charity in the North East of England. They work with some of the most disadvantaged people who are in their older years.
‘Our work focuses on giving people the opportunity to explore their imagination and live in the moment.’
I defy you to watch this video and not feel inspired!
We Nurses – @agencynurse
Many of you will know some of the story behind ‘We Nurses’ but I think I am lucky enough to know most of it. I believe Teresa Chinn is the key reason for their success – what is it that so inspires me about Teresa? It is her values. She is focused on community, sharing and collective value, sometimes at her own personal cost. I think she has a clear moral compass that is inherently the reason why We Communities continues to thrive.
Dr Sue Black – @dr_black
Sue inspires me being a feisty and passionate woman. I remember meeting her in London and being inspired by her story about Tech Mums. But not only that then she helps to save Bletchley Park. I won’t try to replay her story here, Sue tells it so much better than me, you can read most of it from her blog.
Sue is a great example of someone with tenacity and determination to do what she thinks matters.
Playbox Leeds @emmabearman
A sample of the lovely tiles the Playbox team created with the community to improve the benches in the park
A shipping container and a whole lot of courage, inspiration and belief in her community is what it took, I suspect, for Emma Bearman to set up Playbox. In an area of Leeds that is less well known than its city centre cousins, Armley now has a great focus for people and play. Emma is like a force of nature and I admire her passion but also how well her projects encourage people to join in. Watching the development of Playbox has been great to see and is a great antidote to much of what the media would lead us to believe was our current society and communities.
You can read more about Playbox here and follow Emma on Twitter to be inspired.
Michael Seres @MJSeres
Michael is another force of nature. I have been following him for quite a number of years now and have been lucky enough to meet him. I won’t try to tell his story here as you can listen for yourself here as part of the Spark the Difference Exhibition (there are also many other stories here that will inspire)
Michael is one of the humblest men I have met but his particular inspiring skill for me is, that despite the odds, he has an air of optimism and hope which makes me feel that things will work out and that all is possible.
This list is not exhaustive by any means and I may write about more people in due course but what inspires each of us seems to be more poignant and potent in darker times than perhaps when the sun shines perfectly down. I hope they help you feel inspired too.
Who and what inspires you?
We have had a busy few weeks. We have recently had much sadness in our family and this weekend an aunt, who has been left with no direct children at 84, was admitted to hospital. Her lovely best friend (oh to have such long lasting friendships), and the family, have been doing our best with rounds of visiting, making sure she had things to talk about, and more importantly perhaps, eat; a round of prawn sandwiches on special request, a lovely fruit salad, a fruit jelly studded with raspberries. Another friend gave her a lovely leg massage. We are all generally trying to make her feel better.
Today I suggested our aunt had a shower – she looked at me and said ‘Can I?’ We went to the horrible institutional shower room and I handed her the nice shower gel and shampoo I had brought. I asked her if she wanted me to wait outside having sorted a seat for her in the cubicle. ‘No!’ she exclaimed ‘You have seen all this many times before’ and I guess she was right. I know she enjoyed her shower and we put on skin lotion and hand cream afterwards. It is the first time she has been in her own clothes for 4 days!
You have had a really shit few years. The details don’t matter but suffice to say you feel you are moving on, you have met someone who you want to spend more time with and all of the things you have been through are being pushed back away somewhere quiet in your mind. You know you will need to talk about it at some point, after all its nothing to be ashamed of, but you are not ready. Your new partner doesn’t know about your loss and you are both enjoying the next phase of your life. You have decided to move in together and you have been clearing stuff out, sending old clothes and junk to the charity shop. Most of it you will never use again so you feel good pushing things into black bin liners and giving them away.
You open your Facebook timeline and staring back at you is a picture of yourself and David, before he died, when he was looking drawn and ill. The photo is a precious one but is not for sharing, yet here it was. You read the post and you realise that the precious memory stick that you kept all those memories on must have been left in one of the handbags you took to the charity shop and one of the assistants at the shop was trying to find the owner. You knew they were trying to be kind, to reunite you with your photos, but its unbearable.
The lesson I learnt was that kind sharing acts can cause harm. I had no idea those photographs I shared would hurt but they did. We often talk about the negative aspects of sharing and I often see posts from teachers who are deliberately showing kids how far images can spread but I have shared things when I thought it was the ‘right’ thing to do. I won’t do this anymore. I have never really shared missing person pictures either and 
On 26th April I was invited to join the debate facilitated by mHabitat and Leeds Beckett University as part of the Leeds digital festival. I accepted with some trepidation – I have never participated in this way in a debate before. The motion was:
So my conclusion is that its a mutual relationship with power held in both camps, where the only way for big business to meet the needs of patients is to fill the gaps and this needs to be done in partnership with patients, or even by patients, who, god forbid, actually lead the technology innovation; innovation such as #
So the answer to the question ‘Why can’t we do it like Buurtzorg here in England?’ is a complex one. But here are some of the potential answers:
The other speakers were inspirational: Joe, who was a professional cyclist, Lis who has had T1 for over 50 years and at times has struggled with food, Laura who has had many struggles of her own including nearly losing her sight, Wes from the wonderful, inspirational #wearenotwaiting project where parents of children with T1 are taking action to find solutions, Jamie Reed MP who was diagnosed at a key time in his political career and went on to win his seat and Richard who was the first person to receive an islet cell transplant.
I was leaving school, in the same month as Margaret Thatcher became prime minister. I was wearing platform shoes and on occasions long white socks, as you will see if you look at my 
I am intrinsically an optimist and that helps too. I like life goals, not HbA1C targets, but vital ones wanting to have a family (which I went on to do), I wanted to be a nurse and I still want to make an active contribution to society in any way I can – my life goals.
I am starting a new job – there, I said it ‘out-loud’. I have been a bit worried about writing it down as I thought it might jeopardise it, as this is one move I really wanted to make, to do something where I hope I can make a difference. I also know I am nearing the last leg of my ‘formal’ career – I know I won’t stop doing ‘something’ but I suspect what that is might be very different 5 years from now. I can also see that moving from a relatively high profile role to a local one might have its own teething pains too. How can I change how I behave to reflect where I will live?
So I start my new role with some anxiety; I’m setting high standards for myself. I also know that, to do what I want to do I need to move into spaces that will be less than comfortable and may be lonely. I have written before about PWI (
It was lively, helpful and the presence of that small group of people felt like it was there 24/7. Some corporate sites would do well to look at the standards they achieved. It was never belittling or bemoaning; it was positive constructive and consistent. I applaud the skill and dedication of the small and beautifully formed team of dedicated people behind that Facebook site. They even coordinated wish lists on Amazon so people who lived some distances away could also help in a concrete, practical way. I was very impressed and in awe – that takes skill, time and just a dogged determination. When I talk to professionals about using social media they could do worse than to have a look at those sites. Of course there is some negative stuff but the site was run with such skill and community engagement that the positive drowned out the negative.
The second thing I watched was how Facebook connected a group of people from the past. Many years ago I worked for what was then the Midland Bank. A friend who I have known since school also worked there and he invited me to join a group called ‘Midland Bank Oldies’. It was brilliant! The site exploded into life – within a few days the membership of the group (a closed site) had expanded to more than 7000. Everyone was chatting away, reminiscing and reconnecting. It’s the liveliest and most positive site connection I have ever seen.
lushed with the success of the conference we went on to host the unawards a few months later. Stressful and challenging we managed to deliver the events with no cost to anyone at the event but where there was much networking and meeting of minds, connections and chat. The innovations we unearthed are all pretty incredible and the award winner’s worthy.
On a similar vein (I would like to think they adopted some of the things they saw at PDDAwards) attending the Academy of Fab NHS Stuff awards was pretty amazing and a highlight of the end of the year. I have never been to an event like this. It was really fabulous but was truly celebratory of many great NHS ideas and solutions. The awards were given based on public voting. I found myself sat on the same table as the fabulous 5 Boroughs Partnership street triage team who won the 5127 Award. If you haven’t read about the awards you should, they are quirky and fun. The 5127 award for example is to recognise:
Earlier in the year I was lucky to be able to work with the NHS IQ team to produce a short video about using social media. It was a personal challenge that had been set by Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) when I visited him in Plymouth the year before. Although Steve’s challenge was to do a series of interviews I decided that using another media for sharing was what I wanted to do and thanks to Helen Bevan (@helenbevan) this became a reality in 2015.
anniecoops 