Out of the blue recently, one of the team said that a lady they’d been helping and who was now ‘pretty sorted’ was keen to talk to me about what the team had done.  She wanted to make sure it happened for other people and not just her.  This was because we were trying something different and she wanted it to be normal.

I asked the team what they had done and they said they’d helped her get a bunch of things that she was entitled to. It felt like a simple one, almost transactional. Small beer when stacked up against some of the other situations in which we had been immersed. 

Then I met Melanie (not her actual name). Not once did she talk about getting what she was entitled to.  Instead she talked about being understood, respected and helped. We were joined in our chat by Julie (not her actual name), the team member that helped her. We all talked about what happened. My favourite exchange was this:

J: “It was just an hour, it was nothing really”

M: “Julie, it was everything”

Melanie recently started to lose her sight.  She had worked for many years as a carer.  Despite recent public assertions to the contrary, caring requires skill and diligence (around medication for example) as well as compassion and empathy. Her failing sight meant she couldn’t deploy her skills safely any longer and she had to first move to a less complex role and then give up work altogether.

After caring for others, raising her now grown up children and generally enriching the lives of many and society as a whole, she needed some support. For the first time in her life, she needed the state’s help week to week. 

An early visit to the Job Centre didn’t go well. The staff there were rushed and had no time to understand her context.  She got limited, ad hoc financial help from her grown up children, which she honestly disclosed and was wrongly interpreted as being financially much more significant and thus eroded her benefit entitlement hugely.  She felt like they’d somehow caught her out and punitive measures followed.   There was no trust. No anything. She tried reasoning with the people there who didn’t and couldn’t help her.  

She possessed enough empathy to read the room: the people working there didn’t seem to like it either. She talks about pitying them during our chat. There’s no anger.

She left after a fruitless visit and cried. She told us that at that point, she felt like she was “heading for a breakdown.” She decided that she couldn’t go back there again.  It was too much and she’d have to find another way to survive.  This is a lady who has been caring for others her whole working life. She said she felt like ‘scum, just a number’.  

Another one of her ‘jobs’ was to contact the Council Tax service and explain her change in circumstances. She was nervous and spoke to one of the advisors about her bad experience at the Job Centre.  ‘Jim’, from blog number one, called her back.  He asked her about her situation and introduced Julie, who we have on secondment from DWP.  Melanie said it was a “guardian angel” moment. She wasn’t asking for anything special, just some help. 

In about one hour, her Council Tax and Benefits were sorted. 

Nothing was given that wasn’t entitled.  And yet we got fanmail and gin! Melanie said something very profound when we met.  The team said we’d helped her get what she was entitled to. Melanie said they had helped her move on from losing her sight.  We did not predict this, and we can’t ‘measure’ it. But it’s brilliant, isn’t it? 

Now Melanie would like to work again. Volunteer perhaps? She wants to help others to be cared about and understood. We’re exploring ideas with her now. 

On the one hand, it’s an unremarkable tale about helping someone get some benefits, help manage some arrears and readjust their finances with them.

But when I read the amazing and moving card Melanie wrote to us, there is nothing in there about what the team did. It’s all about how they did it and how they were.

She wants us to work with the people in the Job Centre as “Those lasses look sick”. She wants them to enjoy their work like Julie does.  She wants them to be like Julie and Jim.  Truth is, they already are, but as Melanie said herself, “It just needs loosened up”.

My takeaway from our chat was:

• Simple things done well alongside people who really need support are profoundly important
• A good relationship lengthens the impact of the task. Task and finish extends as far as processing an application to yield some resources. Building a relationship too extended this impact by nurturing Melanie’s desire to help others. If that happens lots more, who knows what collective good could come of this?
• We had a purpose, namely ‘help people to thrive’. Melanie customised it for herself into ‘help me move on from losing my sight’. This was a huge moment for me around realising what this work was all about. Our purpose is a working title for citizens to customise as they get to know us and we get to know them.
• Bespoke by default works

(Melanie has given consent for me to write about her experience with us. I changed her name and those of all others in this blog entry)