November 2010: Community Healthcare Innovations, South Woodford
With Stephanie O’Leary, Project Director.
Community Healthcare Innovations started three years ago as a way of providing quality, nurse-lead healthcare and support in a highly deprived area of Redbridge. Stephanie, a qualified nurse, felt called to leave her full-time work in the NHS to commit herself to working with marginalised people who didn't have full access to healthcare.
Stephanie O’Leary had been attending church in South Woodford, and through the church’s social outreach work she had begun to understand some of the community’s needs. As a practice nurse with twenty years’ experience, Stephanie felt called to apply her skills within the community, but it was some years before she finally took the step to sell her home and move to rented accommodation in the area so that she could focus her time on developing a new service.
Community Healthcare Innovations was founded as a community interest company – a non-profit social enterprise – offering holistic care and support. As Stephanie began to develop trust and good relationships with residents on a large, deprived housing estate in the area she learnt that there was an acute need for healthcare support for people who could not register with a local GP. Stephanie’s initial weekly drop-in clinic developed over two years, eventually leading to the award of a contact for healthcare for the homeless in the borough in collaboration with the Healthy Living Centre in Ilford.
Two of Community Healthcare Initiatives’ core projects came out of a piece of research that Stephanie was involved in for the University of East London and the local PCT. A review of health needs in the borough highlighted a lack of growing space for the community to use, and a need for youth work; the ‘Growing Kids’ project began as a way of bringing families together to grow fruit and vegetables and to encourage healthy eating. Stephanie said, ‘One of the biggest achievements was having couple of families who said to me that their kids came to the allotment project having not eaten any fruit or vegetable at all – five a day at the end of the season! That, for me, is what the project’s all about.’
Working with young people on the estate showed Stephanie the importance of having a long-term presence in the community. ‘[Teenagers] said to us, “there’s nothing for us around here; we want a youth club but no-one will do anything. People come in, do their bit and go away again.” And that was the bit that really stuck with me … I said, “We will run it for as long as you want it.”’ Over 200 young people use the youth club, which also offers mentoring and help with life skills.
‘I’d love to have more people that actually get the vision of what we’re doing, and get involved, not perhaps because they just want to volunteer or get a job, although that is important, but to get the vision and take it on board, what we’re trying to achieve. [Growth] is sometimes a bit slower than I’d like, but then on the other hand I look at it and think: three years; what have we actually achieved? We’ve achieved a huge amount; impacted a lot more people than I could have imagined.”
