When I first considered applying for Dragons Den, I must admit, I thought that I wouldn’t stand a chance because I wrongly assumed that Dragons Den funding was mostly awarded to clinical teams.
However, when I delved into the criteria for eligibility, I was delighted to discover that the Dragons Den funding could be awarded to any person or team who had a great idea or suggestion for an improvement to their service.
I work in the Community Engagement team as Head of Experience of Care. I am passionate about my role as I get to use creative, diverse, and innovative measures to support service lines to enhance and improve the experience of care for patients, families, carers, and the wider community.
One of my recent innovations has been to use slam poetry as a method to engage with African migrant mothers in Portsmouth whose children are accessing our Child & Family service. The main aim of the project was to provide an opportunity for NHS colleagues to understand the lived experiences of these families via the lens of slam poetry.
Popularised in America slam poetry is reported to have started in Chicago in the 1980’s. Slam poetry is simply performance poetry, and it is often used to convey messages around race, culture, feminism, disability, health, and a whole array of topical issues. It can provide powerful insights into the thoughts and emotions of the person reading the poem. This method has proved to be useful in my role as it has enabled me to gather rich feedback which transcends the usual feedback, we often receive from traditional patient experience surveys.
For example, an extract from one of the mothers’ poems read:
'If you can communicate in English health practitioners assume you get it.
That you somehow understand everything they are saying.
But we don’t!
Please check that I have understood everything you have told me.
Don’t assume!
If you were to remember these things when we meet to discuss my child, I’d feel peace.
Like I am part of the community because many times I’ve felt like I am not part of the community.
I think it would give me a sense of belonging.’
Reflecting on these types of insights that allowed me to discover that this method could be used to engage with other marginalized groups in the community. This is when I made the decision to apply to the Solent Dragons Den asking for funds to help me to roll out the method to reach groups of people with learning disabilities, the trans community, and other people from racialised minoritised groups. At the Dragons Den panel meeting I explained that the money would fund additional slam poetry events and enable facilitation and development of training tools to equip my NHS colleagues with the skills they needed to be able to replicate this method in their service lines. The other great benefit of the funding is that it’s afforded me with the opportunity to pay for people from the community to help me to co-facilitate the training for NHS colleagues.
Recently one of the community researchers involved in the study with people with learning disabilities said, “when you first asked me if I wanted to get involved with some research involving poetry, I thought what is she going on about? However, when we held the first slam poetry workshop with a group of people with a learning disability, I learnt so much, and I loved it! You taught us how to write our emotions down about a situation and then you helped us to weave it into a poem and to then perform it to NHS staff. I now use this technique to write down how I am feeling when I am upset about something, and it helps me. I can’t stop talking about it!”
The roll out of these methods to other cohorts and the ability for me to be able to share the techniques with my colleagues in Solent has only been made possible with the support of the Dragons Den funding.
Watch this engaging video to learn more: https://youtu.be/HyTnYWVCeTE
Ophelia Watson
Head of Experience of Care
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