Responding to Change - Evaluation - Upstream

Responding to Change

Upstream’s strength has been the ‘action research’ approach – the ability to respond quickly to evidence of success or weakness to produce the best possible result, with self-evaluation as a continuous theme. The factor driving many changes has been the changing needs and wishes of participants themselves. Here are some examples:

• Community mentors trained to engage and encourage people, providing one-to-one support and focusing on self-sustainability; this replaced the planned full-time Assessor, who focused simply on signposting people to existing activities.
• Activity groups begun by mentors, providing informal, day-time stimulation, instead of the plan to signpost people to Adult & Community Learning (ACL) with Learning and Skills Council (LSC) support. For many people, so-called ‘leisure learning’, rejected by LSC, represents essential skills for coping with daily life.
• Artists and other ‘teachers’ who became practised in inspiring participants to use their own skills to sustain activities independently were brought in; the original plan was to commission artistic programmes from established and often costly artists and ‘arts companies’ with less experience in self- sustainability.
  
• Participants’ age range has been extended to include all adults, so that older people can thrive within the context of the whole community and benefit from a range of ages and abilities – intergenerational activity builds trust – participants themselves were keen on this shift of balance: the original brief was 55-plus.
• Outreach in the community has increased as the project matures: initially Upstream mentors reached out into the community to bring people into local centres (often the main towns, sometimes the villages); in response to demand, mentors are now reaching further into more isolated villages to start groups.
• Volunteers in the traditional sense have not been a feature of the project, which has encouraged ‘volunteer participants’ – anyone who joins or visits a group becomes part of the group, participating and helping however they can; this encourages sustainability and participant ‘ownership’ of the group.
• Consultations occur as ‘conversations’ informally in the context of regular enjoyable activity, rather than set focus groups; people participate who would not normally do so and are able to influence local decisions.
• Long-term maintenance of good health in the community has become an important aspect of mentors’ work – it is not enough simply to signpost people to other activities or lose touch after they have ‘graduated’ from Upstream. Successful independence requires monitoring to avoid decline into ill-health.
• Co-operative working has increasingly become a feature of the project – through shared co-ordination and signposting with other voluntary sector organisations and particularly through representation on GP multi-disciplinary teams. The project belongs not just to Upstream but to the whole community.