Storytelling helps to get to the heart of what matters to people who receive services. It can be used to learn about and evaluate projects, improve wider understanding of, and accessibility to services and promote deeper more meaningful exploration of social care to inform our planning.
I was at a work meeting recently; a man was pouring a coffee next to me ‘is that a Liverpool accent?’ he asked. We got chatting and he told me had once had a shop near where I used to live.
When he told me the name of the shop, memories flooded back from my childhood. He is an artist, and I often visited his shop to look at his paintings of Liverpool. I would tug at my mum’s sleeve every time we were in a place I recognised from his paintings. ‘We’re in the painting!’ I would say.
During the meeting I learned that he was an unpaid carer for his wife living with dementia. By listening to people talk about their experiences I knew things were difficult, but through developing a strong connection they had found strength, comfort and support. ‘It’s like finding ourselves all being in the same boat we don’t want to be on, we’re like a family”.
At the end of the session, the artist approached me ‘what are you doing now?’ he said. Half an hour later I was in his living room looking at his original paintings. He was so proud ‘you’ve made my day’ he said ‘you made mine too’ I replied.
This may be a short story, but there are so many well-being themes to reflect on and explore which give an insight into what matters to people – belonging, place, pride, community and connectedness.
If you would like to find out more about storytelling for well-being, promotion or evaluation Social Care Wales have launched a brand new framework full of evidence based tools and techniques. This can give you inspiration to get going or develop the use of storytelling in health and social care settings, including how to reflect on and make sense of stories.
