All About People

‘It is solved by walking’ (‘solvitur ambulando’ in the original Latin). It’s one of my favourite phrases. I’m lucky enough to live near the North York Moors, and I walk the bleak and beautiful hills all year round. It is in walking that I’ve thrashed out whatever life has thrown at me, and it is in ‘walking through’ and ‘keeping walking’, ever onwards towards the next horizon (however foggy!) that I have come to leave NHS England, and full-time public-sector employment, to become a freelancer.

Leaving the NHS after 15 years (10 of those at NHS England) has felt like a huge leap into the unknown, but also like coming up for air. Being in a national role employed by one of the biggest organisations in the world comes with huge potential and not a small amount of power. However, it also brings constraints, not just the infamous red tape, but also the less visible restrictions and personal frustrations. At its heart, my decision to leave the NHS, and to pursue a freelance future, is about choosing authenticity and integrity, and the opportunity to decide exactly where I can best focus my energies to make a positive difference.

I joined All About People a little late, once the more creative members of our foursome had already been swirling ideas around a while. In my career, I have often felt like a bit of an outsider, or an outlier, especially as an introvert working in public involvement. I’m very rarely the one with the ‘big ideas’, and despite various people’s best efforts, I cannot draw, paint, dance, or sing (and don’t get me started on role play…).

Despite over a decade as a public engagement specialist, I have often struggled to see ‘what I’m bringing to the party’. And it’s taken a couple of stints outside of NHS England to feel confident in my own skills. These months at Samaritans and at NHS Charities Together have both been about developing and then supporting the implementation of new or refreshed strategy, as part of which I used my existing skillset in new ways, and saw my contribution in a new light.

I am, at heart, and almost by instinct, a ‘sense-maker’. That is the term I’ve started to use for my ability to see a trend, a theme, something that unites the disparate comments, experiences, views, hopes, challenges voiced by professionals, patients, cited in academic reports and strategy documents. I can take the data, the information, the myriad views of a local community or the dense prose of government policy, and I can create something that makes sense, and that works for the audience. At NHS England I routinely created quick ‘need to know’ documents on the latest ‘big announcement’, including capturing the essence of a publication or statement in one sentence, and in one paragraph. During my career I have written everything from statutory guidance to easy read flyers, from an information standard to board papers to executive briefings, presentations, correspondence, papers on pretty much any health-policy-related topic you can to name.

It is, for me, all about making sense, and that’s what has brought me to understand how my skills can complement others’. When we work with communities, or with any group, we take an ‘asset based’ approach, always seeing first ‘what’s good’ or ‘what’s strong’, and it’s important that we all do that as individuals too. We are all walking our own paths, but we can all help others along the way too.

It really feels like now is the time for me to step up and play my part. 

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