A coat of paint and a new pot plant

Redevelopment sounds like such a big deal doesn't it?

THIRTEEN  MILLION DOLLARS sounds like such a big amount of money doesn't it?

What does a small community expect of the two phrases worked together into a lovely press announcement by a Government Department?  They expect a big deal and a big benefit. 

To quote one of my husband's famous, and slightly Shiraz fuelled speeches many years ago, they want everything to be Bigger & Better!

But what does Bigger & Better look like in bricks and mortar? How does the community get to decide how that looks and what they want? How do you get more than a coat of paint and a new pot plant for your hard effort and dollars?

The first step is to include community members from day one of the process.  I'm deliberately not using the word consumer here.  Consumers and Community can be very different beasts for the corporate and government worlds to deal with.  I'll explain.

A Consumer Representative is when you are driving service change, cultural change and when there has been a negative event that needs to be remedied.  These are the people who use the system, either regularly, or frequently who may have chronic health issues and they know how they want to be treated.  Not treated as in healed, but treated with respect, empathy and understanding of their issues.  These are the people you need for quality assurance, standards and training of staff in how to listen with their ears, eyes and noses rather than their text book google glasses.

A Community Member is needed when you are tackling the projects, the bricks and mortar, the how's, the whys and the whens.  They have no strong connection to the user-end of the system itself, but they have networks, knowledge and occasionally power on their side which can help drive your project home in the best possible way. These are the people who analyse, deconstruct and disseminate information to the local people in a multitude of forums to increase understanding and effectiveness of the changes you are wanting. These are your Champions.

I am a very low end consumer of the health system. I've had a couple of procedures, and see my GP once a year for an oil change and service, get the tyres checked and then hit the road running.  I am however, the child of a high end user in the geriatric sphere, and I have now adult children who ran the usual colds, sutures and such minor things that boys do.  I have some knowledge of how that side works, and enough knowledge to be able to have empathy for the high end users who need my input for change

What I do, and I like to think I do well is to be a good Community Representative for project work.  I have been involved in everything from schools, to museums, to health services and always looked at the system and how to get the best value of a piece of land, a fence, a master plan, and how to deliver those variables to a community who wanted more.  

Community always want the Taj Mahal of garden sheds.  The average person wandering the local hardware store on a Saturday afternoon cannot visualise what $13,000,000 looks like in fittings & fixtures. Some will say it's not much and all we'll get for our town's hospital is a coat of paint and a new pot plant.  Others will say it's a fortune and expect neurosurgical facilities by next Friday afternoon.

My role throughout the current project has been to facilitate the communication between these two extremes of expectation. To balance the day to day hum drum of the government organisation managing the project with the excitement of the community getting something new in their town.  At times it has been to nudge and poke the various powers that be to make sure what to the community is a real project that is needed and wanted didn't become a dusty file on a shelf somewhere.  

There are so many ways of doing this, and I'll continue to share some of them in the next few weeks.