‘It’s been an incredible journey’ – Thank you on reaching 250,000 people through outreach
- Written by: Tommy Whitelaw — ALLIANCE — National Lead for Caring and Outreach
- Published: 6th April 2022
ALLIANCE's National Lead for Caring and Outreach reflects on his journey to engaging with 250,000 people.
The ALLIANCE’s Carer Voices project was born from a commitment to connect with people; connect with unpaid carers and promote their experiences and their stories to support change.
Carer Voices has always known that in order to support the voice of unpaid carers, we need to speak to as many people as possible. Sharing the values of person centred care and the importance of rights based approaches, which advance shared decision making and meaningful conversations, has therefore been our mission.
I am so honoured to reflect on many years of delivering talks, lectures, speeches and our value based reflective practice ‘You Can Make a Difference’. Over 6.5 years, I’ve connected with so many wonderful people from all backgrounds, and shared the values of kindness, civility, active listening, building meaningful connections and practicing a ‘What Matters to You’ approach (this link will take you away from our website).
What started as a programme of delivery focused on health and social care colleagues, has now expanded to include ALLIANCE member organisations working across the third sector, Scottish government departments, statutory bodies universities, colleges, and many more. Speaking to so many varied organisations and sharing the same values to each has taught me how universal they really are.
It has been an incredible journey, and a great honour to have now shared our key messages with over 250,000 unique individuals. We have also collected 30,000 pledges and built What Matters to You? trees and walls in many organisations to capture how people plan to take forward the values.
Reaching 250,000 people has not come without obstacles, and the pandemic brought our face-to-face delivery to a halt. But we adapted, and have since delivered a transformed programme of online sessions. This included a series of 70 sessions delivered to 1,700 colleagues at Social Security Scotland. Moving to digital delivery has allowed Carer Voices to have broad and expansive reach, having now engaged virtually with upwards of 25,400 people through over 460 digital sessions across Scotland, England and North America.
Going forward we will continue to evolve and adapt, including trailing new hybrid approaches to engagement, to ensure that the values of person centred approaches and the experiences of carers reach even larger audiences.
Thank you
Tommy
If you would like to book your own session, or to learn more about our work we do, please email carervoices@alliance-scotland.org.uk
You can read our reports and view our films and resources here.
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