We’ve spent 30 years grappling with some of the most complex challenges faced by our communities and systems, developing responses that push boundaries to create solutions.
First, we go back to our early years—when Grapevine was focused solely on helping people with learning disabilities get a more just life—where we untapped the power of ‘the ordinary’ to turn around the lives of people who were labelled X.
Our person-led planning and connecting forced a powershift in their lives away from professionals and pathologies.
30 years ago, the health and social care system seemed to us unable to operate in a fair way. We saw services that:
Problematised, segregated and removed real choice and control
Operated through a language of interventions delivered by qualified people to a deficient problem holder
Often saw no strengths in a person’s family or community
Failed to develop people’s purpose, agency and relationships.
People were excluded, unvalued and isolated from help, support and the warmth of community. They didn’t get the power or control others had.
Frustrated by these limits, we came to believe that the solution must lie outside of services. So we began searching for new solutions.
We began connecting people with learning disabilities to others in their communities in ways that benefited everyone. This upset traditional service models of ‘needs based provision’ and disrupted the traditional helper and helped relationship. In its place we established a new model of ‘needs as assets’ and began unlocking the abundant pre-existing resources in communities.
It worked. We saw people begin to look after each other and raise each other up. The model built resilience in individuals and grew protective networks within communities. It was more sustainable and more empowering for everyone.
Excluded from several schools and having had contact with thirty-five different services from the age of four, Ben and his family were at breaking point.
“I was exhausted by the whole of health and education; the whole system felt broken,” says his mum Dawn. She had stopped working to help the family cope.
When Dawn and Ben met Mel from Grapevine for coffee, Ben was a teenager and introduced himself as the kid who’d been to five schools and in and out of services.
Mel said: “Whoa, stop, that’s not who you are. We need to find out who Ben is.”
Mel invited Dawn and Ben along to a Slow Roll cycle ride the next day. Ben, who is dyspraxic, was apprehensive.
Credit: Adam Stefanca.
Within minutes of arriving, Dawn had a puncture. “I went home to get the car,” says Dawn, “and left Ben with these people that I hardly knew.”
The group cycled to Memorial Park. Soon after, one of the pedals fell off Ben’s bike. Another attendee, Andrew, cycled home to get replacements. When Dawn got back into town, she couldn’t find the group—they were in the park fixing Ben’s bike.
That was the start of Ben seeing something different—how people have your back and want to support you.
“We went camping with them six weeks later—it was really quick,” says Dawn. “And it really was, ‘Oh my word, this is different; there’s no medical language; there’s no ‘What’s your diagnosis?’ Instead it was: ‘Who are you?’”
Credit: Greg Rosenke.
Ben joined a Swim and Tonic outdoor swimming session to get more people swimming. They had an idea to put a rave on in a swimming pool.
Ben helped run the Facebook page and welcome people with glow sticks. A hundred people came to the first event.
Next, Ben agreed to help out at a Big Paddle event for people who hadn’t swum before, even though he wasn’t a strong swimmer himself. Afterwards, someone from the swimming pool asked Ben if he wanted to do an apprenticeship as a swimming teacher with the promise of pay and qualifications.
This opened doors for Ben in roles across the city. Soon after, he gave evidence to the SEND Select Committee in Parliament. Now he and his Mum both have jobs within the NHS, bringing their insights and experience into the system.
“I realised that if we don’t get in the middle of the NHS, we’re not going to make those changes,” says Dawn.
