Snakes & Ladders - Health & Safety: Blog Action Day - The Power of We

This year's theme for Blog Action Day is The Power of We. Andy Roberts over at DARnet posted about his not taking part given this particularly ambiguous title. I can see what Andy means. I'd signed-up for this year and wondered what to write; but then last Friday morning returning to work up the A59 at the Tickle Trout I was behind a van carrying two ladders...

I used to be a bit reckless in terms of heights, but I was kid then. Can you imagine the sudden lease of mental life from a row of terraced houses in Liverpool to fields and woods? Friends used to climb and go from tree-to-tree, in the summers our football pitches became dusty patches.

In my mid-teens helping out I thought nothing of staining the side of the dorma extension one-handed with about 30cms of standing clearance. In the decade from 1970 to the 1980s attitudes changed markedly as health and safety become firm buddies (see for example HSE). If the ladders were out to stretch their legs then my dad or younger brother were on station ensuring the ladder stayed put. There's the power of we keeping me safe.

The health and independence that the majority of us takes for granted seems to give individuals that childhood tree-to-tree disregard for safety.

H2CM central axis IND - GRP

I can illustrate what I mean; for example, look where this individual has got themselves! Of course, we often depend upon others to get to many places. Our very existence depends on others. 

Central to Hodges' model is a structure built from the key humanistic, that is the psychological and social perspectives of 'I' and 'We'.

This gives the model its spine. Everything else in health and social care follows from this axis. We need the social and political foundations of relationships, families, communities to take us to organisations, political movements, government and global governance. Previously, I pointed to the effort required to deliver person-centred care. We have to conceptually take the individual from the ascendent point in the model and put them at the model's center. Doing this collaboratively that is the communication that counts.

There is however, a responsibility that rests with the person. The Power of We is also not a given. It is possible for individuals to opt out of society, being a citizen is something for others. What difference can I make to political outcomes? There is the political debate about individual responsibility regarding life-style choices. If people are to achieve self-efficacy they need to climb down from that crow's nest and traverse the humanistic and mechanistic dimensions of life.

This responsibility is really telling though when an individual seeks to take, or maintain power for themselves within a nation. They trample on the freedoms, lives and choices of others. The people taking power back, doing so peacefully and gaining evidence of abuse of power that is the real power of we.

A room with a view from on high can still bring unique insights for individuals from which we can all learn:

"I know the whole world is watching right now and I wish the world could see what I can see. Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you really are." Felix Baumgartner, 14 October 2012.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9607604/Skydiver-Felix-Baumgartner-attempts-to-break-sound-barrier-live.html 

Baumgartner image: BBC
Ladder brush c/o: http://www.trendyrobot.com/brushes/000343/popup.html