Yesterday was a big day for Gardening4Health: the first in-person meeting of our Board of Trustees.
It was lovely to go back to Tuppenny Barn: venue for our first Green Therapies conference last year. Tuppenny truly is a brilliant model for any therapeutic garden to follow, and Founder and CEO Maggie Haynes showed us round the site, inspiring us with all the extraordinary projects that go on there.
Maggie is one our our six founding trustees, along with Farah Brooks-Johnson, Richard Claxton, Boyd Douglas-Davies, Wendy Fenn and Anne Wagstaff. You can read more about them all, over on the “Our People” page.
Nobody leaves Tuppenny without a full belly, and either side of a delicious lunch we talked through our vision for the coming weeks and months. We’ve got big plans, and there’s lots to be getting on with!
Dr Carly Wood is a Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Science at the University of Essex and Director of the Health, Exercise and Active Lifestyle Research Group there. Her research is focused on how nature-based interventions can be embedded within health systems to ensure access for all. She spoke about this at Tuppenny Barn last year.
As part of her work, she’s produced some useful Infographics designed to be shared with service users (above), health professionals and policy makers/commissioners (below). There’s also a guideline for their use.
Click the link below to catch up with a webinar where all of this is explained, and there’s also a useful short film from an STH provider on the Healing Power of Gardening.
Since I spoke at the Propagating Green Therapies Conference in October about, amongst other things, how we have employed Garden Therapy Workers in Tonbridge, I’ve been contacted several times about how this works. So, to help others who may want to follow this model I thought it would be helpful to create a summary document to try and explain it.
In a nutshell it’s a way of using NHS resources in England to pay the salaries of staff for Green or Blue Therapies. I know there are many different views and takes on what constitutes a Green Therapist/Garden Therapy worker/STH Practitioner, and I’m not going to dwell on these definitions. The main intention here is simply to highlight a pragmatic means of getting away from having to source charitable funds to pay their salaries.
In 2018 the NHS England Long Term Plan encouraged groups of Practices to collaborate – sharing skills and expertise, and clubbing together to provide services for their locality populations. This was through the formation of Primary Care Networks (PCNs).
As part of this arrangement NHS money was made available for the PCNS (not the Practices) to make use of extra staff to help provide services to their patients. This scheme is called the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS). The NHS has defined the titles of these roles and their salary scales. Examples include Clinical Pharmacists, Paramedics, and Social Prescribing Link Workers.
So, far away the majority of GP Practices in England are now part of PCNs. And these PCNs have been looking for ways not to lose out of ARRS monies as they become available.
What we’ve done in Tonbridge – where we have started NHS Garden Therapy from scratch, is employ two of the Social Prescribing Link Workers, to provide Gardening Therapy for our patients.
It’s a bit of a work-around, and the title doesn’t really do justice to the skill-set that we advertised for when we employed them, but it’s proving to be a reliable and sustainable way of getting monies from the NHS to do this important work.
(Just to complicate matters, we in Tonbridge have a 3rd party Charity called Involve which acts as the employer for all our ARRS staff. This is simply because our particular PCN’s legal structure means we are not able to employ them directly).
In Tonbridge, as a PCN, we set up our Garden Therapy from scratch. However, if there are established Gardens (Charities or Social Enterprises) that want to try and get support in this way, then I would strongly encourage them to approach their local GP Surgeries to see if their PCNs are interested in providing Green or Blue Therapies. Then they can release funds via the ARRS scheme in this way to pay for the relevant therapists. If they are already being employed on a salaried or sessional basis by the gardens, then the PCNs could apply for ARRS monies in the same way that we did – and then advertise for the existing staff to apply for the roles. This then takes the financial burden of their employment off the Garden/Charity itself.
The people with the clout at the PCNs are the Clinical Directors, usually a lead GP in one of the participating practices. They are the people to approach. By all means show them this document to explain the context.
Meanwhile, I’ve been lobbying NHS England to add Garden Therapist/STH Practitioner to the official ARRS list, in order that this work-around might not be necessary in future.
To my knowledge this approach is not possible in Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales, as they have separate systems overseeing Primary Care provision in their devolved NHS.
If you want further advice on this, or have additional questions, then please feel free to contact me through the website or a DM.
The whole day is available to catch up on online for £30. This fee is to cover the cost of the post-production editing, and any surplus will be gifted to the Transforming Tuppenny appeal.
Monday at Tuppenny Barn – a very special day of connection and learning, both in person and online.
Extraordinary speakers and wonderful delegates. All together helping each other navigate the pathway towards the universal provision of Nature-based Therapies.
Within this wonderful healing and growing space; a day suffused with the Tuppenny ethos of sustainability, humility, sharing, and care.
It’s been such a privilege to be able to combine forces organising it all, with Annie Guilfoyle and Maggie Haynes. Both are truly inspirational people.
So many fabulous people to thank, but I wanted to single out Arit Anderson and Annie, for steering us through the day so deftly. Plus Maggie, Rosemary, and the formidable Team Tuppenny, who combine thoughtfulness, kindness with (at times ruthless!) efficency.
Also, to acknowledge that the event couldn’t have gone ahead without the support of all of our generous sponsors – Alitex, British Garden Centres, Garden Masterclass, Natural England, and Westland. And Monty 🐕.
Tuppenny barn, in Southbourne – near Chichester, is deeply rooted in education, organic horticulture and sustainability. In the last four years it has branched in a big way into therapeutic horticulture.
Groups visit to work with Social and Horticultural Therapists, connecting with nature in a safe and supported space – improving their physical and mental health – as well as learning new skills and problem solving. All the while mixing with others, making friends , and in no small way helping to enhance the biodiversity and ecologic health and sustainability of their neighbourhood, and beyond.
Groups include those for people with mental health problems, brain injuries and chronic neurological conditions, homelessness or other vulnerabilities, female Veterans, Young Carers – to name but a few.
All of this is the brainchild of Maggie Haynes – a Veteran herself, and her vision and energy have driven the centre forward, broadening its activities, and thus its importance to its community.
She also has the tidiest shed I’ve ever seen, of which she is rightly proud!
It was a pleasure to meet her, and have a guided tour of the Garden yesterday; a fundraising day in the shape of a Garden Clinic, where punters like us could come along and get our gardening queries answered by no less than Annie Guilfoyle, and Ben Pope.
It was great to meet all three – and especially to chat with Maggie – who’s built the reality of what so many of us dream of – and talk about the obstacles we face in turning universal STH into a national reality, and how to overcome them.
Gardening4Health 