Organisational Summary

The Polyanna Project is a non profit making organisation which has been set up to enable a team of professionals to work together to research and develop information and educational resources in the area of health and social care.

The project is small at present with the members having other professional positions in health and the arts. Much of our work is undertaken on a voluntary basis. There are seven core members to the team, an artist and a designer, a health psychologist, an anthropologist, a consultant midwife with a public health background, a policy advisor and an administrator.

The Polyanna Project aims to consult with communities about their needs around information resources for health and social care. We aim to primarily support communities who may experience inequality in accessing and using health services. This may be due to issues around disability, mental health, language or immigration. We recognise that groups such as asylum seekers and refugees and other migrants may have particular issues because of lack of language skills, which may make them unaware or wary of accessing services. Much of our work will focus on those groups who are not well integrated into their local communities and health services.

Integral to our ethos is the appreciation that people are experts in their own lives. Through our consultations we work with people to create information which is useful, acceptable and attractive for the cohort it pertains to. We work with people who are described within policy documents as 'hard to reach'. Our aim is to help to empower them to be proactive in accessing care in the health and social arena. Our visual diary records how our projects develop and depicts how the communities are central with cross cutting professional input. Our work is developed within an ethnographic framework of action research thereby giving communities a voice not only in the 'tools' we develop but contributing to a body of understanding of the real lived experiences. This research is presented in reports which are shared with the Department of Health and other bodies and in addition becomes the basis of campaigning work.

In the long term we may include some policy and campaigning work to improve equity and uptake of services for vulnerable groups.

Policy Direction for our work

The National Service Framework for Maternity Services and its implementation strategy Maternity Matters (2007) both recognise the need for non-directive information to be available to women to help them to access and use services better. The information on The Women's Wheel does this, reflecting the interventions cited in the Access to Maternity Services PSA 19 agreement and Reducing Infant Mortality PSA agreement (2007). In addition, one of the recommendations made by the National Domestic Abuse and Pregnancy Advisory Group in the Latest CEMACH report, Saving Mothers' Lives (Lewis, 2007) is that women should receive a laminated card containing a list of useful and local numbers of organisations.


Previous projects conducted by the members

Prior to setting up the Polyanna Project the members have worked together on projects including:

  • "MOLLY" (Memory, Object, Learning Leisurely Yarns )
    A project working with Afro-Caribbean elders about identity and integration.
  • "Florence...the experience of becoming a mother in exile"
    A documentary film for midwives and policy makers.
  • "MAAP", Maternity Access and Advocacy Pack
    The MAAP consists of storyboards, with pictures drawn by Heidi Cutts depicting pregnancy, birth and becoming a parent and an accompanying booklet. It was designed to be discursive, that is to encourage information sharing between people within the community pre-clinically.