Herefordshire and Worcestershire Life Stories
Herefordshire and Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust developed a novel and exciting idea in conjunction with Worcester City Council’s Historic Environment Record to develop a Worcester Life Stories’ project.
The project idea was of two independent but interacting platforms. Know Your Place Worcester, and Worcester Life Stories. The Worcester Life Stories platform would be fully co-produced with people using the website such as older people, people living with dementia, carers, and health and social care staff as well as the general public.
The resulting website will provide a virtual platform where residents of Worcester could login and develop their own Worcester Life Story. This will be through a number of mediums such as photos, text, audio and possibly video.
Dr Natasha Lord, Lead Clinical Psychologist for old people’s mental health needs has been the driving force behind this innovative idea and has ambitions to develop the solution in other regions of the UK.
It is really exciting that we are now working with VerseOne to develop the Worcester Life Stories platform. Life story work is already well evidenced for its benefits such as enhancing well-being, and improvements in communication and inclusion. Worcester Life Stories will take this work further by the people of Worcester co-producing what is important to them about their local history and making this easily accessible. Furthermore, digital evolvements mean that digital formats such as video stories will now be possible where they have not been before.
Users of the ground-breaking solution will be able to tap into and trawl through over 35,000 pre- loaded historic photographs and memories of Worcester (by accessing the ‘Know Your Place Worcester’ application) and upload these into their custom life story. Know Your Place Worcester will be a public website, hosted by the Historic Environment Record Officer Sheena Payne-Lunn. This will be a growing resource which will continue to provide local memories of Worcester. The user can then also upload personal images and memories to their ‘life story’ which they may not wish to share on a public platform.
This personalised life story can be downloaded as a multimedia video presentation or printable PDF.
The intention of the Life Stories website is to deliver measurable health benefits to old adults, their carers and their families. Evidence also suggests that life story work is valuable across the lifespan. In recognition of this, the workshops and the platform are open to all. VerseOne with its deep expertise in Accessibility and user experience design is proud to extend their existing partnership and digital footprint with Hereford and Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust, bringing real additional value to the project. VerseOne also recognises the importance and health benefits of this project and as such has contributed £10,000 from its Innovation Fund (established specifically to support novel projects of this nature), that will help to make this project a real success, both in Worcester and nationally. As the UK’s Leading provider of digital transformation solutions, VerseOne has a proud heritage of serving the NHS spanning over 15 years, with their solutions already empowering 350,000 NHS staff who in turn service over 20m patients across the UK.
This project will see the two organisations continue to work together closely to deliver a flexible and highly personalised digital experience with the award winning VerseOne solutions at its core.
For more information about the project please visit https://worcesterlifestories.wordpress.com
To Explore the interactive Know Your Place map, please visit - http://www.kypwest.org.uk/explore-the-map/go-to-the-map/
For more information on how VerseOne are helping in the NHS please visit us at www.verseone.com.