Gloriously Ordinary Sundays - 19th May 2024
Happy Sunday. Today I want to spend a bit of time sharing what Gloriously Ordinary Lives is for. I started using the words ‘Gloriously Ordinary’ when my kids were teenagers to try and explain to the various systems around them how we wanted life to look like. Not some strange version of special or different, but exactly what other young people their age might expect – along with the reasonable adjustments they might need to make things work for them and for them to be welcomed.
When I formally launched Gloriously Ordinary Lives last year, that was the essence I wanted to keep. So, what is it for?
Firstly, it’s absolutely not a checklist or assessment tool. I never want it to be something that people say, ‘Oh yes, we do Gloriously Ordinary Lives!’. So many wonderful ideas got bent out of shape by being something people ‘do’ to other people – I won’t name any here, but I know that something will have popped into your head as you read this. Next thing you know it's Gloriously Ordinary Lives on a Thursday morning…… NO!
What I hope for is that it offers a way of questioning and challenging both how we think about and frame social care, health and education, and the reality of what it means for people who are part of those systems and the people who draw on them.
Lots of you are exploring the wonderful equation of mundane + heart sing, and how that tension is at the core of all of our lives, as well as being a great starting point for checking just how good support being offered is.
Martin Walker joined a LinkedIn thread last week where people were sharing their mundane and heart sing, and commented:
‘I notice so far, for the heart sings …no one is asking for the earth, in fact the opposite. Virtually all seem achievable even within existing and ever shrinking budgets. Is this what a modern (i.e. of our times and context) flexible budget might encompass? Social workers and team managers discuss’
That’s the sort of conversation I’m happy for Gloriously Ordinary Lives to spark!
In chats I’ve been having with people about how they want to use Gloriously Ordinary Lives, they are coming up with great ideas.
Organisations that offer direct support to people, saying that they want to build in Gloriously Ordinary Lives training as part of their induction process. People and families being encouraged to share examples of where the five tests are working in the support they are getting, and when they are not. Senior leadership teams using the Five Tests as ways of holding themselves to account and practice leaders using them in supervision.
I’ve had several conversations with people about how we can use the Gloriously Ordinary Lives Five Tests as a formal way of checking quality. Absolutely! (Although see my first point about Gloriously Ordinary Lives being something that we ‘do’) and watch this space for more on this.
It's lovely how people are talking about Gloriously Ordinary Lives and really thinking about how it works for them and their world. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help make it work. Meanwhile, I’ll get back to my mundane and heart sing.
PS. Did you see? The Gloriously Ordinary Sundays Podcast episode four is here! I caught up with the amazing Bryony Shannon and we talked all about Test Two and the importance of language in health, social care and education.