A Key to the Heart

Emergency hospital admissions in Frome have fallen by nearly a fifth in three years.  In the rest of Somerset, they have increased by nearly a third.  It seems it has been done by prescribing not medicine but community.

One imaginative doctor has worked away at a ‘Compassionate Frome’ project.  It points people towards the support or community group they need.  It notices gaps in provision and badgers people and churches to fill them.

Some of us in some of the churches along the Worth valley have been praying and thinking about this. 

First we noticed how much is already going on.  The Place of Welcome on Monday mornings at St James’, Cross Roads, part of a scheme across the whole Bradford Council area.  Christians Against Poverty’s local debt advice centre in Keighley being in touch about support it can give in the Worth valley.  A group of those with learning difficulties being invited to serve the local community out of a weekly session at West Lane Baptist Church in Haworth.  And those are just three examples someone has spoken to me about this week.

Secondly we noticed how willing people are to talk about the possibilities, at our local Medical Centre, among those fundraising for better mental health care provision in the Worth valley, by Bradford Council’s Ward Officer, in the activities of the local Methodist Circuit, and so on.

If you hear things soon about work for a ‘Healthy Haworth’, remember you first read about it here.  Or rather, you may have already read about it in the history books.  I’m proud to be the successor of the Revd Patrick Brontë.  In the nineteenth century he had schools built in Haworth and in Stanbury.  His work to get new sewage systems for Haworth saved literally thousands of lives.

My piece in the Keighley News this week; the opportunity to contribute a three hundred word reflection only comes round about once a year..

Meanwhile, the photographs are one of our favourite flowers in our garden at the moment and one of the Bishop of Bradford gesturing towards the 'Key of Return' when he opened my wife's first solo textile art exhibition this week; the flow of interested and appreciative people through Haworth's Old School Room has been the real pleasure of the week.