While we are not strangers to the Banyan and its work, it took us some time to understand the unique spirit of the Home Again program. An innovative program that integrates mental well-being and health into the community. An ambitious program that imagines a different reality and then creates it. One that enquires whether those who need care, can actually inform a more inclusive culture in the community in which they live.
This program had been developed by the Banyan and was inviting interest from a wider group of organisations including government programs. Responding to the need of these organisations, Banyan had developed an exhaustive document – over 180 pages of detailed protocols and processes, philosophy and principles.
They invited us to work on it to “develop this document in an easy to understand way, that helps widespread adoption of the program by interested stakeholders”.
The Home Again program sounds too good to be true. It takes a group of people with mental health issues and place them in a home in the community – the premise that this is the choice of these persons to lead their life independently, yet with the gentle support of the program, when needed. We knew we had to bring the document to life with real stories, experiences, challenges. This program uniquely makes sense for the community and for the larger policy framework. It provides a solution for infrastructural limitations, pushes the envelope on inclusion and is also financially more viable. The growth of the program itself shows its potential.
The first conversation with the Banyan team was something we usually start with at Vriddhi – purpose. What do we want to communicate and to who? Who is the user? What do they need? Thus, to re-envision the manual, we invited the team to reflect on:
Walking through the use cases of the organizations which wishes to implement Home Again, we arrived at the understanding that the document would be for two broad groups: 1) organisations that were implementing it; 2) Policy makers who were interested in the program. Either way, this document was not likely to be used as a stand-alone document. It would always be complementary to the hands-on training. It would be a document to refer to as also a document that could bring interest on the program.
We broke up the document into the existing sections putting down what would be the key messages to capture in these sections. Key components in which the program was to be presented (Housing, Clinical Care and Social Care) required a few iterations. This led us to the missing sections. Surely, we had to talk about the implementation of the program – human resource allocations, roles, finances – the program management section was created using existing and new content.
We then worked on some of the key messages to be presented. Our intent was to reduce the manual to 40 pages! We closed it at about 80 pages! There is only so much you can crunch without losing the nuances and essence of the program. This is where we wove stories into the narratives, examples, real questions and notes to implementers.
This document is a result of effort of many collaborators.
Our design partner – Duet Studio – worked hard with us to review the text, brainstorm in the creative representation. We wanted to give it a feel of non – traditional. Duet leveraged the vibrant visuals from The Banyan to bring this to life. We relied on the hawk eye of Maj Gen A J B Jaini for relentless and repeat proofreads of the many versions of the document.
Banyan team in turn had internal discussions as well as with the partners who were implementing Home Again to see what were their needs that the manual should address. Kamala Easwaran who anchored the project, brought her lived experience of the program and softer nuances of it, which were reflected in the text.
We have known the Banyan for over 20 years now. However, working on this brought us face to face with the courage that their team exhibits in nurturing these bold ideas. The sheer difficulty of their work and yet the apparent ease with which they just keep moving. Our own skepticism of this being a “pilot” shifted to an acknowledgement of Home Again as a program with transformative potential. This conviction grew as we read story after story of lives touched, stereotypes challenged and the humble and profoundly brave approach of recognizing that not everything will change, sometimes something will change and sometimes it won’t.
That shouldn’t stop us from just walking.
