An interview with Polly Harrow

Citation

(2010), "An interview with Polly Harrow", Leadership in Health Services, Vol. 23 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhs.2010.21123caf.001

An interview with Polly Harrow

Article Type: Talking Heads From: Leadership in Health Services, Volume 23, Issue 3

Interview by Alistair Craven

Polly Harrow is Head of Personalised Learning at Barnsley College in South Yorkshire. She has been instrumental in creating a valuable partnership with the Barnsley Primary Care Trust, and in introducing health and wellbeing initiatives to learners and staff at the college.

Polly’s role covers cross-college management of Tutorial, Healthy College, Enrichment, Enterprise and the Learning Resource Centres.

AC

Can you tell us about your day-to-day role?

Polly Harrow

My role at Barnsley College is Head of Personalised Learning. This involves managing cross college tutorial programmes, enrichment and enterprise, learner resource centres and leading on Healthy College. Barnsley College is a tertiary college with over 4,000 full time learners, predominantly 16-19.

AC

What are the major health issues you are facing in the South Yorkshire region?

Polly Harrow

Teenage pregnancy, smoking and alcohol abuse are the main ones, though we are also concerned in Barnsley about sexually transmitted diseases and mental, emotional and physical wellbeing.

AC

How did Barnsley College form its partnership with Barnsley Primary Care Trust?

Polly Harrow

It all started with a conversation between myself and David Ramsay, Assistant Director of Operations for Barnsley PCT, about the possibility of having a “college nurse” on the premises full time. We already offered weekly drop-in surgeries for contraception and smoking cessation, but we wanted to improve and develop the health service offered to our young people. At the same time, the PCT had targets to reach, e.g. Chlamydia testing, smoking cessation and so on, and it was very clear that if we worked in partnership we could really make a difference. Senior managers in college were supportive from the start, and that makes a huge difference. We drew up a service level agreement and began our plans for working together.

AC

You said that when Barnsley College first started working with the PCT, “we all experienced a bit of a culture shock”. What did you mean by this?

Polly Harrow

I think one of the most extraordinary things is that across the NHS and education it has taken so long for us to begin talking to each other. We should in fact be very familiar with the services on offer to young people, but actually the two institutions of health and education have not traditionally worked together in post-16 educational settings (primarily FE, health services have been available in HE for some time). The CASH nurses who now work in college full time were not used to the number of 16-18 year olds; they would normally have much more of a mix in age groups. Also, the numbers were pretty overwhelming in terms of students accessing the new health centre in college. We have different ways of doing things and we all had to get used to new rules and regulations – it has been an incredibly smooth transition considering!

AC

What are your long-term goals in this partnership?

Polly Harrow

Our long-term goals are to support young people in accessing the health and wellbeing services they need, and to contextualise this in an educational programme so that the health services on offer have real meaning for our learners. In this way positive lifestyle choices can be promoted and the students will be aware and informed about the risks associated with certain activities. Our health centre has already expanded in response to demand and we offer a wide range of support for every aspect of health and wellbeing. We would hope to continue the development of the service, so that it remains responsive to learner needs.

AC

Can you give us some idea of the difficulty you face in trying to change the culture around health and wellbeing?

Polly Harrow

In Barnsley, as in any other area, there are specific characteristics and issues, which have come to the fore. Changing habits, cannot be done by simply telling people what to do – it is a long-term strategy of informing, and educating so that individuals can make positive choices, and lead productive lives. Drinking and smoking are key areas for us and it is challenging to educate about certain behaviours if those behaviours appear “cool” or are encouraged outside college in society as a whole. Really, the ultimate goal is that young people think, consider and decide in full possession of the facts. From our research, it is also clear that our learners want advice and guidance on relationships, not just the sexual aspect, and we have moulded our health education programme in response to the needs of our learners.

AC

In a statement you said that the project provides “holistic support rather than approaching each health priority as a separate entity”. Can you tell us more about this?

Polly Harrow

Yes, this is something we feel particularly strongly about. Reports from our learners were telling us that they went to a particular place for support to stop smoking, another place to deal with drug abuse, another for pregnancy and so on. It is however quite typical that a young girl, say, might be smoking drugs but think she is pregnant and therefore will need a number of behaviours to be addressed. In the centre we recognise this and our learners can access antenatal support or advice on termination alongside support with drugs, alcohol or smoking or depression and so on. It’s about realising that more than one element (and sometimes many) will be affecting one person, and so we need to practice an holistic approach which encompasses all the strands which may be present. This holistic approach would include the educational side as mentioned earlier – treatment is given in the health & wellbeing centre – but the pastoral curriculum offers a programme of personal development with regard to health and wellbeing also.

AC

What specific challenges have you faced in your project so far, and how did you overcome them?

Polly Harrow

I think that we have been particularly fortunate at Barnsley to forge the collaborative partnership we have with Barnsley PCT and to now work so well with a wide variety of other agencies, which are regular contributors to our health service. I am aware of some of the difficulties faced by colleagues in other colleges around the country, so I would not want to be misleading in saying that really it has been a highly successful project for us when I know that in other areas colleges and local PCTs are not working together so well yet. However, if I had to pinpoint a specific challenge it would probably be finding the space required to establish an effective health and wellbeing centre – we had to double the size after the first three months to cope with demand – and to quickly establish effective methods of capturing data to measure the impact of the service we offer.

AC

Paul Curry, Principal Officer for Further Education at Ofsted has said that, if you feel “safe, healthy and enjoy your learning experience, your capacity to study and achieve is greatly increased”. What are your thoughts on this?

Polly Harrow

I absolutely agree! One of our straplines is “Stay Safe, Stay Healthy” and in the long term we will see the positive impacts and outcomes for our learners in terms of attendance and retention rates, the student experience of college as a whole, achievement rates and greater confidence and awareness in taking responsibility for health issues both at college and afterwards. Providing such a caring and hands-on service right at the centre of the college, accessible to all, is unprecedented on this scale and sometimes I think “why didn’t we do this before?”, though obviously the great thing is that we did it at all.

AC

Finally, are there any closing comments you wish to make?

Polly Harrow

Barnsley College has just been awarded the “You’re Welcome” quality standard which until recently was only applicable to NHS services. We are the first college in the UK to achieve this award which is designed to evidence that health services are “young people friendly”. This is a wonderful achievement and a testament to all the hard work, which has contributed to the success of the centre. We are planning future developments to ensure the sustainability and quality of the centre we have created so that Barnsley College students will benefit now and in future years.