Harnessing the spirit of humankind
THE COMPASSION PROJECT: A Case For Hope And Humankindness From the Town That Beat Loneliness ★★★★ Dr Julian Abel & Lindsay Clarke
Aster, £16.99
THE REMARKABLE story of how Frome in Somerset became “the town that beat loneliness” is told by local residents Dr Julian Abel, a retired consultant in palliative care, and novelist Lindsay Clarke.
The Compassionate Frome project was a grassroots mission to combat loneliness and social isolation, steered by GP
Dr Helen Kingston and community worker Jenny Hartnoll.
Instead of following a pharmaceutical approach, Kingston and Hartnoll shifted the primary healthcare emphasis at
Frome Medical Practice to a compassionate approach, based on scientific evidence that strong social relationships are fundamental to human wellbeing.
So they aimed to tackle mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and low self-esteem by urging people to support one another.They were encouraged to develop informal and convivial social contact by making use of the town’s many community groups, including clubs, charities and choirs.All the groups were listed in a publicly accessible directory.
Assisted by more than 1,000 swiftly trained “community connectors” (from a population of 28,000), Kingston and Hartnoll also set up three talking cafés – where people meet informally to talk about anything they choose – and dozens of peer-support groups addressing anything
from bereavement to addiction. The Compassionate Frome project had some striking results, bringing this small town to the attention of media and policymakers internationally.
They reduced emergency admissions to hospital by 14 per cent between 2013 to 2017, a period when admissions elsewhere in Somerset rose by 29 per cent. “If it came in tablet form, it would be hailed as a wonder of modern medicine,” write Abel and Clarke.
Galvanised by this success, the authors are setting out a much wider case for the “restoration of the active power of compassion as a widely available, fundamental force for good in all aspects of human life”.
Taking in education, business, local government and the environment, they suggest how we might all help to build more compassionate communities. Suggestions include training people to understand the difference between constructive debate and personal attack, and to listen in the workplace.
It’s a shame the book sometimes loses focus and can be a little too sweeping and repetitive.And it would have been more compelling had it included more case histories of those who have benefited from The Compassion Project.
Still, the evidence is highly convincing, particularly in the light of the Covid-19 crisis during which we have witnessed so many cases of that “authentic flow of feeling which can happen between people who may know nothing about one another”, as the authors put it.
Though the book was written before the pandemic, the authors have added material to show how the crisis clarifies “how closely we are connected to each other and how deeply dependent on each other we are”.
There are many takeaway statements but perhaps none as thought provoking as this: “The true disaster now would be for men and women of good will to throw up their hands in despair and complicity with the selfdefeating conspiracy of cynicism, hypocrisy and wilful ignorance that darkens so much of the cultural landscape today.”