The Saanjjhi story
The Saanjjhi project is at the core of this work on social impacts.
Resources available:
The Saanjjhi Project - a summary
The clients at Saanjjhi are those who are emerging from long term serious mental illness necessitating hospitalisation, some for as long as 10 years. Saanjjhi is a rehabilitation unit that aims to be a transitional home for such clients. They have been carefully assessed and are deemed able to take advantage of support leading to directing their own independent lives in partially supported housing. The support offered is notionally around a period of two years. During these 2 years, there is 24 hour live-in support at Saanjjhi.
All of these women, through long term institutionalisation, have lost essential life skills. They have to learn or re-learn what the outside world is like. As an example of the social abuse they suffered, one client had come into Britain from a village life as young women, to marry a young man who was already mentally ill. She was never allowed to set foot outside the new home. Such isolation, combined with abuse from the family led to mental illness. For some of them, their rehabilitation is in fact their first introduction to Britain as their outside world. To give an example, one of the women could not bear to simply stand outside the door of the centre without having someone to hold her hands and speak to her.
Saanjjhi was approached as part of the outreach work of EfA. Balbir tells the story of how the idea of Saanjjhi grew out of her work as an arts worker. The centre has no funds to carry out activities that take the clients into the outside world to stimulate personal growth. The BTCV programme of social and environmental activities filled a gap in provision as the centre had no expertise or resources to provide trips out to connect with nature as the key focus, alongside the provision of other social activities. This opportunity was seized upon by its visionary founder Balbir. Sadly the BTCV work with Saanjjhi ended when the project Environments for All finished and no more funding could be found to continue the programmes of work.
Balbir was one of the two researchers nominated by BTCV for this collaborative research. The other candidate withdrew as her work for the centre came to an end. Balbir was highly motivated as she understood her involvement as a contribution to helping BTCV reveal the significance of the work to people like her clients, in the hope that BTCV can return to do more. Balbir was supported to take on the role of a community researcher. As a result of her demanding work of supporting and enabling the rehabilitation of her clients, she already had many of the discreet skills and knowledge needed for this new role. The main work was to help her to reframe her skills in the context of a community researcher within the brief of the collaborative research. The resulting report is an outstanding elaboration of the impact of the range of BTCV activities and the professional service given by the BTCV worker Manjit.
In situations where there is outstanding success, there are of course extraordinary people. Balbir is outstanding. The outcomes from her involvement can help all of us to do better.
The meaning and social impact of BTCV’s work in Saanjjhi's own words
“All of the activities we have done with BTCV are taken for granted by most people. But, they were not just activities, because the regular support stimulated and nurtured our ‘ladies’. The activities were a unique combination of expert knowledge about nature, facilities and destinations with the warmth and care of a BTCV worker, expressive of the ethos of the organisation. These series of activities enabled severely neglected people to grow and restore themselves. The healing and transforming programme of activities with BTCV, over 3 years, included:
- A residential countryside trip
- The acquisition of an allotment for the ‘ladies’ to grow vegetables and plants
- A trip to the Wedgwood factory to watch craftsmen at work and take part in a pottery workshop to create their own pieces
- A canal boat trip
- A visit to a botanical garden
- A trip to an organic farm
Our ‘ladies’ live within the context of essential 24-hour care, but no matter how excellent this service is, they live within the limitations of an urban residential centre that has no resources to provide extra activities. The activities provided by BTCV gave our ‘ladies’ the opportunity to:
- Experience a stimulating range of natural settings through different outings
- Have fun and enjoy themselves through a range of different activities
- Experience new knowledge and interests
- Be stimulated and inspired by nature and beauty
- Learn about the world from which they have isolated from in institutions
- Have something to focus on and talk about
- Have something to look forward to
- Have a different kind of mental space to share their story, their past history
- Gain the ability to build stories to share with others
- Have a chance to experience a sense of freedom
- Have the opportunity to experience excitement
- Be occupied in a different way and therefore experience freedom from their negative thoughts and feelings
- Receive regular support from an outside agency and be reassured about the possibility of building new relationships with individuals of goodwill in the outside world through the experience of regularly meeting and experiencing the company of BTCV staff
- Be in the company of new groups of people of goodwill in the outside world through the agency of BTCV
- Know that there are good things in the world
- Have a chance of building hope
These opportunities enabled the ‘ladies’ to:
- Increase their ability to be in the outside world
- Build confidence in other members of society
- Receive a sense of value and love from individuals belonging to the outside world
- Increase in self-confidence
- Increase in motivation
- Increase in awareness
- Gain knowledge and understanding of the outside world
- Gain the ability to share and express their thoughts and feelings with others
- Gain the ability to abilities to explore different points of views
- Overcome fear and anxiety
- Stimulate inner exploration and learning
- Explore British culture and traditions to position themselves in society
- Build experience, knowledge and confidence leading to empowerment
- Feel a growing sense of belonging
- Restore themselves as fuller human beings
The next step in the research - the development of materials for participatory evaluations with other BTCV groups
The work with Saanjjhi and the resulting report fuelled the formation of the next step in our exploration of the social impact of BTCV’s work. It is a well-accepted principle that those who are most vulnerable in society and those who have suffered most can, through the telling of the story of their experience, illuminate the common developmental processes that all of us go through and inspire us to look harder and learn about how what is happening to us. BEN ran participatory workshops to find out how the material from the Saanjjhi work can help us to discover in more detail the social impact of BTCV’s work with other groups.