No – I’m not randomly blogging the titles of Beatles hits, (although not a bad idea…). Generally I wax lyrical about my experience of going through leukaemia and all the complications it brings. But today I want to tell you about this brilliant idea that a friend that I connected with through our network has developed. It chimed with me after a recent experience made me step outside of my own blinkered little world when a much loved friend needed some support.

I ended up having a number of online conversations with the practitioner assigned to support my friend and was bewildered by the range of issues she managed with her clients. I wondered how she managed to keep abreast of all the support and agencies that she would need to interface with.

For years, I’ve thought that it would be a great idea to bring together via one easily accessible medium all the resources that one might ever need in managing one’s illness, mental health and general support. For patients, it’s actually relatively straightforward to access all support you need. By and large, it’s readily accessible if your clinical team is any good at all (although stories from fellow patients suggest that it’s not always perfect).

But what if you’re a practitioner? What if you are a care worker (in any capacity), what if you are a carer yourself? How do you access help, support and knowledge? The legislative framework and best practice changes so often, so where do you find help in staying on top of everything?

What if you work in Education, Health, Foster Care, Law, Nursing, Medicine, Probation, Social Work, Youth Work, Housing, Juvenile Justice – the list could go on and on? You need to be able to find information, support and help on such diverse topics as Domestic Abuse, Support for Men, Child Sexual Exploitation, FGM, Contextual Safeguarding, Crime, Knife Crime, Food banks, Parenting Support, Helplines and so much more.

What you need is a multi-agency reference point.

Well here’s a thing – an friend that I made through our support network has come up with this astonishingly simple but brilliant idea. She has basically built an index of resources on a keyring.

You find the resource you need in the tags on the keyring and you simply aim your smartphone’s camera at the relevant code and it takes you straight to the resource you need. How great is that?

So now you can connect straight through to the resource you need without having to search endlessly. Just brilliantly simple. You can find out more at About – QR Code Resources – MAAPP

I know I generally don’t do advertising on here but if you ask me, if you work in any of the care, social care, justice or safeguarding professions, for the sake of £16 (which is the cost of making it), this is a damn good investment!

Anyway – for those of you who work in that area, or know people who do, please do feel free to forward info about MAAPP to them.

I think it’s a wonderful idea with so many potential applications. But that’s the wonderful thing about this network of ours – and its amazing what it helps us achieve.

In the meantime, I hope you are all doing well. Things are definitely starting to look brighter on the Covid front but we still need to be vigilant. Stay safe and be kind to each other and yourself.

Stay strong. Fight hard. Laugh lots.