Imagine if everyone living on your street was looking out for one another. So, if someone was alone or fell ill, or if they died, there was a network of friends, family and neighbours to bring food, to help with school runs, to take care of pets. Now, imagine if that street was a city.
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Jeanette Lacey was attending a conference for the UK-based GroundSwell Project, when she heard that idea. It struck a nerve. "If we can improve our community's capacity to care for people, maybe more people will have opportunities to die at home. Maybe more people will have opportunities to help each other," she says at her home at Hamilton.
Jeannette has just arrived home from John Hunter Hospital, where she has been an end of life nurse practitioner for four years. She pours a glass of water, talks to Molly the family beagle, and turns up the Foo Fighters on the stereo. The weekend is getting started. The kids will have sport, there's things to do. Jeanette's husband has a beer brewing business.
"Tomorrow, we're going to Glandore Estate for Burning of the Barrels," Jeanette says.
Jeanette became a nurse in 1995. She has worked in intensive care, emergency departments, and for a time in organ and tissue donation; guiding people through some of the darkest times of their lives. But she wanted to see similar support going on outside hospitals as well. We spend around five percent of our sickness time in hospital, she says. The majority of our time is in the community. Our care network should be there too, she thought. Then, in a moment of tragedy, it all seemed to happen.
"I have a very good friend whose son was killed in January last year," she says. "And I watched my community in Hamilton gather around his family."
The whole community came out to help, Jeanette says. They walked each other's dogs, brought food - "it was one of the most magnificent things I had seen."
Around the same time, GroundSwell was looking for Australian locations to take up their Compassionate Communities project - groups helping communities care for their most vulnerable. Jeanette started making calls. It has been 18 months since then, and there are now around 15 members - all volunteers - working with Compassionate Communities around Newcastle.
Jeanette starts running through a list of projects the group has been involved with; open days at Sandgate Cemetery, death cafes were those in grief can come to connect and talk. She envisions a 10-year project to link support services around the city.
"Newcastle is a compassionate community, really," Jeanette says.
"We're a community of people who like to help each other out. Everyone deserves to have that."
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Simon McCarthy
Simon McCarthy is a journalist working at the Newcastle Herald in NSW. He writes news and features, and produces video and multimedia, for the Herald and Herald Weekender magazine. He contributes regularly to the Newcastle Herald’s daily Topics column, and is the co-creator and producer of the Toohey’s News podcast. McCarthy has worked as a journalist in regional NSW since 2013. He joined the newsroom of the Newcastle Herald in 2017 from the Northern Daily Leader in Tamworth where he worked from 2015 to 2016.
Simon McCarthy is a journalist working at the Newcastle Herald in NSW. He writes news and features, and produces video and multimedia, for the Herald and Herald Weekender magazine. He contributes regularly to the Newcastle Herald’s daily Topics column, and is the co-creator and producer of the Toohey’s News podcast. McCarthy has worked as a journalist in regional NSW since 2013. He joined the newsroom of the Newcastle Herald in 2017 from the Northern Daily Leader in Tamworth where he worked from 2015 to 2016.
