Becoming well through green care: kindness and community

A range of concerns regarding people’s wellbeing is being highlighted during the Covid-19 pandemic, with research suggesting people are less satisfied with their life currently, that there is an increase in people reporting mental ill-health and feeling lonely, with vulnerable groups (lower incomes, ethnic minorities, mental ill-health) being impacted on more severely. The longer-term impact on physical health due to delayed procedures and on mental health from isolation, stress and worries regarding finances, work and relationships have also been raised. Noting mental health has also been affected by political messages during the pandemic, where some governments have focused on individual responsibility rather than structural interventions. These concerns for people’s wellbeing and the inequalities that underlie and exacerbate them align with the call to build back better, to create societies which are safe and prioritise human and ecological wellbeing over economic growth. 

Relational wellbeing

Human wellbeing is a complex concept, which can be defined and understood in multiple ways. Wellbeing can refer to different aspects of our lives, including social, developmental and educational, though it is often equated with health, specifically mental health.  The focus of improving wellbeing is often located in the individual and focused on a person’s subjective goals for improving their situation and feeling good about it. Here wellbeing is viewed as being obtainable, an endpoint and fixed. Sarah Atkinson argues that this positioning of wellbeing as an individual endeavour has become toxic. Where the responsibility for being well is centred on the individual rather than within society—with the structural inequalities experienced by a person which impact negatively on their wellbeing—constructed as personal failings rather than due to political decisions and societal structures.

However, it has been reported during the pandemic that wellbeing is social, that we are interdependent on human and other-than-human nature. With communities—on and offline—coming together in providing connection and practical and emotional support, and these connections are filling the gaps left in some government policies. During this pandemic it has also become apparent that local natural spaces and spending time in nature has become important for people for their health and noted as bringing solace, through connecting to nature. In these accounts, wellbeing can be considered as residing in assemblages, where the relations between the people, places, technologies and other-than-human nature involved affect a person’s wellbeing. Here wellbeing is considered a continual process and can flux depending on the interactions between a person’s values and meanings and their social encounters (both human and other-than-human, and at micro and macro levels), which can assert negative or positive influences on a person’s actions and choices.  

Green care

My research considers how people’s experiences of facilitated outdoor group programmes influence their long-term wellbeing. Green care is a broad term for a range of facilitated outdoor group programmes that are focused on improving the participants wellbeing. These programmes involve the participants engaging with nature on a regular basis through structured activities. Programmes include activities focused on practical environmental conservation, gardening, farming, adventure, and outdoor exercise. Participants typically have specific wellbeing concerns and are referred or self-refer themselves to a programme. 

Within green care there are a number of potential influences on a participant’s wellbeing including the range of activities, the social interactions and nature itself as both the space for these interactions and activities and the resource for activities. I am currently researching how these green care assemblages are delivered by facilitators and how participants encounter them when a young person (aged 16-29) and the lasting impact on supporting wellbeing. I am exploring with facilitators their motivation for their role, the aims of the programme, and their understanding of the benefits and challenges involved with green care in promoting positive changes to wellbeing. Whilst I am exploring with participants their social interactions with the facilitators and fellow participants, and their engagements with nature and the activities. I am interested in understanding how people’s experience of green care interacts with their past experiences, their reasons for attending and their everyday circumstances, including the cultural, social, material and spatial aspects. Specifically, the effect of these interactions on supporting and/or challenging the longevity of any improvements to a person’s sense of being well. 

Kindness 

One aspect arising from my interviews with facilitators and participants, was the kindness present within the programmes. I felt a warmth, a care from the facilitators that each participant matters and they were alongside the participants. Participants also noted this kindness, acknowledging the facilitators keenness to share their knowledge, to provide opportunities and manage these to fit where the participant was currently at, providing inclusion and a sense of achievement. Facilitators discussed adapting their communication and the activities to participants, noting this flexibility helped create inclusive spaces, as well as empowered participants through trusting their choices and means of communication. Whilst there is a clear desire from the facilitators that the participants benefit from attending, there isn’t a particular measurement of success. Instead it was relationally defined in terms of the individual participants – including a smile, sharing experiences with their family, being able to leave the house with their partner, as well as gaining qualifications and facilitating changes in employment. These soft skills have been noted as important in higher education, in terms of how students are related to at university and the impact this may have on their career choices and the wider impact of this on changing or maintaining current inequalities. From my ongoing research there is an indication that how participants are met by those in a position of authority is an influence on their becoming. 

Alternative communal spaces

There was a recognition that green care spaces are different to everyday and mainstream spaces. Participants experienced them as an accepting, less pressurised environment, where they didn’t have to explain why they were attending and particular behaviours were not seen as unusual or commented on. It was indicated that this accepting atmosphere, was not only fostered by the facilitators, but also by the participants through a recognition that each person has their own difficulties. Nature was also noted as an important part of providing an alternative space, as the glue in connecting to self and others. For instance, farm animals were experienced as companions, providing connection, which supported soothing anxieties, as well as a medium to connect to people. Participants and facilitators noted chats alongside activities about the activity created kinship, as well opening up a space to talk about wellbeing concerns. Spaces that are non-clinical and different to participants everyday have been noted as important factors in supporting wellbeing and suggests the spaces people inhabit do influence their wellbeing. 

Nature connection

The types of activities and natures that participants engaged with for their ongoing wellbeing varied, including walking in nature for social connection, as well as for solitude and reflection, the growing of food for a healthy diet, and taking part in conservation activities at sea, which provided meaning and purpose. Whilst participants noted the benefits to their wellbeing from engaging with nature during a green care programme and how aspects of this nature connection have been maintained through their life, their engagement with nature hasn’t always been consistent. Participants noted there was times in their lives, when work, emotional or personal stressors overwhelmed their capacity to engage with nature as self-care for supporting their wellbeing. Facilitators also noted that the main reason for participants dropping out of a programme was due to their life circumstances, that what was currently occurring prevented them from engaging, as there were more immediate concerns within their life they needed to attend to first. 

However as when life circumstances can overwhelm nature engagement, the nature encountered can also overwhelm the perceived benefits. One participant took on an allotment, a long-term dream, but due to it having been abandoned previously it had become overgrown, and presented more of a challenge than the person was able to take on at the time due to the transient circumstances of their life.  Attending to it was not restful or enjoyable, instead the space became stressful to be part of and think about. Spending time in nature is suggested as a way to support wellbeing during this pandemic and beyond, however as noted above individual preferences and circumstances vary. As such any simplification of nature encounters via prescribing a dose of nature to support wellbeing based on time and frequency in nature, not only ignores these relational dynamics, but risks not providing the benefits which can arise from a relationship with nature.

We are our connections

I began by noting the concern for people’s poor wellbeing due to the Covid-19 pandemic, an issue exacerbated by how wellbeing is often framed as an individual endeavour. My research into green care supports approaching wellbeing as a relational affect and that being well is a collective effort, which whilst individualised by a person’s preferences, is shaped by the human and more-than-human relations and spaces we are each part of. Pursuing improved individual and community wellbeing through plans to build back better requires recognising that we are relational beings and how people are met influences not only a person’s ongoing actions, but the development of spaces, which support or hinder flourishing. Multiple offerings are also required, as noted in my research, certain aspects within a person’s life may hinder them from accessing new or formed wellbeing assemblages. 

By Andy Harrod

February 2021

Andy Harrod

Andy Harrod is a PhD researcher in Health and Wellbeing Geography at Lancaster University. His research explores participants and facilitators experience of green care and how these influence participants long-term wellbeing. Andy’s interest in the affect of relationships is an important part of his work as a person-centred psychotherapist and in his writings, including the collection, tearing at thoughts.