Connection with Dan Minchin

Today we are talking about our seniors, our young people, intergenerational relationships, the old-school village approach to looking after each other in communities, and how we can find hope in loneliness. 

 Yes we’re asking lots of big questions! 

 These big human challenges, are deeply embedded with the whole range of emotions from love and joy to pain and suffering. 

 There is no-one better to dive deep into this discussion with than Dan Minchin.  I know that Dan will instil hope around the warm table with a fresh approach about what we can do to reset how we look after each other in the future. 

Dan is the CEO of Chorus, which is a for purpose organisation showing up for thousands of Western Australians bringing support, connection and compassion so that communities can thrive.  Chorus provides services in the aged care, disability and mental health sectors. 

Join us around the warm table!

Find out more about Chorus: https://chorus.org.au/

Warm thanks to:
Sponsor: Females Over Forty-five Fitness in Victoria Park
Sound Engineering: Damon Sutton
Music: William A Spence
... and all our generous and inspiring guests around the warm table this season!

Transcript

Dan Minchin: 0:00

I'm six foot two I turn up at someone's door and"oh, I'm here to provide you cleaning." So they look and think "Oh, God it's just-". So here I am on my hands and knees in, in the bathroom of a- of an elderly lady, cleaning her home. And I go, this is a pretty intimate thing that this lady has, has has welcomed me in to do. And once you've flipped that, like that, the conversation that pops out of a recognition that you're in this connection and relationship around support and life you.. it's amazing what sort of chats and things come to pass, if you reframe it that way.

Sonia Nolan: 0:39

Thanks for joining me, Sonia Nolan around the warm table, or the tavola calda as my Italian papa used to call a welcoming table of acceptance, positivity and curiosity. My Warm Table Podcast aims to create that and more as we amplify stories of Western Australians making our communities better. My Warm Table Season Three is proud to be sponsored by Females Over 45 Fitness with a studio in Victoria Park, and also online all over Australia. So now please take a seat and join us for Season Three as we explore stories of hope. Today we are talking about our seniors, our young people, intergenerational relationships, the old school village approach to looking after each other in communities, and how we can find hope in loneliness. Yes, we're asking lots of big questions around the warm table today. These big human challenges are deeply embedded with a whole range of emotions from love and joy, to pain and suffering. And there is no one better to deep dive into this discussion with than Dan Minchin. I know that Dan will instil hope around the warm table with a fresh approach about what we can do to reset how we look after each other in the future. Dan is the CEO of Chorus, which is a full purpose organisation a showing up for thousands of Western Australians, bringing support, connection, and compassion so that communities can thrive. Chorus provides services in the aged care, disability and mental health sectors. Dan was born in Perth, the eldest of four children, and he was always taught to be kind to take life seriously and do good things in the world while also having a laugh at yourself. So there is no question he is kind and doing good things in the world. And I'm so delighted to welcome you, Dan, around the warm table.

Dan Minchin: 2:31

Very nice to see you, Sonia. This has been a little while in the making. I'm looking forward to the chat.

Sonia Nolan: 2:35

Yeah, me too. Me too. And we could start across lots of different ideas. But I want to start by looking at where our community landscape is currently, actually. So as the CEO, of course, what are you seeing in the community in regards to our old people, our young people, just communities in general?

Dan Minchin: 2:54

Yeah, I think there's, there's ample evidence and data that local communities are not thriving, or at least not thriving as they have done in the past. And, obviously, there's been lots of progress over, you know, hundreds of years, sort of technology driven progress. And, and many indicators, like life expectancy and wealth, things have been ever on the upward but I think we see the incidence of things like loneliness, at particularly vulnerable time to people's lives, whether that's young adults, or older people, people with disability. And there's really just been this sense, and people talk about a lot, about the communities and kind of what they think it could be or what it used to be. And a sense of possibility as well exists, there's a desire and an interest in finding a way to contribute to a local community. And the paradox is that you sort of retreat behind your- behind your wall and you're fearful and you're, you're busy, and you're trying to get ahead or whatever that is, and the kind of- the fabric of it is breaking down. I think that's a fairly common sentiment, particularly across the developed world.

Sonia Nolan: 4:08

I probably would agree. And in fact, I remember a conversation many, many years ago where we were having a similar sort of discussion about, I don't want to say break down but it is a bit of a breakdown of the neighbourhood. And one of the people I was talking to said the thing that she felt was one of the culprits was the garage door. So you drive in the garage door comes down and you've got this magic, you know, sort of entry into your home and then you don't need to see your neighbours. And she said "I blame the garage

Dan Minchin: 4:39

Yeah, which is, which is almost and this is why door." it's quite, quite paradoxical in a way, it's a product of wealth and progress, the garage door, you know. You know, we live in a house that was built in the 1940s, there is a garage but it's built for a car that's about 30% smaller than ours, you know, like, this just is the evolution of whether it's homes or other, you might call them institutions within our local communities that just don't really suit or don't really promote the thriving and the interconnectedness and the health of that community. And somehow it's the, in some real way, it's the product of the progress that we've made. That has kind of undermined it. And it's something like the breakdown in churches and the people participating in organised religion, you know, the number of people who say they are a believer and active in their local church or whatever religious institution that is, it's just dropped through the floor over the last 50 years. And there will be people in the world who said, it's a lot positive about that. But one thing it's done is it's undermined this institution of local kind of cohesion. And that's again, it's a reflection of, of, of a form of progress, which has a dark side as well.

Sonia Nolan: 5:56

That's right. It just counterbalances doesn't it?

Dan Minchin: 5:58

It does

Sonia Nolan: 5:58

Yeah. And it's funny, so my papa who the Warm Table is sort of a homage to, you know...

Dan Minchin: 6:05

Hello, Papa.

Sonia Nolan: 6:06

Yeah, hello, Papa. Exactly. And he was very much anti-progress in many ways. He would say progress, and it was, it was almost like a swear word for him, because he could see the change in community and change in family and change in in the way that neighbourhoods operated. You know, even his very, you know, sort of village, I guess, the village mentality, like, when did we lose that village?

Dan Minchin: 6:31

Yeah, well, I don't- I don't really know. And one thing we can probably be sure of, is that it was never as amazing as you know, as the pictures of it tell us. You know, the sepia picture of villages of 100 years ago, don't reflect the reality. So, you know, these things aren't- aren't black and white. And, you know, I don't think we should be framing this progress is bad, or the village was great. You know, like, it's, this is the moment we're in this is the, the circumstances of the lives we're living. So what is possible in that environment? And so, you know, we can we can expand on these sorts of themes. But you know, what was, what is it that papa was, was reminiscing about. That might still be possible, if we think differently about the way we show up as individuals, as families, as neighbours, and one of the things that we're thinking a bit about through the Chorus experiences to sort of the institutional type of, I don't know, if that word really works for you, but the institutional kind of settings that are in place that promote or, or discourage the village?

Sonia Nolan: 7:41

Yeah, yeah. And I know you're doing lots of really good things. So let's, let's talk about them. So you've got the fresh approach, which- is that almost your manifesto of how you go about doing things in a different way, within the constraints of government funding and regulations, compliance? So tell me more about that. Well, isn't it? Because - and just for people

Dan Minchin: 8:02

Yeah, yeah. It is, you know, it is the art of threading the needle, having some core principles and continuing to chip away at where the where the constraints might who may not be aware - organisations, because they're sit. So the way you described it is really right on and I guess really, where our concept of the fresh approach or our our sense of the fresh approach kind of started in a pretty practical way, which was Chorus was the merger of three pre existing organisations, not for profits into one, which is a rare thing and a story in itself. so mission focused, and not for profit organisations particularly I'm talking about, so mission focused they were started with, you know, with a heartbeat - And passion.

Sonia Nolan: 8:50

And passion. And to actually find common ground to watch emerge that passion and mission and feel that there is an alignment that is going to be something for the future is very rare, it's very rare.

Dan Minchin: 9:02

It's pretty uncommon for two to merge. I'm not sure I've come across three, simultaneously merging. So yeah, there is a story. It was an incredible achievement. I wasn't involved in the actual coming together, the "doing of the deal" if you like. So there was sort of three boards that had the, had the- The vision and the humility to think that there's a

Sonia Nolan: 9:20

The vision. better way forward, and then I got involved pretty much as the first employee of this, of this new organisation. But one of the immediate challenges on the deck, like I said, practical challenge, what are we going to be called? So there were lots of immediate challenges on the deck, as you can probably imagine, but that was one of them. And actually, in, you know, integrating organisations is painful and difficult. So actually, one of the really optimistic and forward looking things we were doing was talking about what we were going to be called. And we pretty quickly reframed that as "who are we?" or perhaps "who do we want to be?" So it wasn't a simple case of - and I can remember literally briefing a creative agency to help us with this exercise, and we're saying this is not about coming up with a logo that stands out in a competitive market. I mean, we're a business. You sort of need that.

Dan Minchin: 10:15

So there is a bit of that, right? But it's much, much deeper than that and we sort of figured if we could talk about who we wanted to become, and the set of beliefs that we shared, everything else would kind of follow. And over a number of conversations across the three organisations and the stakeholders in those organisations and with reference to some of the things that we've been talking about already about the sort of breakdown of community thriving as an effect or side effect of progress, or however you wanted to frame it. And also some observations about where the system for age, disability, mental health was going. We wanted to state and he said that word manifesto, literally what we wrote was a manifesto that said, we think there's a better way of doing this, and, and then a marketing tagline was, you know, we've got this new name. So out of that process, that name, of Chorus, comes together, and we can, we can reflect on why we came up with that name, something about the multitude of voices and coming together and making something beautiful and then a tagline was a "fresh approach to community service." And well, what's the fresh approach? Well, initially, it was a, it was a very aspirational manifesto statement, a set of beliefs that the world is heading this way, we're seeing loneliness, we're seeing isolation, we're seeing fragmentation. And that's actually in many ways, and not intentionally, there's a whole lot of good reasons why that service systems of age, disability, mental health, are heading the way they are. But they're kind of aiding and abetting that, that fragmentation, it's individual choice, it's individual funding, no one's really talking about the power of, of a thriving community, to support people to live a good life. Nor is anyone really talking about how an older person or someone with a disability or mental illness can contribute to a thriving community. And that's where the belief system sort of started. And, as you said, turning that into an organisation which can work that can be compliant that can be financially sustainable, and achieve these lofty kind of aspirations has been the work of the last seven years. And it's ongoing.

Sonia Nolan: 12:23

It's a real passion for you, isn't it?

Dan Minchin: 12:25

You can see me lighting up, as I start to talk about it. Yeah, yeah.

Sonia Nolan: 12:27

Yeah, which is so true and we need you, Dan. We need you doing this. Because, you know, what I do love about what chorus is doing is exactly what you've described. This individual funding approach certainly works for a lot of people. But does it really-

Dan Minchin: 12:41

It works - I think it probably works for most people, to a degree.

Sonia Nolan: 12:46

To a degree.

Dan Minchin: 12:47

Yes, exactly. That's where you're going, right? It's like, well, but what's the dark side? What's the shadow of that? What's the limitation of that? And that's, that's, again, the challenge we sort of have tried to face into.

Sonia Nolan: 12:58

And this understanding that we live in community, you know, we prosper and thrive and community and, and total aside, but somewhat related is, you know, I remember when my kids were at that stage of taking selfies, and then you know, it was all about them and where they were, but you know, all this, this wonderful technology, now we can actually delete all the background. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Dan Minchin: 13:23

It's a perfect little metaphor for what we're talking about, isn't it?

Sonia Nolan: 13:25

Isn't it? And it just, it makes me really sad, because I just think, no, I love looking back at the really old photographs of you know, growing up and you can see the

Dan Minchin: 13:35

Out of focus, the random seagull.

Sonia Nolan: 13:37

Yeah, and the wine bottle on the stained tablecloth, or whatever it is, it adds character, and it adds history and the story and the extra that is around you at every single moment of time.

Dan Minchin: 13:50

And if we, if we talk to your papa again, like you know, there's this whole inter woven, rich, messy version of living that he was reflecting on, which would have had all sorts of darkness to it. Like no one should be on the delusion that villages where these sort of these havens of safety and possibility but there was something very rich about that. And, you know, when you're talking about the garage door example, you know, the human organism and the human community evolved for 99.99% of its history without garage doors, right, you know, so like, there's something very, very fundamental that there's no question where we've drifted from. And as you said, the perfect metaphor is that you take a photo of yourself and then you cut out the whole thing. That's not just you. I mean, you know, that's pretty, that's pretty dark.

Sonia Nolan: 14:52

That's pretty dark, isn't it? But it's not seen necessarily seen as that dark right now, but I do I've always said, no, I'm coming in the background because I'm part of it all, we need to make sure you've got the background because the background is, is the is the stuff that makes you thrive. I think yeah, yeah. So what are the measures? Are there apart from me coming into the back of your selfie as a measure of thriving? How do you measure thriving in a community? After midday.

Dan Minchin: 15:17

Yeah, look that's an excellent question. And I, we as Chorus, we haven't really nailed what, what we want to measure, I can talk, I will talk about some of the, the general principles and some of the sort of macro measures we're talking about. But I actually think if you're serious as an organisation about anything, you need to be finding a way to measure it. And that doesn't typically only mean, you know, cold, statistical, quantitative data, there's a whole there's a whole warm data side of that. So I think we've been talking for 10 minutes. And we've probably, we've described the measures, right? How many garage doors are closed, you know, how many, how many, you know, papas are standard sitting on their balcony and drinking Grappa or whatever it is that we do, right? You know, like- After midday, and we all, well if - you know, whenever, but you know, we all... I would say that, if you if you sat with 99 people out of 100, you could say, tell me what it feels like to walk through a thriving community. And I think people would say many of the same things about look, feel, smell, sound. But I think the sorts of indicators, the kind of big numbers that we should be all thinking about as a society and then as an organisation whose purpose is to enable local communities to thrive, we need to be able to sort of say, well, when we rock up in your local community, how are we actually contributing to that? Is around connection. So there's plenty of, sort of, again, macro level data, we ask people, to what extent do you feel how often do you feel lonely? How often do you - to what extent do you feel connected with your community? And they're some important metrics, and we were recently involved in a very small pilot, where we literally asked people; How often do you feel lonely? And over the course of the of the of the work, which was nine or 12 months, that number was, we're able to show how that number could improve. And so that's a sort of macro to micro, I think, simple questions like how many of your neighbours do you know? A lot of this is around, sort of connectivity, I think. And then I think we need to zoom out a bit further, I think you can just look at some pretty solid health and economic type of data, I think, you know, things like how often people rock up the hospital when that could have been avoided, that is data that gets collected. You look across the map of Perth, Western Australia, whatever, you can see these numbers vary. You can talk about participation in paid work, you can talk about participation in volunteering, which is a really interesting measure. And, you know, we do know that the, the incidence and prevalence of formal volunteering, where you where you rock up and you join an organisation and you volunteer has been declining for a while, and COVID kind of smashed it for a bit. But our hunch is that the the prevalence of informal, what the sort of industry calls informal volunteering, but just the showing up, the neighbourly type action is probably on the rise. There is some data to suggest that more people are volunteering for less hours, you're actually not seeing a drop off in the number of people who are volunteering, their just not doing hundreds of hours a year they might be doing 20. And like I said, even you just go beyond formal volunteering, and think about people's willingness to contribute. And I think, again, that would be a really good indicator about people's sort of interest and willingness to contribute. So you know, it's connection, its willingness to contribute. And then you zoom out you talk about things like impact on health and people's prosperity or, or, or wealth.

Sonia Nolan: 19:02

Yeah. And on that volunteering, I actually was Yeah. having a bit of a look at the informal volunteering stats, and it was pretty much one in three people would would do some informal volunteering for a neighbour or family member, friend, and that's everything from running errands, gardening, home maintenance, providing emotional support. I reckon that over the last few years, we've probably seen and it's funny that that's even called informal volunteering. I just thought that's just being human. Right. But-

Dan Minchin: 19:28

Yeah, yeah, well, this is a this is a conversation that we have within chorus and we've had sort of across people who are interested in the world of volunteering, there's a general discomfort with calling something in a form of volunteering. And so we tend to use words like neighbourliness or active citizenship or something like that.

Sonia Nolan: 19:47

That's a word that you don't hear as much anymore, citizenship. Definitely, yeah, it does. And I think that

Dan Minchin: 19:51

Yeah, well, you hear it a bit in our organisation because of this idea that you know, and again, this is what we were trying to differentiate ourselves in our thinking and our expression of our beliefs is that, you know, we're a service delivery organisation at our core, that's where our revenue comes from, it's where our employment comes that's, I always, you know, having been, you know, I'm a from, it's what people come to us for. But what we would love to find a way to do is to build activities, almost use that as a scaffolding for for promoting and, and sustaining citizenship. And yeah, that's, that's kind of what it's on about. So I think- I think citizen is a great word, it's, we sometimes, you know, just to put a, to put a colourful point on it, what do you call the people we provide support to? You know, historically, they're called clients. We didn't really like that language, it implies a sort of a dependency. So is it all the rage at the time of the merger was that people were consumers, which I don't, again, don't really like and then we called them customers, right? Because they come with their money, and they make empowered choices. But now, six, seven years later, I think all of us in the organisation go, we'd love this not to be such a transactional conversation, you know, so then we use mouthfuls like people we support. And actually we have this recognition that people involved wordsmith, and I love words. And I do think that words matter, I in our organisation, some of them are at, where they are a customer, some of them are volunteers, some of them are employees, and there's a whole lot of other stakeholders, and so we talked about the Chorus community. And then, you know, you sort of find yourself tangled up trying to describe differentiating, that's always good. But in the end, this is the community, of course, and the boundary doesn't stop at the outside of our organisation. It's the community within which Chorus is part. And then you end up talking about citizens; who are the local citizens who are part of this system that we're participating in? Yeah, the language in here is all very, all very reflective of, of our evolving thinking. And I think think they matter a lot. And they start positioning things of where the world's got to the fact that government services are provided to consumers, tells you a lot. and start getting into your head in a particular slant into how then you interact. That's, that's the currency of community, right? Language has pretty much the essence of it. So, it's important.

Sonia Nolan: 22:27

Yeah. It is important and this understanding that, you know, you're talking about consumers rather than citizens. Yeah, t's a tricky one. It's a tricky one. But going back to our measures, I did notice and very related to what we were just talking about, one of your measures is time with customers.

Dan Minchin: 22:42

Customers, yeah.

Sonia Nolan: 22:43

Yeah, that's one of your measures with your people as they go out, to spend time and do the work with your customers. So that's an interesting measure.

Dan Minchin: 22:52

Yeah well, especially given what I just said, right? The discomfort with the word customer. So yeah, that's a really interesting pickup, we ultimately, as a, if you look at us through the lens of a business, we're in the business of delivering services, and we basically get paid by the hour, you know, you can shape it and frame it lots of different ways. But in the end, we get paid by the hour.

Sonia Nolan: 23:17

And that's government funding.

Dan Minchin: 23:18

Yeah, pretty much all government funding. We have small amounts of private, well, most people who are in the agecare system pay a little bit, it's sort of needs tested, and things like that. So there is there is a consumer, there is a customer paying out of their own pocket. But it's all sort of come through the same doorway as the government's funding, we have other grants and partnerships and donations and things like that as well. But the single biggest driver of revenue in our organisation is hours of support provided. And the single biggest driver of cost in our organisation is hours of, of employee time. And you just- the math is very, very simple. You need to have Chorus people, providing a paid hour of care for X percent of the amount of time we pay that worker, it's just a pure productivity measure. So time with customer from a pure business lens is a productivity measure. It's the biggest lever of our financial sustainability by a country mile. There's, there's nothing that comes close. You know, we own buildings, and we have vehicles and we spend money on equipment, but none of these things have anything like the financial impact of productivity. So we've been through a really significant structural change, which we can talk about, where we've basically created small teams, and they all have a very clear eye on their time with customer. The other thing about time with customers is; it's our purpose, right? You know, it's a very blunt measure of our purpose and there's a whole lot of baggage with it that I think is not particularly purposeful cuz it's very sort of financial, and it's very operational, if you like, but I also sort of sit back from it and go; well, in the end, as we're turning up to work every day, like, what what should we be doing with the vast majority of our time? Spending it providing support. So time with customers is a measure of the support that we're providing. Noted, caveat, blunt measure, and, and a proxy, probably better way of putting it. So I don't feel completely uncomfortable with really saying, as an organisation, how much about time do you think we should be spending actually with customers? Would we be satisfied with a third of our time? We definitely wouldn't. Would we be satisfied with two thirds of our time, we still think we can do better. And you just, you know, as a taxpayer, as a member of the community, how much time do you think we, you know, an organisation like ours should be spending with people. So it's kind of got a double side to it, it's productivity drives our health of our business, and in the end, we're a business we need to be financially sustainable. And it's a really sound, easily measurable, fortnightly, we can measure. And increasingly, we'll be measuring it in real time. How much time are we actually spending doing the work, we said we're out here to do. Where it gets interesting is, you can totally see how that potentially drives a very narrow focus on the work that we do. And I talked a bit earlier about our fresh approach, which is all about saying, okay, yes, we're in the business of service delivery, but how might we leverage that as kind of like social scaffolding that can then promote active citizenship of our people, employees, volunteers, and the people, we support the customers and of the neighbour and of the neighbours neighbour. And there's a, there's a challenge in that, because once you get very focused on operational productivity, you probably haven't a lot of time to go and talk knock on the neighbor's door and say, would you be interested in whatever. So that's a bit the dilemma we're facing into right now.

Sonia Nolan: 26:57

And the way I looked at the time with customer measure, as well as all the productivity, I actually really liked it as a measure because it actually showed how much time you were helping people avoid loneliness. Yeah, you know, and then that the essence was for me is I thought, this is just a really great way to measure how much you are impacting on a day to day with people in the community, because that's, you know, the essence of what you're trying to do.

Dan Minchin: 27:24

Exactly, and that's why it works. The assumption there is that the hour is an hour, supporting a person to get connected or to support that person to thrive. And again, in some of some of the hours we're talking about, we're in your garden, we're mopping the floor, where in some cases, we're picking up shopping for you. And again, you can see how quickly that would be broken down and reduced right down to this very, very transactional service relationship. And again, our fresh approach idea is that, you know, some of our clients, some of our customers call our staff, the cleaner, and our staff that I'm not cleaner, you know, I'm actually a lot more than that. And I'm with that, right, and we absolutely get your house clean. But what about we're looking looking in on you, we're talking about your well being we're talking about your connection, connections, we're talking about other things in your life, and where it's at, at the best, those cleaning hours turn into a relationship, they turn into possibilities, they turn into connections, so but you can sort of see how quickly that system beats all of the love out of it. In a very, very, very, which is not to denigrate people who clean, this care work is so critical. I have a colleague, we have a principal within the organisation that everybody in the organisation does some time with customer myself included. And one of my colleagues in the in the sort of in the leadership type group, every Friday, spends a couple of hours on paper cleaning up person's house in close to where she lives. And one of her reflections was, this is an incredibly intimate thing that I'm doing. And then once you think I'm really really in and I've done this myself, you know, I'm six foot two, I turn up at someone's door and "oh, I'm here to provide you cleaning." So they look and think, "oh God it's just-". So here I am on my hands and knees in in the bathroom of a of an elderly lady cleaning her home and I go this is a pretty intimate thing that this lady has has has welcomed me in to do. And it once you flip it like that the conversation that pops out of recognition that you're in this connection and relationship around support and life you it's amazing what sort of chats and things come to pass. If you reframe it that way.

Sonia Nolan: 29:54

It's so true and it actually makes me think of some of the conversations I've been having lately with friends. We which is about homemaking. We talk a lot about parenting, I talk a lot about parental leave, we talk a lot about people returning to work male and female. And what I haven't heard a lot in the conversation is the homemaking. It's that with complexity of relationships, which is, you know, where parenting is, it's complex, and it's all about relationships. And there has to be an inefficiency within any complexity in order to make it work down the track. Right? Well, you don't get paid for the inefficiency, though. And, and that homemaking I see sits in that complexity, and in that inefficiency of you know, the number of times I've hovered around the kitchen just to have conversations with my kids, when they've come home from school. Totally inefficient, I could have been doing so many other things. But that relationship building and that creating a home for them, creating that, that intangible thing that's really intimate, that's really inefficient, obviously, at the time, but then you can just race down the track, because you've got that relationship, you've built it to the point where, you know, it is so effective, so efficient, so beautifully complex in all the right ways. And so what you're talking about, the way that Chorus operates is with that homemaking element through it. Her books right up there.

Dan Minchin: 31:23

Yeah, that's a beautiful link. I think that's a really nice, a really nice way of framing it. And I think, you know, I just need to, again, have emphasised that this is very challenging to unpick the, the reductive kind of focus on efficiency and free up the space that you talked about. But that's the aspiration. Yeah, and for as long as we get paid by the hour, there's a tension here, unless you can reframe the hour, unless you can re imagine the hour like I just described, my colleague who reimagines the hour of the two hours of cleaning and, you know, the language is horrible, the bureaucratic names, called a domestic assistance and a social support. That's my colleagues going in to do on paper on the report, the government, that's what that's what they're doing. And in the industry, that's what we describe. Just doing a DA, that's a domestic assistance, it's like - reframe that. And in a lot of things become possible. And I don't think that's the case that the system sets out to tell you, you can't establish a relationship with somebody, and you can't build that in. But you can easily see how quickly that's where you end up. There's a- on the subject of efficiency, you know, it's like efficiency for what? Like, to what end? And there's a- you sort of think about how you can re-imagine that concept efficiency. So absolutely, your starting point is to say, look, this would be much more efficient. If I just kept cracking on with the chores or my work or whatever, and you miss it, you miss your kids, you miss your partner, you're missing whatever your neighbour, because you're busy getting everything done. There's this I was just going to go there. So she's recently- amazing thinker, thought leader, who has possibly been mentioned on your podcast before called Hillary Cottam. Yes, the books called Radical Help, well, that's the original book and she, she's the most inspiring leader, she's an English person. But something she's done more recently is a bunch of roundtables of blogs around the core theme, but it's it's about what she calls care work. And she frames care work very broadly, as all of the nurturing generative work required for the economy, and for the practical progress to be made. Historically, it's almost entirely women's work. And I'm talking about a long way into history and possibly in for many people, it's possibly still true. It's historically undervalued and invisible and unpaid. There's a whole thread for us to potentially unpack there. But one of the things that really stuck with me, she says, care work it requires'baggy' time. That's her word, baggy. Just what you said, for this inefficiency concept. That actually, I think when you- what you just described was, it's actually more efficient in the end, even if lets imagine you cared about efficiency. And probably in the end, you do care about resource use, and you care about, you know, a technical, you know, progress and, you know, so but the, the idea that change and progress only happens at the speed of trust.

Sonia Nolan: 34:31

Yes.

Dan Minchin: 34:32

We talked a bit about that within our organisation. It's true in communities. You know, the time spent now is building relationships, that the the foundation of trust and then when it matters, when something hits the fan, and it's time for quick action with people that you trust, the trust is there because now - let's talk about efficiency now. You know?

Sonia Nolan: 34:58

Exactly, exactly right. And look, that's that's my whole career is that sort of, you know, building meaningful relationships so that when you need something done, it can it goes fast then but all of that baggy time, I like that, you know, sort of- No, no, no, Hillary Cottam's phrase very much, but

Dan Minchin: 35:13

Not my phrase. yeah, it's just so true, but we're not funded for baggy time. We're not geared as a society in many ways because we have to be seen to be productive, that baggy time is very undervalued and it's indelible, yet invisible. You know? Yeah, well once it goes away, you see it.

Sonia Nolan: 35:37

But you don't- it's a bit like the, you know, the artist has never appreciated until they're gone. And it's the same thing the homemaking and that you know, building of trust and community and the baggy time until it's gone.

Dan Minchin: 35:48

Well, you go back to your question of how do you measure a thriving community, you can measure the consequences of the lack of the care work that's been done remembering care workers, very broad concept in their- the nurturing work, you see the consequences of it. And part of the reason that sort of the thriving of communities has declined is we probably undervalued - not probably - we definitely undervalued the care work, right? And because it wasn't measured, it wasn't valued. It's not in, it's not in GDP, you know, and suddenly, it turned around and a generation or two have passed and you've lost a whole lot of something. And now we're sort of trying to work out how you -

Sonia Nolan: 36:27

How we get it back.

Dan Minchin: 36:28

How you piece it back in, in a worldview, which has fundamentally moved on, you know, we're, like I said, the sort of- the irony, in a way, the irony that these big care, publicly funded care, service programmes; childcare, aged care, disability support mental health programmes, return to work, you know, the only that they turn into something which is sort of transactionalised and commercialised and individualised, when what people need is nurture and care is extreme, isn't it? You know, and that's all driven, because it was fiscally unsustainable to keep, which is true, it's fiscally unsustainable to keep funding, you know, welfare, health, the way we have been. But I can tell you something that the sort of consumerization of the industry hasn't changed the fiscal sustainability of at all, it's possibly, and probably

Sonia Nolan: 37:27

Possibly exacerbated issues that you made it worse. know, the unforeseen consequences that we were even yet to realise, yeah.

Dan Minchin: 37:33

Just by the way, doesn't make me a complete critic of the NDIS, the aspirations of the NDIS. And even the reform in aged care. And to be clear with in Chorus', case this is all about home based care as in not in - we don't run any nursing homes or anything like that. There's a whole lot in it to like, if you're a family of a person with disabilities, some of those families have been advocating for 30 years for more choice and control for people living with disability. And so in lots of ways, it's been this sort of immense step forward. But we're all aware of the rorting and the poor outcomes, even without the rorting some of the outcomes are really, really poor, as we try and set up a new system, which I still think lags behind what we really, really need. Because the assumption that you can create a market for care, that then solves all of the problems is clearly faulty.

Sonia Nolan: 38:25

Yeah, very faulty, very faulty. And you were pretty vocal about all of that, Dan, you're always vocal about it.

Dan Minchin: 38:32

Vocal about lots of things.

Sonia Nolan: 38:33

Vocal about lots of things.

Dan Minchin: 38:34

It's going to be the longest podcast you've ever recorded.

Sonia Nolan: 38:36

It could be, it could be. We will we will break very soon. But I did see was it the Canberra Times? Yeah, you had an op-ed opinion editorial piece in

Dan Minchin: 38:43

Yeah. the Canberra Times last year, about August last year. That's 2023. And, you know, and that's when I reconnected with you. And I said, Dan, oh, my God that you know, that piece you just wrote in the, in the Canberra Times really spoke to me, I was just so, it was so lovely to see all of those thoughts in writing in a publication where you just, you just, you just went, you went for it, didn't you? You went for it, and I love it. And so I just want to highlight a few of the things that you've said in this article that you've written. You talk about the aged care setting, and, you know, getting back to this understanding of loneliness, and I guess disconnection with community. 40% of aged care residents never get visitors. Yeah.

Sonia Nolan: 39:30

That's, that's just a lot of lonely people.

Dan Minchin: 39:32

Unimaginable, isn't it?

Sonia Nolan: 39:33

It is unimaginable, it is unimaginable. And yet, this is this is where community is.

Dan Minchin: 39:38

And we had - just a sidebar - we had a brief conversation at work this week about that stat or a version of it. And we said, isn't it interesting that developing countries have a lot of problems, they don't have a loneliness problem. It's a developed country phenomenon. As, as where we started was it somehow it's a it's a byproduct of so called progress. You are quoting me - I'll let you go back to quoting me.

Sonia Nolan: 40:05

That's right. Why do I need you to speak when you're here when I can quote you from a newspaper, Dan? But the other thing that I really loved reading in here is, you know, you started off asking, why is it so emotional when we, when we watched that, that gorgeous show on the ABC of four year old - was it the aged care for four year olds? And yet, I don't think there's a dry eye when people watch that it is so beautiful, so heartwarming. It's so wholesome. Is that the right word? But yeah, and you ask the question, why is it so emotional? Why is this idea of intergenerationality so emotional for us? Have we lost it to the extreme that, you know, we sort of look at it with tears?

Dan Minchin: 40:49

Well, I mean, that's the conclusion that I, that I've drawn, you know. I just think, if it was all around us all the time, or if it didn't matter, we wouldn't feel emotional about it. But that is an absolute tear jerker. And as I say, in the, in the, in the column, we have similar sorts of things that we do. And, you know, one of our local teams has formed a connection with a local childcare and they come together, and they do nature plate, right. It's the simplest idea imaginable. It's completely doable. It's time with customer, like it ticks the boxes.

Sonia Nolan: 41:27

Ticks everything.

Dan Minchin: 41:28

But it does require a bit of imagination. And it requires a bit of presence and requires a bit of connection into a local community. And there's a lot in the local-ness of all of this, by the way, but- and it pops out, and then it brings tears to your eyes and you go, oh my God, like, why are we... How is this just not a thing? Why does it have to be sort of orchestrated? And I think that's, that's why I think it's so, it's so upsetting, because it's absent. And it's important. And it's back to your question, like, how do you know, how do you measure a thriving community? Well a thriving community will, will be intergenerational, intergenerationally interlinked it'll be, it'll be linked across all sorts of things that have become boundaries, fences, ethnic backgrounds, you know, beliefs, what, like whatever it looks like. And, and I think that's the sort of the, that's the reflection.

Sonia Nolan: 42:20

Dan, there's so much we could unpick and maybe I'm going to have to have you back on the podcast. This has been such a great conversation, but the theme is 'hope'. Okay, I'm hoping we're pretty hopeful. The things we talked about, maybe we've left a lot of questions unanswered at the moment. But I'm wondering for you personally, Dan, what does hope mean for you?

Dan Minchin: 42:42

Yeah, I think, and I've used the word a bit in this chat. I mean, the hope, for me is about possibility. And I think I'm lucky, fortunate to have been born a basically hopeful person. So, you know, bad things happen, and I can reflect back and go, there was a pivot moment when I went from going, this is a terrible day to what might now be possible. There's a psychological kind of, you know, I'm lucky to be a basically hopeful person. And I'm also very, very lucky to have resources and connections around me that make those sorts of thoughts possible, you know, it's a very, very privileged place to be in your life, in a life, where you do think there's possibility. So for me hope, is a sort of state of being. I'm very aware of how fortunate I am, I haven't earned that - that has been bestowed, whether it's biological or environmental that's been bestowed. So, you know, I'm, I'm aware of that, but for me, hope is about possibility.

Sonia Nolan: 43:57

And what about hope for Chorus at an organisational level?

Dan Minchin: 44:04

Well, I mean, I guess, I guess it ties in, right, you know, I sort of think what would it take to create a bit more of that space for possibility for people in the world? And, you know, it starts in a, in a person's home, we rock up to do a DA, a domestic assistance, what would it look like? Yes, that's, that's, that's the bureaucratic language, what would it look like if a DA was actually a little spark of possibility for that person, who for many reasons, whether it's an older person, someone with a disability, or any other kind of thing, they may not have a lot of possibilities in their life, they may not feel particularly hopeful. And then you think about it from an organisation perspective, how do you systematically do that, whether just a little bit more possibility in people's lives. And I've been I believe, and chorus is built on a belief that you know, the possibilities start with you, and then they go across the fence to the next door and then down the road in the place that you live. So you need possibility to be present locally in your street, in whatever, and what I think we're trying to do at Chorus is, you know, weave the eye of the needle, like I said, because we're still, you know, our business and we've got things we've got to comply with. And that in the end, could we organizationally and systematically create possibilities for people through the, through the vehicle of a really thriving community. And that's what hope sort of looks like, if you could bake it into a, into a system.

Sonia Nolan: 45:37

I love it. I love that. And I love what you were just talking about is that if you can make one person hopeful and a little bit more thriving in a better way, it actually flows over the fence. And that's the happiness contagion, isn't it? The happiness contagion.

Dan Minchin: 45:53

Yeah. I think - I think that's it. Yeah.

Sonia Nolan: 45:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the stats show that improving the well being of one individual by 25% can increase a close contacts well-being by 15%. It's that ripple effect that you guys are doing at Chorus.

Dan Minchin: 46:07

And it starts with, you know, I think we've talked a lot about the people who consume or rely on our services, but it starts with us in Chorus, it starts with the the worker, the employee, the volunteer, myself, you know, it is the contagion, the happiness contagion. If that person, you know, because people who work in this world often don't have a lot of possibilities that we know about. People who work in care, the care economy, are not necessarily the most, they're not paid particularly well, traditionally not respect- not not given a great deal of sort of respect and dignity, not necessarily valued. And we talked a bit about care work before, you know, it's how, how might you create an environment where people like that are, who are doing this kind of work, we can create those possibilities and hope for those people. And if they can show up in a, in a customer's home and provide a little bit of hope, then it is it sort of ripples out from there. So that's the that's the theory we're working to.

Sonia Nolan: 47:09

It's a beautiful thing, Dan. Dan, thank you so much for joining me around the warm table today. You are a wonderful human being -

Dan Minchin: 47:17

Thank you, that's very nice.

Sonia Nolan: 47:17

You are inspiring hope and solutions for our

Dan Minchin: 47:21

And so are you, Sonia, through your, through communities. your stories that you're capturing and sharing out there into the world. So yeah.

Sonia Nolan: 47:27

Thank you, Dan, that's generous. Look, I'm gonna keep an eye on Chorus and see what else you get up to. So, thank you.

Dan Minchin: 47:33

Thanks for having me.

Kelli Reilly FOFF: 47:38

Hi, I'm Kelly Reilly, creator and head coach of Females Over 45 Fitness or FOFF, as we are fondly called. Our studio is located in Victoria Park, and we are also online all across Australia. At FOFF, our members range in age from 45 through to 84 years of age at the moment, they are amazing examples of hope. Let's meet one of our members now and be inspired by her story.

Carol: 48:06

Hi, my name is Carol. I'm in my 60s. I recently retired from a job I loved and have been working in for 18 years. My husband and I migrated to Australia from England in 1996. Leaving all our family and friends behind. We came to chase the sun and the wonderful outdoor lifestyle we have in Australia. We loved Australia from the start, but it was weird to turn every corner and not bump into someone you know. Growing up in the town where you new everyone, I must admit that we did miss seeing familiar faces. As I'm getting older, I used to find it hard to get off a low chair. And that started to worry me. So I needed something to increase my strength. I joined Females Over 45 Fitness about three years ago. And trained twice a week. I've joined gyms in the past and never gone more than a month because I lost my motivation. But FOFF keeps me motivated with a nice environment with women my own age, and we have a lot of fun. I love the range of movement I can do now and the strength I've gained. I also love the girls who are like a little family to me. And we have lots of laughs there. And of course, I love our Friday coffee mornings and our catches up on the weekends. FOFF has given me more confidence in myself to try other things. I was very nervous going there, and it's something I wouldn't normally do. But I felt I really needed to do something for myself. It was out of my comfort zone. But I am so glad I took that step.

Sonia Nolan: 49:45

Thanks for joining us around the warm table. My Warm Table is produced hosted and edited by me, Sonia Nolan. It's my way of amplifying positivity and curiosity in our community. I invite you to share this conversation with family and friends and follow My Warm Table podcast on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Also, you can subscribe and follow My Warm Table on Spotify or Apple podcasts, and maybe even leave a review because it helps others to find us more easily.