Varya Shaw

Can you really improve services when there's no money around? CIHM says yes. Find out more with this podcast on their Fair Chance toolkit for creating social value.

Just ghosted this about The Truth About Stanley, for 24housing magazine.

The Truth About Stanley is a short drama made to raise money for homelessness. My partner Tom Clark produced it and I did the PR. We managed to get it on the front page of guardian.co.uk, and covered in the news section of The Observer. It also got a five star review in the Independent on Sunday  - an unprecedented achievement for a short film. Saba Salman  compares Stanley to Cathy Come Home  on her blog, The Social Issue. But the wonderful Cathy is in the realist tradition, the filmic equivalent of a Zola novel about coalminers. The homelessness was triggered by bad luck and a bad system - a work injury and no safety nets. Stanley is much more psychological. It looks at why people choose a life on the streets. It is a film for this age of the mind, where we have virtual lives on the internet, neuroscience is revealing the potential of our brains in old age, and charities like Kidsco reach right into the psyches of traumatised children. I believe Stanley is extremely watcha

Guardian opinion piece  on co-production by Becky Malby, Director of the Centre for Innovation in Health Management. Co-production is a probably the least 'sticky', least 'sexy' set of concepts I've ever had to work with. Still figuring out how to make it light up. But try this - it recognises that the ill, injured or disabled are a goldmine. Someone who's learned to manage their own health condition can inspire and help others to cope with ill health in a way we all know a GP never could. Can you think of a better way to put it? If so leave a comment!

I'm currently editing some pieces by Irwin Turbitt, a former assistant chief commissioner of the Northern Ireland Police Service, now an academic. He was behind the transformation of the Drumcree Parades from riots to peace.  His articles contain a lot of theory, but they pack a tremendous narrative punch. This is applied research at its most exciting. It's a real privilege to work on it. Also I have discovered through this work that there is something called the Kafka Brigade - an action research team aimed at tackling bureaucratic dysfunction. LOL!

How often do you get to write about the birth of a profession? I'm writing a fair bit about the young profession of coaching, and it's a real privilege. My first coaching article was published by  Coaching at Work  magazine. It focused on bullying, and argued that coaches are a potential antidote to this scourge of the workplace. Before Christmas I went to lunch with my aunt who is a psychodynamic work coach.  I realised that her approach, with its ability to encompass the role of the unconscious and the undertow of emotion in organisations, fully backs up my article. She's lent me some books on the subject and I'm slightly overwhelmed by the non-stop depth - can't a day at work just be a day at work? But I am also fascinated. After Christmas, I wrote another article about health coaching, and it seems coaching is also part of the answer to preventing long-term conditions like diabetes, obesity and Alzheimers which are bankrupting the NHS. Coaching essentially