This post is from josie Moon, EMU’s People and Place Ambassador
I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting this week. Since feeling a bit better and being able to be more present at work over the past month, I’ve been struck by how quickly things open up when we start connecting properly with people again.
Our networks are expanding, and relationships are growing. A few colleagues have been away on visits recently, and I find that so rich. When you go away for a couple of days and see how other people work, how they approach their communities, you can’t help but bring something fresh and energising back home with you.
For me, that was a trip to Barnsley for the Cultural Health and Wellbeing Alliance conference. I came back with new connections, including the regional Neighbourhood Health Fellows in to work alongside us. We’re working together to understand health in our community far better and figure out how we can help to build better neighbourhood health. It’s had an immediate positive impact across all our workstreams and priorities.
And honestly, that work could not be more urgent.
The Health Reality in East Marsh
Alarmingly, healthy life expectancy in the East Marsh has fallen yet again. It now stands at 48 years old. I find that deeply upsetting.
The East Marsh is a relatively small ward of around 11,000 people yet it is now the second most deprived ward in the UK. When you sit with that for a moment, it’s shocking.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how we understand health inequalities at this level, and how we talk about them. Poverty isn’t neat or isolated. It isn’t just about someone having poor health, or living in substandard housing, or missing out on education, or struggling to find work. It is all of those things, hitting people all at once. Underpinning it all is the sheer number of people in our community who are simply unable to engage with work, training, or education right now. It is incredibly complex. But too often, the public conversation about it is appallingly simple.
The Hammock Myth
Nearly two years ago, I was sitting in a meeting with a very successful, affluent, and well-connected local businessman. Out of nowhere, he made a remark that has stayed in my head ever since. He said, with complete confidence, as if it were an undisputed fact, about the number of people on benefits:
“Unfortunately, some are using it as a hammock to enjoy not working.”
At the time, it wasn’t the right moment or setting to challenge his assumptions, but they disturbed me deeply. Here was someone with immense social capital, great opportunities, and a comfortable life, making sweeping statements about people whose daily reality he knew nothing about.
To look at a neighbourhood where healthy life expectancy has collapsed to 48, where adults are often living with functional literacy levels of an eight- or nine-year-old, where people are so consumed by anxiety and fear that they struggle to even walk through the door of a doctor’s appointment – and to sum that up as ‘enjoying a hammock’ is deeply offensive. And it is profoundly wrong.
Nobody living through that level of hardship is relaxing. Living under the weight of constant poverty, poor health, and systemic barrier after barrier isn’t a lifestyle choice. It is exhausting.
Stripping Away Shame and Stigma
Poverty markers don’t just create financial hardship; they strip away people’s mental capacity. They stop people from being able to make decisions and be active agents in improving their own lives.
When we talk with GPs, psychiatrists, and health professionals across our area, the same key words keep coming up: shame and stigma.
If a simple medical leaflet is written in language you can’t easily read, or if you feel judged every time you try to access support, fear takes over. People stop reaching out. They don’t attend routine appointments. Barriers go up, and health gets worse.
If we want to change this, we have to turn away from simplistic, judgmental attitudes about people on benefits and start dismantling the actual barriers holding people down:
- Take away the judgment: Meet people where they are, with compassion rather than suspicion.
- Make support accessible: Translate medical and public information into clear, human language that respects low literacy levels without patronising people.
- Work across sectors: Health isn’t just a clinical issue. It’s wrapped up in housing, education, local culture, and community safety.
True change won’t happen by telling people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps when their shoes have been taken away. It happens when we remove structural constraints so people can reclaim agency over their own lives and futures.
That’s what I’m holding onto as our networks grow across Barnsley, Grimsby, and beyond: replacing casual judgment with systemic empathy, and building relationships that actually make a difference on the ground.
