The aim of the MEE Samen project (MEE IJsseloevers and MEE Veluwe) is to use social networks to strengthen an organisation's care and improve quality. Situations in which the social network becomes increasingly distant from the client and its potential is not used are, unfortunately, more the rule than the exception. I recently heard an example that illustrates the underlying problem well. A father of one of the clients of a care organisation is an accountant and was asked to volunteer with some of the clients to go shopping. The person in question indicated that he was good with numbers and did not like the idea of doing an activity with the residents. He suggested taking over some of the administrative work from the group leaders, so that they themselves could go to the sales. The group leaders said that this was not possible from an organisational point of view, because guiding activities falls under voluntary work and the administration falls under the tasks of the employees of the care institution.

The approach was to find an organisation/group that wanted to take on the experiment of (differently) using social networks. For this purpose, I approached various care institutions, either by telephone or within the network. In a number of institutions, I had meetings with directors, policy staff or team leaders.

I had expected that organisations would be curious and would want to participate in a pilot to involve social networks in a different way in healthcare, with added value for all parties. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth and I have not yet seen the expected pilot results. There were positive reactions, but it was seen as something that would be interesting in the long term and not for now. Time, money and the unfamiliarity of working with social networks were important thresholds. The use of social networks requires a completely different way of organising care for the average care institution. I also noticed that people in care are not very familiar with the circle of influence. So I need to ask more explicitly what people think about it. I noticed that people often react like this is how it should be or this is what I've been told to do. I did manage to bring the subject to the attention of my organisation. We have more and more experience with the deployment of social network reinforcement, for example by deploying client support workers. The municipality of Ede has also allowed us to deploy a tilting coach in a neighbourhood team, someone who can supervise the tilting of care, towards more control and responsibility on the part of the client and a real alignment of care with the question and the person. As one of the spearheads for 2018, our Training and Consultancy department will now be focusing broadly on care. Which means that, starting in December, we will once again try to draw attention to the subject more broadly.