Lessons Learnt from the Grenfell Tower Fire

What are the lessons learnt from the Grenfell Tower fire? The Grenfell Tower fire stands as a stark reminder of tragedy and systemic failure. The blaze that engulfed the 24-story residential building on June 14, 2017, claimed 72 lives and left hundreds more injured and displaced.

A recent report by The King’s Fund unravels the response of health and social care initiatives in the immediate and long-term aftermath of the fire. The King’s Fund collected accounts from a range of sources including survivors, the bereaved, health & social workers, and members of the community. Together, they highlighted the importance of health and care services listening to and learning from the communities they are meant to serve. 

Looking at these findings, we’ll cover the lessons learnt in the aftermath of the fire and how these changes might shape the future of health and social care.

Lessons learnt from the Grenfell Tower fire – The value of local initiatives

In the aftermath of the event, survivors reported on the initial confusion in the support provided with health care services unsure of where to refer people to for support, who to contact in connection with the need for acute care, or who exactly was in charge. 

When health & social services floundered, local organisations and community members stood firm to provide key support. Local people and organisations from the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise (VCFSE) sector reacted at pace, including opening the doors of local community centres, churches, and mosques to provide shelter and support. 

In the aftermath, survivors and bereaved formed the Grenfell United who campaign to this day for justice, safety, and the health and wellbeing of the survivors and bereaved.

Health and social care responses

The services set up by health care systems in the aftermath to provide support for survivors, the bereaved, local people, and the community included:

Together for Grenfell – Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) and three local voluntary organisations partnered with GHWS to offer culturally sensitive mental health and wellbeing support to Arabic and Somali-speaking people who have been impacted by the disaster. Also, the survivors and bereaved could access support via a key worker or mental health care professionals based at a community centre called the Curve.

Mental Health Support – the NHS provided support for affected people’s mental health including a telephone hotline known as Time to Talk, “borrowed” nearby therapists from other services to increase the amount available in the local area and introduced a “Screen and Treat” programme in the community. The “Screen and Treat” programme included healthcare workers knocking on local people’s doors in the community to discuss people’s mental health and offer avenues of support.

Grenfell Health and Wellbeing Service (GHWS) – GHWS aimed to work with children and young people, adults and families to find therapy that best suited individual needs. 

Lessons Learnt from the Grenfell Tower Fire – Problems arising

The core problem that arose from the support available was the lack of personalisation to what the people being supported wanted. The community was vocal about wanting a different style of working – a non-formulaic form of support. Instead, the community wanted support that was about connecting in a human, relational way, and being held to account by communities. Individuals felt that the support available was not actually useful to the people it was supposed to be supporting.

Key reasons included (but were not limited to): 

• Working Alone – a lack of coordination between different entities involved in support services. For example, individuals were supported by the NHS for mental health concerns and the council for housing, despite the two issues being connected. With little information shared between the two bodies people were stuck in the middle between the two groups.
• Cultural Competency – a major issue arose from services not understanding the community they serve, including pre-existing biases, asking insensitive questions, and structural racism. A key example was the reality of the Screen & Treat support available. People felt the questions were formulaic and lacked the empathy they needed from support services.
• Lack of Trust & Understanding – people reported feeling a lack of community involvement in decision-making processes. When they asked for support, it did not meet their needs and neglected their feedback.
• Clarity in Spending – NHS and service spending was not transparent for community members. Many reported feeling that the money spent could have been better spent on more beneficial support if services had listened to the community. 

Lessons Learnt from the Grenfell Tower Fire – Successful steps

Working with Grenfell United, survivors, and the local community, services have taken steps to help provide support that meets the community’s need – showing ideas for improving services. These include:

• Cultural Competency – new staff at GHWS are required to complete “Lucy’s Walk” around Ladbroke Grove and the walk is available for visitors who need to understand the area. Lucy is a community liaison manager at GHWS who has lived locally her entire life. Lucy developed a guided walking tour of the area to help people begin to understand and connect with the community. The walk was designed to strengthen understanding of the community, break down assumptions and pre-existing biases, and demonstrate what the area has in terms of assets rather than focusing on what it does not have.
• Community Connections – diversifying the staff and the role of community connectors has helped services to understand community needs. Community connectors worked with the local community to help people engage in services and provide insight into the barriers facing people in the community. 
• Long Term Health Checks – after petitioning from Grenfell United, long-term health checks are available from GPs for survivors facing long-term effects from the fire. However, people reported that these checks are often confusing with repeated GPs unaware of the opportunity which shows how there is still change needed to support people in the local community.

Key messages

In the wake of tragedy, The Kings Fund has identified 5 key messages for the future of the healthcare industry to make positive change and support people effectively.

1. If you are going to listen, you have to be prepared to act – health care services must listen to what the affected people want – but it goes beyond that too. After listening and understanding people’s views, a service must be ready for change. Listening is only the beginning, and action is where change can occur to positively impact people. This includes, being open to new leadership styles, allowing staff the ability to think innovatively, and acting upon feedback from people in the community they serve.

2. Engagement is not a separate activity, it needs to be core business for all – Understanding and working with the local community is the role of every staff member, not just community engagement teams. This includes understanding the community, its history, and the people they are supporting. 

3. You cannot engage people in silos and should instead take a system-wide approach – Supporting people is the work of a range of different services including health & social systems and local authorities. Working and communicating with other services will help people feel less isolated in their support and make it easier to access the support they need. Organisations need to take a more coordinated approach to listening to and learning from people and communities across the local system as a whole.

4. Identify and address the issue of structural racism – Trust between communities and health & care systems is essential to supporting individuals. People will only trust those systems if they feel that services are on their side and not part of the structural disadvantages they face. 

5. Working in partnership with local communities is the greatest opportunity – Sharing power with communities involves changing organisational cultures. This includes recognising the value of local initiatives and organisations in providing support for local people and working to include them as part of people’s support.

The lessons learnt from Grenfell Tower fire are likely to affect the future of the healthcare sector for the better, helping to place the community at the heart of all support. With key findings shared, new opportunities will be available for the Health & Social sector to improve on past experiences to provide the right support for everyone.