I came across something recently which shows that the big new ideas in Dame Carol Black’s report on the health of people of working age are not quite as cutting edge as you might think. We already know that various imminent types were talking about the biopsychosocial model and such like twenty years ago but the roots of the new Black report’s recommendations go back further than that. In 1926 a husband and wife team of doctors, George Scott Williamson and Innes Hope Pearse set up the Peckham Experiment which recruited 950 families in Peckham, South London, and gave them access to swimming, games and workshops and monitored the impact on their health.
The Peckham group’s thinking was ahead of its time in promoting wellbeing, early identification of health problems and ill health prevention. So why did it come to an end in 1950?
It was because the new hospital consultant-led NHS with its focus on acute care wasn’t keen on these innovative ideas and refused to fund it. Let’s hope that history doesn’t repeat itself when today’s NHS is asked to fund the new NHS-based occupational health fit for work teams recommended by Carol Black.