Our focus is to find the other explorers, learning as we are and finding new solutions together.
We’re doing that in different ways:
By replication
Peaced Together
Community Resources is the base for Peaced Together, which was created by Heidi Singleton. Peaced Together is a creative arts course for women – with a difference.
Underpinned by the belief that good can come from negative and difficult experiences. Peaced Together uses themed craft projects to encourage women to reflect on their lives and set out on a personal journey from brokenness to hope. The themes help people to explore topics such as beauty, peace with the past and positive choices.
Over 2,000 women have taken part in 40+ locations who have been licensed to offer the course across the UK and Republic of Ireland so far.
By exploring the power of friendship and its impact on our health
Connect
This is fundamental to everything we do in Community Resources. However, Connect is exploring how to create an environment where friendship and trust can flourish – especially when people are discharged from hospital without family or friends to support. The learning approach has been funded by the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham, and Community Resources are supporting Care City in leading the work, alongside three local delivery partners: ILA, Harmony House and Humourisk, also supported by Ageable and Signal.
Connect particularly recognises that when people come out of hospital their recovery – physical and mental – can be much more difficult if they don’t have a strong network of family and friends around them. In fact, local research indicates that 95% of the time, recovery from significant ill-health is reliant on friends, family and community, in addition to the crucial 5% of the expert clinical input and action.
The initial discovery period of this programme worked with people to understand the reasons they became isolated in the first place. The resulting approach of helping people to build confidence, starting with what matters to the individual and enlisting the support of a wide range of hyper-local, community-based partners working in different neighbourhoods will mean that the learning and impact will last far beyond the duration of the programme.
The approach is being tested by working 100 people who have had a hospital stay over the course of 12 months – listening, learning, building evidence of what works, working together to find the right environments and people which spark belonging – iterating as we go.
By creating new environments
BD_Collective
Community Resources was the secretariat for the BD_Collective between 2019-2024. Founded by one of the Community Resources team, who drew other local leaders together to explore how to break down the barriers caused by the competitive funding environment. This radical approach to social sector infrastructure co-ordination creates an environment where collaboration is front and centre, built on a basis of trust, accountability and power sharing.
Over our five year tenure, this approach:
- Has explored how a ‘place-based’ mindset not only creates better solutions, but also attracts more consortia funding, as the whole became greater than the sum of its parts
- Has attracted £2.5m of statutory funding for consortia working locally to tackle some of the most endemic issues in the borough including social isolation, mental health, community infrastructure, early help for families, and hospital discharge.
- Ensured smaller organisations are able to access funding opportunities via consortia model.
- Is exploring how to retain its Collective nature, while also becoming a Community Benefit Society, capable of receiving funding.
- Created a culture of transparency by ensuring all available funding streams are openly communicated to the sector, developed via consortia, and wherever practicable governed via an online open platform, enabling trust to build
- Worked with funders to ensure that learning is core in any consortia delivery model to better understand issues being tackled.
- Established eight cross-sector themed networks of organisations, small and large linking together people who are ready to put the community ahead of their organisation
- Facilitated the establishment of two consortia-led community assets.
Everything the BD Collective does is focused on listening and learning, allowing new ways to emerge – and then being bold enough to try something. The principle of connection is key – always working with others, especially those affected by the issues – whether residents or people working in that sphere.
Our intention from the inception was to relinquish the secretariat lead seat after our initial tenure, and in September 2024 we stepped into the role of ‘active member’ as BD Collective formally becomes a Community Benefit Society.
By connecting people and systems
Community Locality Networks
A ‘joining the dots’ initiative bringing different professionals together to solve crunchy issues where lots of agencies are involved was a significant step along the way to exploring how to create a community-based infrastructure.
Community Resources initiated the Community Locality Networks. A learning-based approach, which is iteratively seeking to join up local assets including residents, VCSFE groups, other civil society groups and local businesses – as well as linking with statutory services. The focus is on ‘place’ – learning how to create a healthy, thriving ecosystem where we improve population health and economic outcomes in the borough, tackling all the multiple deprivation factors that significant numbers of residents face across the borough. It is based on the significance of the following factors which are underpinned by an international evidence base:
- Residents sense of control over their destiny, and their sense of living in a community that has control over its destiny, and can hold government and public systems to account and contribute to/and shape the community they live in
- The strength of connection, trust and belonging within a community that gives residents permission to accept support from local people and a desire to offer help
- (For significant ill-health) the combination of ‘the 5%’ of work by healthcare systems and ‘the 95%’ of support offered by family, neighbours, work colleagues and other civil society supports around health interventions
Our role in this part of the work was to initiate, then support the shaping and convene the learning by:
- Building Relationships: Across the VCFSE sector, civil society and with the statutory sector including the Council and health colleagues, in particular local GP Health Inequality leads. Discovering how best to connect people together, building trust and belonging, rather than fixing problems – recognising that most people are very able to sort their own problems out with alongside support from others – in particular family and friends.
- Innovating – Drawing on the expertise of UCL PEARL who supported the development of an appropriate Quality Improvement framework, we worked with local people who were identifying issues which they wanted to find a solution to. A rapid fire testing, evaluating, adapting and going again approach was cultivated, and some significant and simple innovation to tackle local issues, as defined by local people, is emerging.