Engaging and empowering communities - update from the four regional events

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350 people from across the health and social care attended the four Engaging and Empowering Communities events delivered by TLAP, the Coalition for Collaborative Care, Public Health England and the NHS Alliance.

Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, demonstrating the appetite that exists to move forward on building community capacity. All plenary presentations have been uploaded to our website.

The events provided the opportunity to disseminate two key framework's:

Dr Brian Fisher from the NHS Alliance introduced audiences to A Charter for Community Development in Health, a call to health and other agencies to embed community development as part of their core practice.

People with lived experience described why connecting people with communities and developing social capital is fundamental to ensuring ' lives not services' becomes the standard approach.

The events provided an opportunity to hear about the ever growing and strengthening evidence base whilst a number of workshops demonstrated what community capacity building looks like in practice. Critically, delegates were invited to contribute to a strategic briefing setting out what needs to change nationally to create the conditions to make this happen at scale. This briefing will be shared with key system leaders from across the sector.

Delegates who found the events helpful may wish to join the TLAP quarterly Building Community Capacity Practitioners Network forum. The network sets out to:

  • Create a space in which learning and challenges can be shared and peer support provided
  • Identify gaps and synergies and develop a comprehensive picture of activity
  • Explore shared ways of recording the effectiveness of community and asset/capability based approaches

The next network will be held on September 23rd, 2015 from 1.30 - 4.30pm. If you would like to become a member of the network, please contact Corinne Moutou on Corinne.moutou@scie.org.uk