How do we grow community assets?
We work with people in local communities to help them identify and recognise their own assets and the resources around them. This enables them to have the confidence to play an active role in their own health and social care and the health and wellbeing of their families and wider community.
Did you know?
- Over 7 million people in the UK are unpaid carers, looking after loved ones and contributing an additional £57 billion to the care provided by the NHS?
- Over 20 million people in the UK volunteer either formally or informally
ONS.gov
Empowering communities by growing assets
We passionately believe in the importance of recognising, valuing, celebrating and supporting the amazing unseen work that ordinary people do to contribute to health and wellbeing of their local communities by actively managing their own care and caring for others.
We recognise the importance of all the informal work that people do which at many levels holds together the social fabric of families and communities that is so critical for health and wellbeing and the wider social determinants of health and wellbeing.
Across the health and social care system, people are starting to appreciate how important it is to investing in growing community assets. An asset includes the practical skills, capacity and knowledge of local residents, their passions and interests that give them energy for change, and the ‘social capital’ in a community including the networks and connections upon which it is based.
Examples of our work in empowering communities through growing community assets include:
- Supporting unpaid carers to develop coaching skills to better support their loved ones
- Supporting community volunteers to develop health coaching skills to provide services to people with long term conditions from their communities
- Developing the knowledge, skills and confidence of volunteers from health charities and social enterprises to deliver services to their communities
- Supporting people to develop community asset mapping skills to inform social prescribing initiatives
We work in partnership with you to co-create a solution that supports the people in your community as they identify their own assets and resources, and develop the skills for how to use them.