Asset-based community development in Northumberland
Community engagement through listening to residents helps local authority identify local strengths and assets to improve health and wellbeing.
Summary
The public health team at Northumberland county council is taking a fresh approach to improving health outcomes in their population and reducing avoidable health inequalities. The focus is much more upstream and asset based with the ambition of achieving countywide, resilient, flourishing communities who have high levels of wellbeing.
It is collaborative and community focused and has involved listening to what local people say helps them to feel well and gives them a purpose in life. This insight is helping the team reshape the joint health and wellbeing strategy to address, within public health responsibilities, what really matters to local people and what will achieve the sustainable outcomes.
Background
Reducing health inequalities is a key priority for Northumberland. Working with communities to identify strengths and assets to work together is vital to successfully addressing these inequalities. This includes having autonomy, positive relationships, a purpose in life, and self-acceptance, all of which enable communities to flourish. Evidence from community-health interventions has shown that a contributory factor to health and wellbeing is being linked to a local community and reduced social isolation.
The team makes the best use of all the different types of resources available in Northumberland.
These resources include:
- the human resources (people)
- natural resources (place)
- energy, passion and expertise (approach)
Working in this way is not only in response to the substantial financial cuts facing public services but also is the right thing to do. This approach can lead to improved health behaviours, self-efficacy and empowerment, have positive impacts on housing, crime, and social capital, and yield a social return on investment. There is also increasing evidence it also reduces health and social care costs.
What was involved?
Using the concept of asset-based community development, Northumberland public health team has been working with communities to identify the communities’ own assets and resources. The focus of this work was in the north of the county as it had strong community anchors, is a rural area that does not have access to the broad range of services available in the more densely populated areas of the county. Also historically, much of the council’s efforts have been focused on the more deprived south-east area rather than the more rural north.
Northumberland public health started by having conversations with communities about what factors create health and wellbeing, rather than the more traditional approach of focusing on preventing the causes of ill health. This empowers and encourages communities to utilise what they already possess. This asset-based approach acknowledges that the expertise to improve health and wellbeing already exists in the community and the public health’s team’s role is to facilitate rather than ‘do’.
In September 2015, a ‘World Cafe’ event was held in Berwick for the local community to have a conversation about being well. This was organised by the members of the public health team, supported by the Berwick, Glendale and Seahouses Community Development Trusts.
The aim was to:
- meet people from the area and find out what was important
- identify local strengths and assets
- help people connect to support and resources
The event was well attended and people shared ideas about what was important for them. Micro-grants were suggested as a mechanism to encourage people and groups to initiate activities to support their own health and wellbeing.
Working together, the public health team and the 3 trusts developed the micro-grants concept. A key principle was that it should be simple and easily accessible to enable groups and individuals who hadn’t previously applied for funding to set up projects and activities. The partners worked together to create and adapt the processes to support this.
The grant size was kept small and the processes light to enable projects to take off without unmanageable administration or accountability. The high level of trust between the partners resulted in the trusts ensuring that the funding was focused on projects that had clear health benefits.
Projects have been wide ranging and include:
New Seahouses Seaside Amateur Drama Club
The grant was used to hire a room for rehearsals and props for the first event. The first play brought together from the community 100 people across a wide age range. The group has expanded; is now self sufficient, and is looking forward to putting on their second event.
Prior Park Residents Group
The grant was used for room hire and administration support for a new residents group in Berwick,
Bamburgh, Beadnell Skiff Building Project
The grant was used to raise funds to purchase a skiff kit and trailer; the skiff (a small flat-bottomed open boat) is now being built as part of a community project.
This approach has had the following outcomes:
- identified local strengths and assets
- established networks to increase involvement in decision making by local residents
- there are over 75 projects across the 3 community trust areas and initial monitoring suggests that 26 projects have together involved over 1,000 people in some positive activity in their community
- mapped against the 5 ways to wellbeing, 27% of the projects were linked to being active and 39% were linked to learning and 98% were linked to staying socially connected, promoting social and emotional wellbeing
- 38 out of 42 projects in Seahouses have continued and in Wooler, 40 schemes are continuing, some with additional funding from elsewhere or self-funded
What has worked well?
The approach focuses on the conditions that create good health and wellbeing such as:
- feeling connected
- doing things you’re good at
- building confidence and skills
rather than the negative factors which create ill health such as:
- excessive alcohol consumption
- smoking
- lack of physical activity
- poor diet
As the approach and the ideas came from the community they have been more likely to be sustained by the community.
The approach focuses on what’s strong rather than what’s wrong, and is built on the positives and the strengths within communities to improve health and wellbeing:
- by developing the assets already there, communities have offered resources, time, accommodation, equipment so much more can be delivered with lower overheads compared to a publicly funded service
- we have asked communities, what do you need and what would work here - tailoring the approach to the needs of the local area
- it has been contagious and travelled by word of mouth, people have told their friends and people have made friends as a result
- it has widened participation with people being involved who hadn’t previously and have got together to talk about and share things when they wouldn’t usually, for example sharing our heritage and skills
- it has been inter-generational, involving children in the nursery through to older people in their 80s
- it used micro-grants - small amounts with minimal bureaucracy; communities were pleased with this approach and told us that the small amounts felt low risk and reduced their fear of trying something new and it not working
- the micro-grants have provided seed funding for new ideas and new connections, for example, in Seahouses over 100 residents gathered together in community play and over 200 got together in Berwick for a family fun day
- as the approach and the ideas came from the community they are more likely to be sustained by the community
- after finding out if the idea would work, some groups have gone on to bid for further funding or after finding out something works and there is interest, they have self-funded
- using this approach has helped to build trust both between communities and with the council and will be a building block for future relationships and joint working
Next steps
We have gained a better understanding of existing assets in areas with high wellbeing and are currently sharing good examples across Northumberland. This will become easier as more relationships are built with local people.
Half of Northumberland residents agree that people pull together to improve the local area and it is hoped that this proportion will grow. The role of Northumberland county council’s public health team is now to facilitate change to make it easier to be healthy and to connect people with services and other partners.
The Northumberland Director of Public Health aims to continue to:
- challenge our thinking and move from a ‘deficit model’ to focusing on and maximising the strengths already in our communities
- build relationships with local communities to find and maintain local solutions to improve wellbeing
- harness the skills and passion for Northumberland in our own workforce so that they can be agents of change, to seize every opportunity and make every contact with people a health improving opportunity
The learning from north Northumberland has informed the public health team’s underpinning values and principles about how it will work in the future such as:
- being community-focused, community-driven and locality-based
- mobilising and building on existing assets
- supporting the devolvement of power
- helping to build and support partnerships and networks
This learning has informed the development of ‘A people and place-based approach to wellbeing in Northumberland’ which is being taken forward in the Health and Wellbeing Board’s joint health and wellbeing strategy and will inform our future funding strategy and bids for external funding.
Further information
For more information please contact: Liz Morgan, Director of Public Health, Northumberland county council.