From September 2024 to August 2026, Community Catalysts worked in partnership with Gloucestershire County Council to develop community micro-enterprises offering personalised, flexible care and support to older and disabled people in their homes and communities.
The project supported local people to turn their skills, experience and ideas into small community-based enterprises. Through Community Catalysts’ Development Programme, enterprise leaders received practical, one-to-one support to develop safe, sustainable services while retaining the flexibility and personal approach that make community micro-enterprises distinctive.
The community micro-enterprises supported through the project developed a broad range of offers, including personal care, help at home, companionship, practical support and wellbeing activities. The work demonstrated the potential for very small, locally rooted enterprises to complement traditional care provision and increase the range of personalised support available to local people.
Alongside enterprise development, Community Catalysts worked across social care, health, employment, housing and the voluntary sector to build understanding of the community micro-enterprise model. Activity included work with social care practitioners, NHS and Social Prescribing teams, Jobcentre Plus, Gloucestershire County Council’s Employment & Skills Hub, Adult Education and other local organisations.
The Gloucestershire project also generated valuable learning about what it takes to develop a community micro-enterprise market. In particular, it reinforced the importance of developing enterprise capacity and practitioner engagement alongside each other, building relationships from the outset and allowing sufficient time for new approaches to become understood and used.
The project demonstrated both the potential of community micro-enterprises and the value of combining personalised enterprise development with wider market-building activity. This learning continues to inform Community Catalysts’ work with local authorities looking to diversify care and support, create new community-based capacity and enable more people to access support that is personal, flexible and rooted in local communities.