A lot has changed in the last month; we have a new Prime Minister and a new government, football didn’t quite come home (this time), and across the UK big-picture conversations have been ignited about the future direction of the country.

We’re revisiting questions like: what would it take to end homelessness? How do we respond to the increasing need for care and support without diminishing quality of care or the agency of the person receiving care? What are the best ways to help people avoid experiencing a life-altering crisis? Which decisions should be made at a national level, and which should be made locally?

These are not new questions by any stretch, but with a renewed focus on care, prevention, and local decision-making, we thought it would be a good moment to paint our own vision of the future.

Imagine if there was a Local Area Coordinator (LAC) in every neighbourhood across the UK. That’s a total of around 6,500 LACs nationally, which, for scale, according to Social Work England compares to around 105,000 registered social workers nationally.

Those LACs are proactively meeting people in the places they already go to — schools, cafés, community spaces, and the spots where people naturally bump into each other — out in the community rather than being based in an office. They’ve built fantastic local connections and are friendly, professional, non-judgemental, and well-trusted people.

They’re available to anyone living in that community, of any background, at any stage of life, regardless of their circumstances. There’s no complicated referral process or barriers to accessing support, and a LAC can stay alongside someone for as long as is necessary, without time limits and providing continuity of support throughout someone’s journey.

Without even getting into the practice of the role, just think about the difference a service designed with these features alone could make to someone who is really struggling. Someone who is dealing with poor mental health and has gradually stopped seeing friends, is no longer going out, and starting to feel like the world is getting smaller. Someone who has recently lost their job and is struggling to work out what comes next. Someone who is caring for a family member and quietly reaching the point of burnout. Someone who has been sleeping on friends’ sofas because they have nowhere stable to call home, but doesn’t see themselves as someone who is ‘homeless’.

In public services today, someone facing these circumstances can often only trigger support once things have become more serious. Once they have reached a threshold. Once there is a recognised need. Once a referral has been made.

The opportunity is to create a missing layer of support in our communities: someone whose job it is to know the place, know the people, spot opportunities, and help connect the dots between services, natural support networks, and the person’s own capacity to create change before situations become more difficult and costly for everyone. At a time when the country is asking how we reduce pressure on public services, improve social care, and prevent people reaching crisis, big-picture conversations like this feel worth having.

This is the conversation we want to explore at our upcoming Local Area Coordination Network National Gathering (our annual gathering of LAC teams from across the country). This year’s theme is ‘LAC of the future’ where we’ll imagine what the next chapter of Local Area Coordination could look like.

If this is a conversation you would like to join, please reach out to us at LACN@communitycatalysts.co.uk.