This month, I wanted to write about a fantastic event we held on 17th March. We’d been working on it for quite some time and it went absolutely brilliantly. Over 100 people attended, coming from a wide range of backgrounds such as charities, the NHS, local authorities, and, most importantly, members of the VOICE group from the National Innovation Centre for Ageing (NICA) with whom we collaborated to deliver the event.

NICA’s building in Newcastle is stunning and made for a perfect venue. They were a real pleasure to work with and it was great to recognise the natural synergy in our work: supporting people to live good lives in their own homes and communities as connected, contributing citizens.

The event was titled ‘Neighbourhoods for Living Well’, reflecting the growing interest in neighbourhoods as a place for health creation and change. This aligns strongly with themes in the recent NHS 10-year plan and neighbourhood health guidance. Our aim was to understand what the concept of ‘neighbourhood’ means to different people, and what services look like when designed and delivered through the lens of the neighbourhood.

One of the workshops was on Local Area Coordination and was led by Hazel (a Local Area Coordination Manager) and Marny (a Local Area Coordinator) from South Tyneside. They shared an excellent overview of their purpose and the difference that Local Area Coordination makes to the lives of local people. They reflected on Karen’s powerful story (have a watch) where she talks about her journey from feeling stuck at home following a life-changing health condition to becoming an active, participating member of her local community. With Marny walking alongside her, Karen was able to visualise and move towards her own vision of a better life, sharing her gifts and talents with those around her.

We also had a great workshop from my colleague Helen on community micro-enterprise, delivered in partnership with our good friend Vici (CEO of Disability North).

Two other brilliant people were also involved; we opened the event with a poignant and hopeful pre-recorded message from Clenton Farquharson CBE, and closed with Sir David Robinson from The Relationships Project who reflected on his work highlighting the importance of relationships and social capital. We were very grateful to both. To have David in the room with us sharing his wisdom and reflections on the ‘relational neighbourhood’ concept he and I wrote about last year was a particular privilege.

There is much more to come from all of this. If you find these themes interesting, please let me know as I’d be happy to share the resources that have already emerged and those that will be released in the coming months.

For now, a big thank you to NICA for being such great partners, and to everyone who came along and helped make the event such a success.

Nick Sinclair,
Local Area Coordination Programme Director