Local Area Coordination in England and Wales

April 2024

Updates on Local Area Coordination, the work of the Network and
the areas implementing the approach.

In this edition we’ll be covering:

• Hello and welcome
• Publications
• Growing the Local Area Coordination movement
• Events, training, and campaigns
• Useful blogs

Read all about it here.

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A note from from Nick Sinclair,
Director of the Local Area Coordination Network

Hi everyone, Nick here. Welcome to this month’s newsletter. Thanks as always to Lily for putting this together.

This week was an exciting one for us as it saw the long-awaited release of findings from the first ever multi-site evaluation of Local Area Coordination.

Avid followers of this newsletter and our work will know that since late 2019, the Network and more specifically four of our established member areas have been working with a team of universities to support this significant and groundbreaking research project.

We’ve written this blog to share and reflect on the key findings, which also contains a link to the policy briefing that was released earlier this week. We’re expecting the full report to be released in May – just in time for a high-level virtual roundtable that we’re convening with current members and new ones who are interested. More on all of that next month!

We were pleased to see in the findings lots of familiar knowledge relating to the principles, design, and logic of Local Area Coordination. We’re also encouraged to see more evidence of how applying these gets consistent results even in very different socio-economic and geographical contexts. This gives us more weight to our argument that Local Area Coordination can work everywhere.

Perhaps most importantly though, the research really brought home the importance of trust and time in the relationships built between Local Area Coordinators and the people they are alongside. It demonstrated how positive relationships aren’t simply ‘nice to haves’, but in fact are fundamental in supporting people to achieve sustainable change in their own lives and communities.

We are really excited about where this takes us next as a Network. We now have such a robust evidence base, a clear pathway for implementation, and above all a massively positive energy in our Network for bringing this to more people and places in England and Wales.

I’d like to finish by asking for your help. Could you please share our blog and help more people to understand and connect with this way of working? We’ve never felt more confident that it is time for Local Area Coordination. With your support we can bring this to more people and communities across the country. Thank you for reading.

Nick Sinclair