- The Local Area Coordination Network comes back together
- A new area joins the Network
- Building a Cost of Living Alliance
- And much more…
Back in the room
Welcome to this month’s newsletter, I do hope you’re well? So much going on in the world of Local Area Coordination and we’re delighted you’re here to read all about it. I want to say thanks as always to Rachel for compiling such a cracking read.
This month I’ve been alongside local people in two parts of Surrey as well as colleagues from Surrey County and District Councils as they went about recruiting their second and third Local Area Coordinators. It was wonderful to witness once again the power of local people coming together in an actual room in an actual community space sharing their deep knowledge of their places, getting to know the candidates through workshops and having a say. Community recruitment has always been one of my favourite aspects of Local Area Coordination. Being back in a room together after such a difficult and challenging period of time felt particularly poignant though.
Talking of special, this week Rachel, Pip and I were in York to welcome our leaders of Local Area Coordination to our first in real life gathering since the pandemic. We held it on the 23rd which marked two years since the start of the first lockdown announcement. It was kindly opened by Cllr. Carol Runciman of York who has been a significant leader and supporter of Local Area Coordination in York since its inception there. Thurrock’s Local Area Coordination Coach, Karen Dobson, kindly followed to read out some of her reflections that she’d written during the early days of the pandemic. It took us back to those moments in March / April 2020 and reminded us just how much we’d been through individually, organisationally and collectively as a group too in the last 2 years.
In the room, we were joined online by colleagues who couldn’t make it due to various Covid related barriers for the most part. This reminded us that the impact of Covid is still very present in our lives. For our Network activity, it appears that “hybrid” will very much be the future and we will continue to find ways to make that as effective as possible. We managed to do our best this time to bring the two worlds together which led to some very rich discussion as well as sharing and reflection both virtually, in the room and combined too. Most of all though it was great to see people connecting with each other. This is what being a network is all about of course!
The big news is WE HAVE GROWN! We are delighted to announce that Wakefield has taken up the Local Area Coordination challenge and joined the Network. We are very excited to have them in the family and for them to start their journey in designing and establishing Local Area Coordination with our support.
Much more to follow next month, but for now, enjoy the newsletter
Nick