We’re working with six communities across England and Wales to strengthen small community led organisations and find new ways of designing and resourcing services so that people facing complex issues get the support they need, when they need it and in ways that work best for them.
Over the last decade, we’ve seen funding and availability of local services decline. Services that are there to help people in crisis like refuges, shelters, and counselling, as well as support that helps people so they don’t end up in crisis. Small community-led organisations often deliver these services, many of which have seen their own income to deliver contracts decline. At a time when more and more people are turning to charities for help as public services continue to shut. The impact and consequence of these decisions on people and wider communities have worsened following the global pandemic and cost of living crisis.
We’ve been funding and supporting small organisations for a long time. We also work nationally to shape policy and practice to improve the operating environment for small charities and address root causes of complex issues.
In 2019 we started to look at how we could work locally to change how we collectively design, resource and deliver essential local services that can improve people’s lives. Recognising that it is often the small community-led organisations that provide vital services, our focus was to strengthen these organisations and change how local organisations design, resource, and deliver services.
We have committed to working with six communities across England and Wales over the longer term: Bolsover, Great Yarmouth, Halton, Merthyr Tydfil, Redcar & Cleveland, and Telford & Wrekin.
Through this work we’ve brought together:
Using a range of approaches we’ve developed and strengthened relationships with people, organisations and sectors and engagement with this way of working. From this we’ve worked closely within the six communities to agree on shared ambitions for each of the six communities and collectively identify a focal issue for each.
1. Redcar and Cleveland – Local partners are focusing on in-work poverty in East Cleveland, which is a rural area of the district. Learn more about our work in Redcar and Cleveland.
2. Halton – The focus of the work in Halton is currently being reset after initially having explored food inequality, partners are meeting to identify a new focus for the work.
3. Bolsover – The focus of the work in Bolsover is poverty and inequality and has focused in on an aspiration as an area where we can collectively make an impact.
4. Telford and Wrekin – We held a series of workshops during 2021 to identify a good starting point that would fit the local context in Telford and Wrekin, and this was identified as early intervention with a particular focus on aspiration and unlocking potential. Learn more about our work in Telford and Wrekin.
5. Great Yarmouth – We are supporting the Great Yarmouth Homeless Alliance and have been since its inception in late 2020. This work emerged as a result of conversations in the area during the first lockdown in 2020 where people were accommodated in hotels during the ‘Everyone in’ policy. Learn more about our work in Great Yarmouth.
6. Merthyr Tydfil – The focus in Merthyr Tydfil is on children and young people’s mental health, which emerged as a priority for stakeholders in the area through a series of facilitated sessions. Learn more about our work in Merthyr Tydfil.
We developed an initial long list based partly on size of the area, profile, statistical measures and insights from our regional managers who advised on places where there might be an appetite to work with us. Based on this we developed a shortlist of places and started having some conversations to find out if our approach could support local areas. The final six were arrived at based on response and engagement from a range of partners, across sectors, in the local areas which we felt was a strong base to start from. Click on the illustrations below that provides highlights of their journeys so far.
Redcar and Cleveland
Telford and Wrekin
Halton
Great Yarmouth
Bolsover
Merthyr Tydfil
This independent report summarises learnings from three years of working with communities across England and Wales. It highlights crucial lessons on new ways of designing and resourcing local services to provide sustainable support for people facing complex issues such as homelessness, addiction and domestic abuse.
To find out more about our work with People and Communities, email hballance@lloydsbankfoundation.org.uk.
