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CollaborAGE: Co-production and community approaches

Along with personalisation, community-based responses and co-production approaches address many of the Care Act's requirements and direction of travel while not being terms specifically used in the Act. There are many initiatives, some led or involving housing providers, which illustrate the value of facilitating community development, co-production and user-led provision. We have captured these in an exciting new online CollaborAGE Directory of local community-led approaches to housing and care.

The CollaborAGE Directory and other resources listed below provide information for commissioners, providers, community leaders and individuals on the benefits and challenges of these approaches, top tips, studies and examples. And read the Housing LIN's Jeremy Porteus Blog on CollaborAGE.

A Quality of Life: Code of Practice

The Quality of Life Foundation have produced a code of practice, based on eight principles, aimed to enable effective community consultation and engagement in development, planning and design.

Coproducing Research in Practice: Experiences from the Amar Bari, Amar Jibon project

Published on The Open University’s Societal Challenges webpages, this blog from the Amar Bari, Amar Jibon research team draws attention to how coproduction is core to the Dunhill Medical Trust funded research concerning urban ageing amongst Bangladeshi communities in East London and reflects on their experience.

What’s fixed and what’s flexible? An honest approach to co-production

This blog by Jennie Shrewsbury, Good Practice Mentors Programme and Co-production Lead at South Yorkshire Housing Association, was published to coincide with Co-production week 2024.

Bridging the Gaps In Evidencing Prevention: Key Findings from a Multi-site Study of Local Area Coordination

This evaluation report by the University of Hull examines the key benefits across four Local Area Coordination (LAC) projects overseen by Community Catalysts and the LAC Network. The findings show that LAC works on a number of different fronts, from system level to community and individual level impacts.

Learning from the Community Development with Older People role in South Bristol

This new blog by Kathleen Woodhouse highlights the work of the Knowle West Healthy Living Centre in South Bristol, focusing on their efforts to engage older people in the community through an Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) approach.

Creating a Britain that Works and Cares

Published by the Centre for Social Justice, this research highlights the importance of carers in society, making the economic and fiscal case for better support of working-age carers and offering detailed recommendations for action.

Good Housing, a Cornerstone of Community Contribution

In this Housing LIN guest blog, Nick Sinclair, Director at Local Area Coordination Network, shares his passion for community and community led-approaches that led him to Local Area Coordination.

Collaborative Housing and Innovation in Care (CHIC) Project Report

Funded by the National Institute of Health Research School for Social Care Research, the CHIC research project report explores the ways in which collaborative housing might help meet the changing care needs of older people.

A brighter social care future: co-producing the evidence to make five key changes: Evidence Review (2023)

This Evidence Review, co-produced by Research in Practice and Social Care Future, brought together groups of people, with different lived experiences of social care, to talk about five key changes needed in social care in order to unlock an equal life.

How to embed asset-based approaches in health and social care: integration across public and community sectors

This work by IMPACT examines asset-based approaches to the design and delivery of health and social care services, building on lessons from the IMPACTAgewell® Demonstrator project in Northern Ireland.

Building the Economic Case for Social Prescribing

Recognising the urgent need to demonstrate the health economic benefits of social prescribing, the National Academy for Social Prescribing (NASP) commissioned a rapid scoping review of 19 studies on the economic impact of social prescribing and 7 studies on the impact of social prescribing on health service usage.

Putting People at the Heart of Care and Support: Emerging Approaches on Co-Production

This report for East of England ADASS developed by the "Putting People at the Heart of Care and Support" working group captures emerging practice from a selection of co-production approaches in adult social care from across the region.

Toward a feminist housing commons? Conceptualising care-(as)-work in collaborative housing

This article shows that the framework of care-(as)-work is key to bringing a critical understanding of the labour, often gendered, that goes into making and maintaining “community” in collaborative housing.

Making every relationship matter: a practitioner toolkit for relational care with older people

An accessible practitioners’ toolkit for care providers and professionals.

The value and practice of relational care with older people: a research report by The Open University

Understanding how to develop positive relationships when delivering care is vitally important.

The power of co-production

First published in Care Management Matters on July 4 2023, this Housing LIN guest blog by Debra Edwards, a co-production champion for (TAPPI), shares her lived experience of drawing on care and support housing and reflects on the key principles that make co-production a success.

French lessons on Ageing in a Cohousing community: A realistic alternative until the end of life?

Published to coincide with Coproduction Awareness Week 2023, this Housing LIN guest blog is written by Dr Anne Labit at Universities of Orléans and Tours, France, and outlines a nationwide participatory action research project on cohousing.

French lessons on Ageing in a Cohousing community: A realistic alternative until the end of life?

A guide to getting started in co-production

This guide, produced by the TEC Action Alliance, shares why co-production must be integral to health and care, always the starting point, always defined by the individual who will receive the support to live a good life.

Inclusive Engagement Toolkit

Published by Community Consultation for Quality of Life (CCQOL), this Inclusive Engagement Toolkit is a handy resource that outlines the key steps and principles to enable and encourage equal access to opportunities and resources during consultation and engagement processes for planning.

Innovations In Social Prescribing: the role of housing

This report is part of the National Academy for Social Prescribing Accelerating Innovation Programme and explores how we could accelerate collaboration between social housing and the social prescribing community.

Putting people at the heart of new housing development: Coproducing the place we call home

This Best Practice Guide, published by East of England LGA, features case studies demonstrating integrated working and a high level of coproduction drawn from across the eastern region and further afield from a variety of organisations.

Putting community and cooperation into care and support: community of practice for community businesses and co-operatives

This report, published by think local act person (TLAP), details learnings from phase one of the Community of Practice (CoP) which has concentrated on sharing the ambition, opportunities, risks and barriers to developing community businesses and co-operatives.

Developing our understanding of the difference co-production makes in social care

Published by Social Care Institute for Excellence, this resource shares the research findings conducted with people who have been involved in co-production, considers the evidence about what is understood about co-production in social care, and looks at what more should be done to better evidence the difference that co-production makes.

‘It’s about people, not just Place’: How community organisations support older people in dispersed communities

This report shares findings from Ambition for Ageing's research project that commissioned ten community organisations to deliver activities for dispersed communities over a three-month period to find out more about the kind of support that older people from these communities need to stay connected as they age.

Co-producing with head and heart

In 2015 South Yorkshire Housing Association (SYHA) were delighted that Sheffield was named one of only 14 areas in England to be awarded the Ageing Better programme from The National Lottery Community Fund (TNLCF). This report outlines how Age Better in Sheffield has brought people together to build a city where everyone is proud to grow older.

Communites Can Report

This report on the ‘Communities Can’ partnership between Stonewater and Community Catalysts summarises an eleven-month journey across three localities to take more community-centred approaches, supporting staff, residents and wider stakeholders with practical tools to understand and develop the assets and strengths of local people and their places.

Ten Actions for an Asset-Based Area – Report

This action orientated report shares examples of where councils such as Leeds, City of York, Swindon, Kirklees and Hammersmith and Fulham, along with organisations including Choice Support and Wiltshire Centre for Independent Living are taking practical steps to shift in the direction of building asset-based communities.

The community opportunity: Lessons for adult social care from the Keep it Local campaign

Published by Locality, this paper showcases the vital and unique role that community-led care can play in tackling the adult social care crisis.

Community Power: The Evidence

This report on Community Power by New Local is based on the principle that communities have a wealth of knowledge and assets within themselves, which if understood and nurtured by practitioners and policymakers, has the potential to strengthen resilience and enable prevention-focused public services.

Stronger Together: A Co-production Toolkit from Ageing Better

Ageing Better have launched the Stronger Together toolkit co-created by the 14 national Ageing Better programmes across England

Local Area Co-ordination in Derby: Evaluation report 2018 - 2021

The aim of this evaluation report, published by Derby City Council, was to reveal how Local Area Coordination (LAC) is a practical assets-based approaches that can helps to reform and support local health and social care systems, benefiting citizens, services and finances in Derby.

Creating a sense of “belonging” in older age

In his new guest blog for the Housing LIN, ExtraCare Charitable Trust’s Dr Michael Roberts considers what we can do to bring about a much-needed sense of renewal, after COVID-19 forced us to reflect on our sense of “belonging”.

The essential guide to provider collaboratives

This ‘how to’ guide aims to clarity what is meant by ‘provider collaborative’, explain the benefits, demonstrate how to set up and/or join a provider collaborative and show how the Good Government Institute (GGI) can help.

Understanding and aligning link worker and community capacity building activity: A place-based approach in York and Wakefield

This report - commissioned by NHS England and delivered by Coalition for Personalised Care and partners - sets out how be employing link workers helps build community capacity and help health colleagues to deliver greater personalised health, including links to social prescription.

COVID-19, Inequality and Older People: Developing Community-Centred Interventions

This report by the Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research into Ageing (MICRA) and Manchester Urban Ageing Research Group (MUARG) highlights the pressures on communities the challenges that face social networks in communities, as a result of Covid-19, and the effectiveness of activities that have taken place to address this, such as Mutual Aid groups.

A CollaborAGE Directory – Championing Communities

Do you know your cohousing from your community circles? - In this Housing LIN directory, we put the spotlight on models of collaboration in the development of age-friendly homes and sustainable communities during Local Area Coordination Week.

Real time evaluation of Leeds Neighbourhood Networks

This report for the Centre for Ageing Better evaluates the response in Leeds to COVID-19. The Leeds Neighbourhood Networks support older people to live independently and to participate in their communities. Following the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020, they adapted their service offer rapidly to meet the needs of people living in their communities. The report summaries the key outcomes of the service transformation.

Which Way Next? How Local Area Coordination can help us beyond this crisis towards a better future for all

The report from the Local Area Coordination Network and Community Catalysts outlines how the LAC approach has adapted to meet new challenges and argues for the creation of a powerful new deal based on the strengths and assets of our communities and the abundance of neighbourliness.

Sketches from Spain: Finding inspiration on informal care community networks

Elisa Pozo Menéndez, an architect and urban designer specializing in Sustainable Cities and Healthy Ageing in Spain, writes about her experience Covid-19 in Madrid. In particular, she describes the importance of the way informal networks were established to provide community support, the resultant connectivity and neighbourliness offered to combat loneliness and isolation, and how the links made are now being sustained to generate a new self-managed mutual support.

Exploration and Discovery - Getting under the skin of it

This report from partners TLAP/SCIE and Shared Lives reports back on Phase II of the work undertaken by the Social Care Innovation Network. It seeks to discover how to develop, through learning groups, practical lessons on how we can develop the conditions in which innovations in social care can flourish or proliferate.

We Were Built for This: How community organisations helped us through the coronavirus crisis

This report from Locality highlights the vital role that community organisations have played in meeting community need and supporting people during the Coronavirus crisis.

Community Micro-Enterprises: As a driver of local economic development in social care

This New Economics Foundation (NEF) report explores the benefits to local economies of community micro-enterprises. These are small social businesses that provide care and support in diverse ways.

Building community capacity – 7 economic case studies

This case study report commissioned by TLAP summarises the key findings of seven different approaches to building community capacity.

Evidence for strengths and asset-based outcomes: A quick guide

This quick guide from SCIE and NICE is based on recommendations from a range of NICE guidelines and quality standards that focus on identifying and supporting an individual’s strengths and assets.

Social Infrastructure: How shared spaces make communities work

This report from Ambition for Ageing argues that to reduce social isolation, we need a diversity of social infrastructure to ensure chance social encounters with a diversity of people.

Embedding Community Circles in Support for Older People Living in Residential Care Homes or Extra Care

How can community circles help increase person and community centred support?

Strengths-based social work: practice framework and handbook

A handbook from the Department of Health and Social Care

Participatory City

Participation in practical everyday activities transforms people’s lives and the neighbourhoods in which they live.

Nothing About Disabled People Without Disabled People

This report identifies how to remove the barriers disabled people face in the Hammersmith & Fulham, by working with the council to ensure appropriate action is delivered.

Building Collaborative Readiness: Mapping Community Resources

This resource from the Tamarack Institute documents how "mapping community assets can be an instrumental tool to building collaborative readiness."

Peer Support in Practice: A Research Report with Recommendations for Practice

This report from Inclusion Barnet was created to assist with how we talk and think about peer support, by describing the characteristics of good, intentional peer support.

Community-Led Housing: a Key Role for Local Authorities

This report from CCIN illustrates why and how councils across the UK are enabling and supporting Community-Led Housing (CLH); 12 local authorities case studies have been produced across in England, Scotland and Wales.

How-to Guides for creating an Asset-based Area: Transforming conventional into asset-based practice

The first in a series of How-to Guides that put 'flesh on the bones' of Asset-Based Areas and how they can be developed.

Co-production: A Manifesto for growing the core economy

This document from the New Economics Foundation (NEF) sets out to define co-production, to explain it, to offer a range of possibilities for making it happen and to paint a broad vision of what public services might look like if they embraced it.

Heading Upstream: Barnsley's innovations for social justice

Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council have commissioned this report to demonstrate the changes they have made over the years to help local people.

The Asset-Based Area

This briefing paper by Shared Lives Plus describes ten features of an ‘asset-based area’ necessary for developing strong communities and sustainable public services.

Owning our care: Investigating the development of multi-stakeholder co-operative social care in the UK

This report states that no overhaul of the funding for care will be sufficient unless there is also a simultaneous shift in our approach to providing care and wellbeing

The Place of Kindness: Combating loneliness and building stronger communities

With the support of JRF, The Carnegie Trust in Scotland have been working with seven organisations to test what, if anything, could be done to encourage kinder communities

Asset-based places: A model for development

This SCIE briefing suggests a framework for local areas to enable asset-based approaches to thrive.

The A-Z of Co-Design: A brief introduction to participatory design

This bite-sized ' A-Z of Co-Design', produced by Mobility, Mood and Place and supported by the Centre for Accessible Environments, is a folding wallchart exploring participatory design's origins, methods...

Taking care: a co-operative vision for social care in England

This Cooperative Party report concerns the provision of formal adult social care in England. The analysis examines the trends influencing adult social care - legislation, public investment, personalisation,...

Growing Older Together: An Overview of Collaborative Forms of Housing for Older People

This Housing LIN Case Study Report shows how collaborative models of service delivery for older people are now being widely adopted in the heath and care sectors and suggests that housing could do more...

Collaborative Healthcare: Supporting CCGs and HWBs to support integrated personal commissioning and collaborative care

This guide by Inclusive Change, the national partnership set up to help people "live good lives in good places", shows how small-scale community projects are already delivering major health benefits...

Developing a national user movement of people with dementia

"Learning from the dementia engagement and empowerment project (DEEP)" JRF's Dementia without Walls programme started in June 2012, with a vision of making the UK a better place for people with dementia....

Continuing Care Neighbourhoods: neighbourhoods that continually care

This Housing LIN Viewpoint no 73 argues that all of our residential neighbourhoods and communities - urban, suburban and rural - need to be considered as 'continuing care neighbourhoods', which are intergenerational,...

Coproduction and Participation: Older people with high support needs

This report gives a summary of a review of literature and a small-scale survey of good practice on the participation and co-production of older people with high support needs. This is a key issue for...

Building community-based support with older people: evidence from research and other reports

This report by Outside the Box is a summary of reports, discussion papers and research studies that have been published over the past few years. Drawing on UK examples, it look at aspects of creating...

Community-led care and support: a new paradigm

The aim of the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) roundtable discussion in February 2015 was to identify, celebrate, support and learn from community-led activity. They aimed to identify practical...

Community Hubs: A partnership approach to creating community based services for older people in Gloucestershire

This Housing LIN case study no 106 provides an overview of the initial findings from the first year's evaluation of the development of Community Hubs in Gloucestershire. It is based on a paper originally...

Inside out and upside down: Community based approaches to social care prevention in a time of austerity

This report showcases six councils that have developed their approaches to asset based community development in a climate of austerity. The report draws out some of the themes that are emerging from...

Landscapes of helping: kindliness in neighbourhoods and communities

This paper from the JRF explores how communities need to evolve, to reconnect, so that people cultivate the 'background hum' of sociability that has been associated with neighbourliness. Drawing on...

A guide to community-centred approaches for health and wellbeing

This report by Public Health England and NHS England presents the work undertaken in phase 1 of the 'Working in Communities' project. It provides a guide on building confident and connected communities...

ABCD in Practice: Connecting Older People and Communities

This report by Sitra takes a look at Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) for older people. With a growing interested in building resilient, strength-based community involvement, the report includes...

Developing the Power of Strong, Inclusive Communities

The Care Act places a responsibility on health and wellbeing boards and partners to fulfil new wellbeing and prevention duties. Developing the Power of Strong, Inclusive Communities sets out a framework,...

Can a neighbourhood approach to loneliness contribute to people's well-being?

This report evaluates JRF and JRHT's Neighbourhood approaches to loneliness programme. It: highlights that good practice requires skilled staff who are able to communicate effectively and provide pastoral...

Commissioning for Outcomes and Co-production

This report by NEF looks at commissioning for outcomes in the context of social value, well-being and co-production. It includes practical resources to help commissioners put these ideas into practice...

Top Ten Tips for Co-production

Sally Percival, Chair of TLAP's National Co-production Advisory Group, has worked with colleagues to produce a one page profile of coproduction including ten top tips for its effective implementation....

Co-production in social care: what it is and how to do it

This is a guide to what co-production is and how to develop co-productive approaches to working with people who use services and carers. It is aimed at managers and commissioners, frontline practitioners...

Loneliness resource pack

A set of resources to help individuals, groups, communities and neighbourhoods take a closer look at - and to reduce - loneliness.

The Connecting People Intervention: A pilot study

This presentation and NIHR Research Findings report on the results of a project for practitioners to support isolated people to engage with their local communities and enhance their social networks....

Are we there yet? A planning tool and checklist for building community connections

This checklist and planning tool aims to help local organisations and people make sure that, in tough times, the real wealth of local communities is released and sustained.

Viewpoint on Co-Production, Personalisation and Housing: Improving Outcomes for Individuals and Communities

Housing LIN Viewpoint No 18 - Further to the bigger role for communities and emphasis placed on co-production in the recent Vision for Adult Social Care , and the Decentralisation and Localism Bill,...

Putting People Centre Stage

The aim of this Housing LIN Report and the accompanying case studies is to emphasise the real benefits to commissioners and providers of housing with care and support which arise from the genuine engagement...

Weathering the downturn - What is the future for Lifetime Neighbourhoods?

This new ILC-UK report brings together analysis of recent developments, specifically the impact of the downturn in the economy on lifetime neighbourhoods and if the original agenda set out in the government's...

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Everything we do at GreenSquareAccord is about people – whether that’s providing a good quality, safe home, or helping someone to live an independent life. It feels a natural fit to partner with the Housing LIN and its ambitions to provide accessible information to progress the care and retirement housing sector for the people who need our services most.”
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