denise is a community health champion in the city of york she arranges activities with a focus on connecting people and building relationships in her community for me being a health champion it's more than just a sense of pride and it's more about me being able to get my passions out into the community but it also gives me a sense of purpose it makes me feel like all these fantastic people that have helped me that's my way of giving back to them and it's my way of creating this lovely ripple eff
ect for future generations in york local area coordinators connect with people and help them to achieve their vision of a good life exploring options and overcoming barriers being involved with the local area coordinators especially with sarah has been actually quite a powerful journey they walk along beside you and guide you but what they do is and it's it's really clever and i i think it's quite fantastic they'll guide you but it's not them telling you it's actually you they support you it's y
ou that makes these decisions it's just that they bring out that best side of you just by being there and being a friend and being supportive encouraging people to build on their strengths and natural support networks develops their personal resilience and also that of the community denise was introduced to me by a person at the local primary school this lady introduced saying this person is quite new to the village um she lost her leg due to cancer and she could really deal with some support yo
u know our journey is still still ongoing but denise is just such a big part of the community that she doesn't often need my support anymore you know she walks down the street and people's faces light up because they know that she's like there and you know she's chatting and she always makes people feel a lot better strengths-based approaches put people in relationships at the heart of everything and shift power to citizens and communities every area of york is slightly different so we we actual
ly adapt to where we are and um having that freedom to to develop the role and to be who we are and to really get to know the areas it really works we don't go around with lanyards on saying that we're from the council we're very fortunate to be employed by the council but we very much see ourselves as embedded in the community being able to listen and take on board what that person's saying we can make assumptions about how we think somebody's life should be but listening to them you can get an
idea of what life they want and that is crucial to having an asset based approach language is key to reducing inequality and creating the different kinds of relationships which is part of the vision for york helping the council to create a more caring compassionate connected society and city we're very big on language and how we've been reframing the narrative and discussion to reflect more strength and asset based practice so we always talk about the citizen you know the active citizen that ag
ain reflects wanting to build on people's passions skills assets their gifts their capabilities and to tell their own story connected caring communities of active citizens are central to people living well leadership that understands nurtures social action through a sense that we're all in this together by investing in communities local authorities can cultivate the conditions for people to flourish and over time reduce the dependency on formal services to resolve crisis a number of the people t
hat asked to be introduced to us as a team are struggling with their mental health loneliness and isolation and often the solution is not in a medical model you know in hospital in care it's in the community through the power of the culture arts creative sectors through the power of sport and physical activity dee's a great example of one of our health champions somebody have lived experience that had fallen on very difficult and challenging times reflecting her complex health condition but has
some amazing personal qualities and through ourselves working with her tapping into her potential has been an amazing story it's a great example of community building city of york council are challenging the traditional approach to measuring outcomes and inviting people to tell their stories to make systems better so we were looking at a way to measure the impact of social action and decided to do something that was a lot more creative and develop the stories that we knew had such a big impact i
nto something that would maybe have a little bit more academic rigor so we would make them into layered stories so start with the individual story develop that into some accessible format so we would have it in written format a picture with a hard hitting quote and a short film and then around that map some of the community connections and the social action in the community context and then above that the systemic context and the the wider kind of ripple effect and we've taken those stories to y
ou know head of housing and and one of the stories uh you know it's really been a catalyst for system change and and really fed into the way that housing are restructuring their services using community intelligence and experience to co-design services creates reciprocal relationships between citizens and local authorities i think so many systems have done really well at designing people out and designing that human contact and that human element out of processes and everything we do and evaluat
ion and local area coordination definitely brings that back in i grew up in a small village so when i grew up i was always told it takes a community in a village to raise a child i think that in this ideal world that we create if we have a lot of people together all helping each other all supporting each other then you know you can only grow from strength to strength can't you the only way you're going to get that ideal world is if the community is all band together and we all support one anothe
r we live in challenging times but have seen how quickly communities can mobilize showing natural kindness and creativity the power of human connection and compassion in finding collective solutions is clear you
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