Community Well-being Development
"It has become a common assumption in the UK that middle-class areas have more resources available to them than poorer, deprived communities do. This notion has shaped practice to the point where it is believed that nothing can be achieved without grant funding of some kind. The danger of grant chasing is that groups will tend to do what funders want, or what they will fund, or the community does nothing because there are no grants available. Practice in the USA takes a somewhat different approach and there are many autonomous community groups running projects that take advantage of a variety of local resources or assets" (Beck & Purcell 2019).
Our aim is to enable and empower communities to identify and solve their own wellbeing issues regardless of funding by taking advantage of local community assets and building capacity for individual and collective change through mutual support, cooperation and meaningful co-production with local service providers.
Our approach to community wellbeing development is an integrative practice, synthesizing Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) and Transformational Social Learning with Positive Psychology to provide an evidence-based framework for community wellbeing development we call Positive Community Development (PCD).
Positive Community Development involves seeing the community not in terms of an underlying pathology of what is dysfunctional, but in terms of what is inherently functional.
Fundamental to this process are the assumptions that:
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The community is not broken
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The community understands its strengths and weaknesses
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The community can solve its own problems
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External service provision is necessary but not sufficient for meaningful change
We focus on strengths based capacity building to promote community cohesion and wellbeing, which:
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Identifies and develops the collective strengths of the community (groups and resources)
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Identifies and develops the practical strengths of individuals (practical knowledge, skills and abilities)
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Identifies and develops core character strengths of individuals (capacities for thinking, feeling, and behaving in ways that benefit self and others)
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Identifies and develops opportunities for individuals and communities to experience PERMA in an individual and collective context. PERMA is:
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Positive emotions - learning to frame life in a more optimistic way
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Engagement - creating opportunities for engaging in meaningful activities
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Relationships - promoting opportunities for strengthen family, friendships and community
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Meaning - providing opportunities for people to find purpose in life
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Accomplishment - opportunities to achieve individual and collective goals
Central to the capacity building process is the identification and training of community leaders/connectors and the development of networks for co-production. In this context community leadership is not about power and control over others, or a top-down process, it is about information sharing, connecting people, liaising and facilitation.
The role of community leaders is essential for the sustainability and coherence of community cohesion and wellbeing as it is the leaders who will provide the mechanism for liaison between the community and service providers. They are essentially network facilitators and are the first point of contact for information and signposting in the community, and they are the people who disseminate information between and within community groups.
Simply, it is the community leaders who maintain local activities after the professionals have exited the community. They become the facilitators of their own community wellbeing!