Since starting on 1st March 2020 in the role of CC Coordinator, I continue to work towards developing a relationship based on trust, impartiality, compassion, and love, with all community members, wherever they may be located.

Fundamentally the role of the Caring Community Coordinator is to help source resources to support the expressed needs of community members as their requests relate to health and social care and mental and emotional health and wellbeing needs.

Since the inception of CC Coordinator post the remit for the role has evolved. This has been borne out of the diversity and uniqueness of everyone who makes up the whole and from my desire to provide as person-centred a response as possible for each individual.

I hold as my motto – ‘I spell love – T. I. M. E.’ and this comes from something I discovered during my time as a midwife and more latterly as a Care Team Supervisor in residential care for older adults. In my personal experience and anecdotally from colleagues the single most common complaint from ‘clients’ (read people) is that their ‘care provider’ never has enough time for them as an individual. Despite being trained in person-centred care within the NHS as well as the residential home it is absolutely not achievable to do this given the restricted parameters for carrying out the functions of the job, despite the requirements of the job far outstripping what is achievable in the time frames, workloads and resources.

Our growth has been entirely organic and through this has shown us that there is a real (unmet) need for a person-centred responsive supportive structure that utilises community friends and neighbours as well as providing signposting services and alongside that allowing for hosting of peer support/chat groups, awareness raising events, informational/educational materials, social gatherings, working groups, etc. as well as developing collaborative relationships with other organisations and services.

Over the four years (2020-2024) we have literally served hundreds of individuals. Sometimes it is only a one-off and very simple and at other times it is far more complex and ongoing.

My assistant and I assess situations in-person as required and this tends to be for those more complex and potentially ongoing situations such a when a person has been diagnosed with a serious disease, a person is going into and/or discharging from hospital, where a person may have dementia, experiencing mental health issues, when a person is needing end-of-life planning support or is indeed at end-of-life and of course there are multiple other scenarios that can occur such as people ageing and needing to know what is available to them, experiencing bereavement and needing to talk.

We liaise with outside statutory support services and other organisations/agencies, and we network across the third sector. I plan to develop this if I get more hours and a permanent administration assistant. I attended the NHS/Social Care Locality Planning Meeting this week and was very encouraged by the openness of the health and social care services to third sector organisations. I hope we will collaborate more in the new year as I would like to be able to develop relationships and identify where we can create the strategic partnerships and collaborations that would serve our community in the future.

CCCoordinator also provides Health Advocacy to anyone who would benefit and as such either I or my assistant will accompany people to appointments as well as communicate on behalf of people on their instruction and with their full knowledge and consent.

Laura Shreenan
Caring Community Coordinator
Caring Community Circle (CCC)
Park Ecovillage Trust
Findhorn

for more information please see: www.parkecovillagetrust.co.uk/caring-community/