Connecting Communities

• 11th Feb 2022
• Community

Connecting Communities: To pioneer an approach to improve wellbeing, reducing isolation amongst older people utilising the Stevenage Community Transport service.

Stevenage Borough Council (SBC) has run a community transport scheme for over 30 years, focused on providing transport solutions for older people and those with disabilities. The service primarily offers daily trips to social clubs, shopping venues and local attractions. The service charges a nominal fee to users and is further subsidised by the council. Throughout the service there have been numerous anecdotal examples of older people’s wellbeing improving as a consequence of the relationships and connections to services that are made. These have been more challenging to capture, as they are often intangible and longer-term in their nature.

Through a Co-operative Councils Innovation Network (CCIN) Policy Prototype we aimed to formalise this, to train and develop the role of Community Transport Drivers to become Community Connectors. The aims of this being:

• to support older people to increase their social networks,

• to support early intervention of preventative services reducing the need for crisis intervention,

• to encourage statutory services to change their commissioning processes to recognise the role of “relationships” to improve wellbeing for older people

• Connecting Communities

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