About Building Community Capacity and Think Local, Act Personal

The Building Community Capacity project was developed by the Department of Health and is now being led by the Think Local, Act Personal partnership. The project has been working alongside local government partners with the aim of exploring the role of social capital and co-production in the transformation of adult social care and its contribution to health, wellbeing, independence and quality of life for all. Think Local, Act Personal underlines the critical connection between preventative community-based approaches and personalised care and support.

Why focus on Building Community Capacity?

To transform social care and deliver personalisation we need to reach beyond traditional care services. Promoting social capital and building community capacity is a vital part of the equation because the relationships, exchanges, groups, amenities, services and wider communities that form part of everyday life are fundamental to health, wellbeing, and independence. For example, most of us need shops, private and public spaces, housing, transport, friends, work, money, interests and commitments for concepts of 'independence' or 'health' to be meaningful. Put simply, care services can only help us with part of our quality of life.

This view is reinforced by Camden and the Office for Public Management (OPM)'s experience in measuring social capital. When asked what a strong and supportive community looked like local people expressed it in terms of both social capital and facilities and services that they use (See Figure 3). Hence they see social capital as: contributing directly to the quality of their lives; being augmented by services and facilities; and being used to help them make best use of and influence their development.

Social capital will not on its own enable people who use social care to meet their needs unaided, it is just part of the jigsaw.

More about Think Local, Act Personal

The Think Local, Act Personal vision states that:

• Social care change will require the harnessing of the sector's long tradition of volntary ad community action.
• Support should enable people to retain or regain the benefits of community membership, including living in their own homes, maintaining or gaining employment and making a positive contribution to the communities they live in.
• Councils and their partners should encourage and help local communities and groups to provide newtworks of support and invest in building community capacity.
• People, carers, families and communities should be involved in commissioning and service development.
• People's own resources, skills and 'assets' should be mobilised to help them take control of their care and support.

Read more about the Think Local, Act Personal partnership

Background to the project

The project originated as part of the Putting People First delivery team at the Department of Health. Putting People First was a shared vision and commitment to the transformation of adult social care across government. The framework was published in December 2007 via a cross ministerial concordat. It laid out the need for a radical reform of public services, enabling people to live their own lives as they wish, confident that services are of high quality, are safe and promote their own individual needs for independence, well-being and dignity.

Putting People First identified four key and interconnected areas of focus for councils and their partners in delivering the vision. These were: Universal Services, Prevention, Choice and Control, and Social Capital.

Source: 'Putting People First, the whole story', DH 2008

Personalisation

Personalisation, including a strategic shift towards early intervention and prevention, will be the cornerstone of public services in the future. This means that every person who receives support, whether provided by statutory services or funded by themselves, will have choice and control over the shape of that support in all care settings.