Community Circles

We believe that relationships are key to creating true wellbeing, which is why have built Community Circles into our support model. Community Circles are the ideal way for us to support great relationships to thrive in a way that is effective and great value-for-money.

How do Community Circles work?

Community Circles help people to be happier, healthier and more connected with the support of those around them.

They do this because they realised that, more often than not, people have other people in their life who’d like to help them out – but they don’t know how or where to start.

A Community Circle solves this by bringing people together to help someone who needs it and giving everyone the opportunity to find out what they can best do to help. The Circle then helps to share tasks, and keeps everyone in the loop about how things are going. Members meet every few weeks with the person being supported and their Circle facilitator, who keeps things on track and makes sure that conversations turn into actions.

If it sounds simple, that’s because it is.

Traditionally, communities organised themselves to support each other. Today the way we live, work and interact with our communities has changed, but the principles have stayed the same. We believe that all today’s communities need is a little help to learn how to support each other again. Community Circles are the way to make that happen.

What this means for Wellbeing Teams

In the Wellbeing Teams model, this means that people are:

  • supported to do more of what matters to them
  • enabled to maintain relationships with people other than paid staff
  • able to use paid support only where necessary, once other options have been explored; making the service more cost-effective and delivering more with less
Find out more about Community Circles

Visit www.community-circles.co.uk or download the free e-book ‘Innovations in Dementia’, produced by In Control and Helen Sanderson Associates with sponsorship from Alternative Futures Group.

Why we need a new model

12 ways that Wellbeing Teams are different

How we will spread Wellbeing Teams

Information for commissioners

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