Examples

Some examples of strong relationships in practice are as follows:

• Groundswell, a charity that helps homeless people, including through the use of volunteers who have had similar experiences to those helped. For more information, read this blog by Steve Wyler.

• Future Links, a partnership between Community Links and the Bank of New York Mellon, which helps provide young people in Newham who are not in education or employment with the skills, social networks and support to get a good job.

• Buurtzorg, which empowers staff to build better relationships with those they help and frees them from unnecessary bureaucracy. Nurses are given extraordinarily high levels of control in their day to day work which leads to higher levels of patient satisfaction and virtually eliminates the need for middle management and so reduces costs. Founded in the Netherlands in 2006-07, Buurtzorg replaced fractured services for those they helped with holistic support, and the nurses under this scheme now look after over half of those needing home care.

• Some examples of schemes or facilities that help build social connection and social capital are allotments, the Big Lunch and GoodGym. These and other examples are explored in Incidental Connections: an analysis of platforms for community building published in 2015 by Community Links.