Trust is key to community connectedness

Dartmouth Community Chest community cafe is a great place for advice and support. Even if the people on hand can’t help you straight away, they will find someone who can. The thoughts, ideas and experience of people using the cafe has been included in a national project that looked at how easy – or difficult – it is to get social welfare legal advice.

Dartmouth joined communities in Manchester, Wales and London for a study on Social welfare legal advice and engaging with communities. You may remember Suzy Survey – sorry Susanne – popping around the cafe with an iPad asking questions. The research ‘examined how access to social welfare legal advice interacts with community connectedness, (in)equality, and wellbeing’.

Susanne and Dr Lorien Jasny were the people from Exeter University. And they joined others from University of Manchester, Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation, the UK Advice Services Alliance and the research was led by Dr Sarah Nason of Bangor University.

The responses have been drawn together for a report. It’s an interesting read, and you might say its pretty obvious. But still, it’s nice to see it written down.

One of the themes that stands out is trust and trusted relationships. Another focuses on listening and being heard.

It’s good to see how communities throughout the country face similar, and different, approaches to getting together, working together to share knowledge and solve problems.

You can read the report (it’s 6 pages).

The research was funded by British Academy and Nuffield Foundation collaboration on Understanding Communities.