Often disabled people and people with mental health difficulties are isolated from their local community. Those people with a label of “complex needs” are most at risk of living a life that is far from ordinary and often spent segregated from society.

Community Connecting uses an assets-based approach to create relationships between disabled people and people with mental health difficulties and their local community. Relationships are grounded in shared interests and a mutual exchange of assets. Both disabled people and the local community have something to give and a lot to gain by connecting.

We use Community Connecting as an approach across a range of projects to enable disabled people and people with mental health difficulties to have meaningful friendships and connections which unlock opportunities:

• We provide training in how Community Connecting can be used as a means to enable people to be linked into their local areas, gain friendships and other opportunities.
• We use Community Connecting as part of our Leadership Programmes to enable people to make strategic links that can benefit their personal and career development.
• Since 2018, we have been working with the Co-op Foundation on our Common Ground project, which uses community connecting as an approach to tackle youth loneliness in young disabled people and young people with lived experience of mental health difficulties.

If you want to know more about Community Connecting email us at [email protected] or ring us on 0300 302 0770.