People living well within supportive communities is at the heart of the local Health and Social Care Partnership’s aspirations. One of its priorities is to connect people to their neighbourhoods and communities, promoting good health and self-help.

CTSI, SVE and partners have created a new volunteer role to support this aim: Community Health Champions (CHC)

A CHC is a named person based in an organisation or group, who would volunteer to help support people referred to you for support.  

Community Health Champions (CHC) can support people in their communities in different ways.  

One is supporting people making the first contact with a group.

Our Community Link Workers have found that a barrier for people looking to access local services, is getting their foot over the door for the first time. CHC’s can help support this. They could do this through things like: meeting them outside and bringing them into the group; helping them become comfortable in a new environment by showing them around and introducing them to people.  

This is a fantastic support for new people and will also help organisations retain more attendees for their activities and would be useful when putting in funding applications in future (partnership working with CLW’s, TSIs, HSCP etc).

 

CHC’s will be supported by and based in host organisations, but will also be invited to a quarterly get together with each other and the Community Link Workers. This will be an opportunity for peer support, idea sharing and to explore further training opportunities.