Build lasting relationships
Effective partnerships is key to developing a successful Dementia Friendly Compassionate Community initiative and can be achieved by working with local organisations with common interests as well as acting as a conduit through which others might achieve change:
- Build lasting partnerships with key stakeholders as well as rural voluntary and community organisations.
- Make use of individual health conditions groups and carer activist groups or individuals.
- Remember that people affected by long term health conditions would rather be supported by those who understand their situation, so make good use of peer groups.
- Set up support groups for all people affected by long term health conditions
- Reach far and wide. Local businesses, especially in small communities, will all have clients affected by various health conditions. NHS and Local Authority personnel often work much of the time in isolation so they may not have the level of knowledge or training around specific conditions that they feel they need, particularly dementia.
- To affect change in communities an initiative needs to cut across the private, statutory and voluntary sectors.
- Accommodate strong personalities – bearing in mind that 48% of Community Investment Companies are dissolved within the first two years and one of the main reasons cited for dissolution is internal disputes. While supporters with strong personalities can help to establish and drive the project forward, tensions can arise when people have differences of opinion, e.g. over the core aims of the initiative or how best to achieve them. Don’t allow strong personalities to sway the initiative with their own agendas. Keep the initiative’s key values and vision at the heart of any decision-making.
- If there are differences of opinion, to avoid losing valued supporters, consider altering the organisational structure, commissioning internal reorganisation and/or dividing responsibilities between groups.