Celebrating our Community Assets – people, places and partnerships

Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust is delighted to be presenting our 4th Better Care Together conference in partnership with Birmingham University and the Community Hospitals Association. Our starting point is celebrating our community hospitals and thinking about what they add to our communities, and what our communities add to them. But what about the people and community organisations across the county that work with and for their communities, either alongside or without a local Community Hospital? What are “community assets” and how do we recognise and value them?

Researchers at the University of Birmingham’s Health Services Management Centre & Third Sector Research Centre in collaboration with the Community Hospitals Association and Crystal Blue Consulting led one of the first major studies to explore the role of community hospitals, patient experience and the relationship which community hospitals have with their local community. This is the link to their research findings: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/social-policy/departments/health-services-management-centre/research/community-hospitals-research-programme.aspx

There has been a growing interest in community hospitals in England as a result of an increased focus on shifting services closer to people’s homes and delivering more integrated care locally. At this conference, colleagues from Birmingham University and the Community Hospitals Association will present the findings from their research and discuss the huge variation in the form, function and community value of community hospitals. We will then go on to ask ourselves about community assets in places without the galvanizing resource of a community hospital; how we recognise, value and support those assets and ensure that the individuals and community organisations that we describe as “assets” are heard.

We will hear from the people who use our community services both hospitals and other services; those who support them as volunteers, members of the Leagues of Friends and Carers; from community organisations of all sizes who help to sustain our communities, and we will share examples of how NHS and non-NHS services are providing specialist, expert and practical support to local people to remain in their own communities.