Tendring Community Assets Full Final Report

52 14 RECOMMENDATIONS There are some issues which extend across all Live Well categories and which should be taken on board across the whole system, these are listed first. 14.1 Community Leadership 14.1.1 Identify and connect community leads and assets across the neighbourhood with a purpose; allow them easy access to information about what is available so that they can draw connections. Facilitate ongoing dialogue between asset leads under the auspices of a co-ordinating body, such as CVST, to maximise existing linkages and organisational skills  regularly bring people together to reinforce and expand upon neighbourhood linkages and service synergies, such as use of network breakfasts, but locating these in different community venues  Learn by doing, enable those delivering the service to help evaluate and plan what works best 14.1.2 Further support and develop existing and identify new local champions to set up, run and/or promote sessions in the community. These pro-active members of the community have achieved excellent results through a mixture of confidence and tenacity and clearly help to establish and maintain many community assets. 14.1.3 Encourage providers to meet regularly, approximately twice a year, to have facilitated, semi-structured, themed group discussions about their services and localities and how they might work jointly with others in their locality or across the district. This should include a new mix of attendees across the sessions to widen the perspective and inspire joined up working. This could be facilitated by Community Agents. 14.2 Improving Transport 14.2.1 Community transport is a lifeline for people living in rural or remote areas. At present the support available does not reach everyone, making risk of loneliness and isolation potentially greater for those excluded. Current transport providers should be encouraged to continue working together to develop a business plan to cover the whole District and support finding applications. Support would be needed to recruit and train more volunteers and to support funding of journeys, volunteers, vehicles for community transport and maintenance costs. 14.3 Improving Information and Access 14.3.1 All significant village halls and community centres and other venues should have a website with good information about what activities are run there, with times, cost and who they are aimed at. This must include having a named person responsible for updating and a simple way of doing so. This should be a simple page avoiding lots of graphics and data heavy animated extras given that many people will be trying to access them on mobile devices or the poor Broadband connections which still exist across the district. It is recommended that service providers avoid using social media platforms (such as Facebook) as an alternative to websites - even where people are digitally active they may not wish to register as users of these sites, which is often required to access all the details. It is recommended that funding is provided to assist with this. It may be helpful to take some good examples and develop guidance for community organisations to use. 14.3.2 Older people need printed information leaflets or newsletters. Some villages have excellent examples of this, available to all households, which could be shared. The existing free press might be used to support this.