Growing and Developing your Community

Are you looking at how to evaluate your community work that is promoting health regarding caregiving, serious illness, death and grieving?

Check out this article on a RE-Aim evaluation framework which could be used to evaluate your Compassionate Community.

I am a retired community based researcher (Social Work background) who has been doing community capacity development in the area of dying, death, loss and grief for 20 years. I am currently working with Compassionate Ottawa.

One of the initiatives being undertaken in Ottawa is the HELP project, which essentially is using community development approaches to build capacity in the geographic catchment areas of 2 community health centres and among the membership of 2 faith communities. Dr. Pam Grassau of Carleton University is the principle researcher.

Grace Johnston, Pam would be a great contract for you in Nova Scotia. Let me know if you want an introduction mlkelley@lakeheadu.ca

I also want to recommend Tamarack’s new publication on Asset Based Community Development. It is an excellent and concise resource to approaches for bottom up and inside out community change work.

Hello everyone! Sorry in advance - you'll come across this more than once as we want to make sure everyone will see it:

I'm Cara, the Compassionate Communities Engagement Coordinator. The Exchange is meant to be informative, current, engaging, and most of all, useful to you! 

Sometimes HOW you say something can be just as important as WHAT you're saying. For this platform to be beneficial to you, make your posts accessible and appealing to other community members. 

Here are the top 4 tips to increase engagement of your post (see image).

The benefits of a well-done post include more likes, discussion, feedback, and relationships with other community members-the Exchange is a great space to connect with others. Make the most of your time here by using these tips.

I'm excited to see where higher engagement can take your posts. See you around the Exchange!

If you have feedback, ideas, or questions, my inbox is always open. You can message me here or email me at cdavidson@pallium.ca. 

What are Compassionate Communities initiatives calling them-selves around the world? (Those working towards engage the whole community to create a culture change)

In the UK they say Compassionate ........ (name of city or community).

In Canada, we do have two examples of this Compassionate Ottawa and Compassionate Kingston. Is this how we should name all Compassionate Community work that includes the whole community?

Five years ago (2014), Nova Scotia released its “Integrated Palliative Care” plan. The approach is “rooted in primary health care” (page 6). One pillar is “Capacity building and practice change” (page 5). The full report is at: https://novascotia.ca/dhw/palliativecare/documents/Integrated-Palliativ…

Would appreciate your thoughts on what to advise to advance this strategy into the future by proposing how collaborative primary care practices across the province could help build ‘compassionate communities’.

I submitted an abstract to the Primary Health Care Research Day in Halifax in June. In the months ahead, I plan to prepare and post a report on this at dal.ca.nels .

The 2018 paper by Abel, Kellehear, and Karapliagou in the UK advocates social prescribing, network/care mapping, and employing community development workers (Table 2). http://apm.amegroups.com/article/view/19026/19347

NavCare led by Barb Pesut from UBC also seems to show much promise: https://pesut-lab.sites.olt.ubc.ca/projects-2/ncare/

Advance care planning is already happening across Nova Scotia, e.g. NSHA Community Health teams offer education and support each month in their educational programming: http://www.nshealth.ca/service-details/Community%20Health%20Teams Research on developing a primary care webportal was funded by CFN focusing on identifying persons who are frail: https://www.dal.ca/sites/nels/research/tvn-implementing-frailty-portal…

Do you support these ideas?
What else would you advise?

Sustainable Community Development: from what's wrong to what's strong - Cormac Russel (2016)

"Thousands and thousands of pieces of evidence call us to the idea that we should start with the capacities and abilities in people and in communities" says Cormac Russel as he talks about focusing on strengths rather than deficiencies. This video provides knowledge on applying asset-based community development and fostering sustainability which are key when building Compassionate Communities. Examples of communities' experiences are shared which can help community champions visualize the significance of identifying, connecting and mobilizing local assets (a bottom-up approach) to address community needs within caregiving, dying, death and grieving.

Click here to watch the TED Talk:

Returning Death to the Community - Cormac Russel (2017)

This video would be helpful for Compassionate Communities champions looking to gain an understanding of asset-based community development in the context of caregiving, dying, death and grieving. Cormac Russel highlights key foundations of community development such as the importance of collaborating and working with communities (i.e. a bottom-up approach) rather than re-creating services for them we think they need (i.e. top-down approach). Overall this video provides a basic understanding of how to approach Compassionate Communities as a movement that encourages empowerment and sustainability (i.e. "with" and "by" the community rather than "to" and "for"). 

Click here to view the video: https://www.restorecommons.com/returning-death-to-community/

Public Health Palliative Care International (PHPCI)

This association works to help embed health promotion principles within palliative care. The Compassionate City Charter is designed to promote health and is one of the ways in which they are supporting serious-illness, caregiving, dying, and grieving.

There aim is to support those working in this area through conferences, webinars, newsletters, and connection with others around the world. This is a great place to look for new research and example of Compassionate Communities around the world.

To learn more, click here: http://www.phpci.info/

Title: Understanding community engagement in end of life care: developing conceptual clarity

This article is helpful when trying to understand what community engagement is and gives engagement examples which results in high impact within the community. This knowledge and understanding can help to guide your initiative as you will be able to ask yourself - "How well is this potential project engaging with the community?" The figure below will be able to help you decide.

We have included a picture of the figure 1. Spectrum of engagement in end-of-life care: developing community capacity.

Review the abstract here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09581596.2014.909582

Universities and colleges can be a great resource for accessing supportive articles that aren't open access through in-kind support, and this can be a partnership opportunity for your Compassionate Community initiative.

The reference for the figure 1:Libby Sallnow & Sally Paul (2015) Understanding community engagement in end-of-life care: developing conceptual clarity, Critical Public Health, 25:2, 231-238, DOI: 10.1080/09581596.2014.909582