Finding, engaging and supporting the people you most want to reach

This in person workshop builds upon the work of the Social Connections Group, convened by the Population Health Hub. The Group has brought together residents, community organisations, and public health professionals to understand and enhance social connection across City and Hackney.

Thanks to dedicated funding for this initiative, we are pleased to offer this workshop free of charge. As places are limited, we kindly ask that you cancel your booking in advance if you can no longer attend, which will allow us to offer your spot to someone else.

Session overview

Hosted by Good Practice Mentors, this session will explore practical approaches, tools and tips for finding and working with the people in your community who are seldom heard from, and those least likely to say ‘yes’ to formal groups or services.

We’ll be exploring some of our communities and our own barriers to engaging, and introduce some practical ways you can informally reach out to the people you want to meet. You’ll have an opportunity to create a piece of informal, outreach friendly comms and consider how to create welcoming spaces that will keep people coming back to work with you.

Finally, we’ll explore how you can create a ‘Warm Welcome’ and how this approach can keep members of your community returning to engage with you in the future, and develop more sustainable connections amongst themselves.

This session is for anyone who is looking for new ways to engage with the people in your community who are most likely to say ‘that’s not for me’, but whose voice you most want, and need to hear.

Faciliator bios

Jennie Shrewsbury – Good Practice Mentor, South Yorkshire Housing Association

Jennie is a solution focused practitioner who is passionate about making co-production accessible and achievable for a wide range of organisations, networks and individuals. Jennie works across the country as part of the Good Practice Mentor Programme, supporting organisations and communities to describe what co-production means to them, and to find simple ways to include and use co-production in, and with, their communities.

Jennie also supports organisations to explore how they can embed Ripple Effect Mapping into their work as part of a participatory evaluation approach, aligning with her belief that both co-production and evaluation should be both easy to use and realistic for those organisations that want to build relationships and shift power imbalances with the communities they support

Jessica Duffy – Good Practice Mentor, Leeds Older People’s Forum

Jessica has worked at LOPF since 2018, for the Time to Shine programme, gathering learning from a range of smaller delivery partners who worked with older people to reduce loneliness and social isolation. The Time to Shine project gathered learning on Warm Welcome techniques, working in a person-centred way, supporting younger older people and anti-ageism campaigning.

Jessica ran a peer support network for those delivery organisations during the Covid 19 pandemic, as well as running regular training sessions for older people’s organisations.

She also brings 25 years of experience in the environmental sector where she trained staff and volunteers, and worked with communities to set up local conservation groups. She trained people in group leadership, volunteer management as well as a range of practical skills like tree planting.

Jo Stapleton, Good Practice Mentor, Age UK Camden

Jo Stapleton is a Good Practice Mentor Outreach Specialist based at Age UK Camden. Her work focuses on sharing outreach training and support for organisations to successfully find and engage the people they would like to reach. Jo has previously worked as the Senior Manager of a UK-wide peer support network based at a national disability charity as well as Outreach Manager of the Ageing Better in Camden programme