Together Neighbours: how our work continues to evolve

Back in September, we blogged about shifting from crisis response to community building as we shape our former pandemic response, Together Neighbours, for the long-term.

The past two years have seen major changes: we stepped up quickly in March 2020, mobilising volunteers and getting on the phone to respond to almost 10,000 requests for support to date. Since then, we’ve helped people connect to their communities, regain confidence, and think long-term again.

Six months on from our September blog, and two years on from the start of it all, we’re into the next phase of our community-building journey with three key shifts to our work.

Shifting from a city-wide crisis response to community building in local areas

In crisis response, we’ve had an open referral form, where anyone can contact us to request volunteer help with practical tasks. As time has passed, the need for this support from Oxford Hub has reduced. The City Council Locality Hubs have gone from strength to strength, supporting residents with emergency help, financial advice, and more. Goodgym are also doing excellent work providing practical support around the city. We are very grateful to Goodgym for their support to us throughout 2020, and are excited to see what they do next.

This enables us to focus on community building in specific areas of the city, OX3 and OX4, where the majority of our pandemic response work has taken place. We’re supporting people to access their local communities in new ways with new networks. Covid has exacerbated health inequalities, and we’ve seen over the past two years the great potential of communities to come together. There’s potential in every neighbourhood, not just in crisis, but long-term too.

From the end of March, we won’t have an open referral form. Instead, for now, referrals will come directly from partners. Current members of Together Neighbours will be supported to continue or find a sustainable alternative on a case-by-case basis.

Shifting from volunteer/beneficiary relationships to include peer connections, too

Within our volunteer programmes, we’ve seen promising friendships form, from the shopping volunteer who swaps books with her match to the many Phone Links pairs who go on to meet for coffee in real life. But what if these connections were peers from day one?

This winter our Keeping Connected peer networks introduced peers for friendly phone-calls. We’re also facilitating Umbrella Club, a group of men who meet to share interests.

At Umbrella Club, one attendee has found a new draughts opponent. Meanwhile, a Keeping Connected pair who both experience chronic illness know they can talk to someone who understands when they’re not feeling their best.

Peers often choose to help one another. Alongside our volunteer programmes, we’ll be learning all we can about peer support in this next phase.

Shifting from city-wide volunteer call-outs to local Pods

In 2020, most matches were about shopping. Now, a volunteer might be accompanying someone to the shops or helping them get to a health walk. We call this kind of buddying support Bridge Builders. Time-limited and mostly short-term, it aims to help people gain confidence to build their own community connections.

Lots of our tasks are short-term now, but our volunteers are not — so we’ve launched Local Pods. These Whatsapp groups are pools of volunteers who are notified of tasks and nominate themselves for opportunities as suits — and get to know other volunteers too!

Volunteers can join Local Pods in OX3 and OX4. We’ve also got an OX1+2 pod for the odd task that may come through. Find out how to join here!

If you’d like to join a Local Pod or volunteer as a Bridge Builder Buddy, we’d love to hear from you! As spring blooms in Oxford, we’re excited for the next phase.