FEATURE

Join Up The Dots campaign

The second of the home projects is called ‘Join Up The Dots’ and it’s run by CrossReach, the social care arm of the Church of Scotland.

Pete Cuthbertson, Donor Partnership Officer at CrossReach described the background to ‘Join Up The Dots.’

“We all know that life in the 21st century is becoming immeasurably tougher. Increasingly, people are feeling isolated and cast adrift by the communities that can help them. Loneliness and isolation is being recognised as a serious issue by national government with the Scottish Government issuing a new draft national strategy, one of the first in the world, to tackle loneliness and isolation.”

Pete explained: “At CrossReach we are encountering loneliness in every community and we’ve identified areas where we could, with this funding, make a real difference.

“There are people in rural communities with poor or no public transport links who are unable to reach counselling or listening services. This leads to them having to bottle things up and it can make them feel very alone.

“We have found children who have settled in Scotland as refugees who struggle to integrate into school and make friends.

“We have found adults with learning disabilities experiencing the bewildering effects of dementia as their life expectancy increases, becoming easily confused and withdrawn in otherwise familiar environments.

“We are working with newly-housed homeless men and women, often in an area unfamiliar to them, leading isolated lives apart from the community.

“Older people whose life revolves around a lonely diet of day-time TV as community amenities disappear. In today’s Scotland, two in every five of older people regard the television as their main form of company.

“We’ve found people of all ages with mental health problems retreating into themselves in response to what they are experiencing or as a result of the stigma they carry from others.”

CrossReach, as the Social Care Council of The Church of Scotland, works in over 70 locations throughout Scotland of course, providing loving care and support for every aspect of our society, children and families, adults and older people.

“But as broad as our offering is, we know that there are areas of need we are not currently able to support.

“This new partnership with the Guild will allow our services to expand to increasing numbers of those who are lonely and isolated and therefore harder to reach.

“We have targeted several areas for the specific use of the Guild funding.

“We plan to develop and roll-out a digital health platform that will allow those in rural communities or those in sprawling suburbs, to access care and support remotely and be able to feel connected without leaving where they live or work.

“We want to expand services like the CrossReach ‘Daisy Chain Early Years Project’ which brings together families from multicultural Govanhill where many refugees from any number of countries now live. We would like to take that blueprint out into other communities where it could be used to good effect,” says Pete.

“We want to recruit and retrain new Dementia Ambassadors. We already have a Dementia Ambassador in all our care homes. They are specially trained to help those living longer with learning disabilities to come to terms with, and embrace, the alienating effects of dementia. We want to be able to bring more of these Dementia Ambassadors into action.

“We also plan to use the funding to set up a ‘Befriending’ scheme, initially in Inverness, that will provide sustained support with integration into the community of newly rehoused previously homeless people.”

“In another innovative move, we would also like to reconfigure some of our residential care homes to enable those who are living a ‘cut-off’ life in the neighbourhood who will be able to come together with the residents of the homes to enjoy the same on-site high quality amenities and services in dedicated public areas. It’s hoped that this interaction between the residents of the homes and the people who live nearby, and who wouldn’t normally have an alternative to daytime TV, will be able to develop a community together that will benefit both sets of people.

“It’s ambitious, but we also want to be able to develop our Community Guide Service that provides one-to-one support for those in their communities with mental health problems.

“The Community Guides help to increase their client’s self-esteem, bring them new confidence in going out and coping with interacting with other people and help them to become involved in local activities or groups that interest them and will help them get more out of their lives.”

The final project is organised by the Boys’ Brigade, Scotland.

“‘Faith in Young People’, focuses on growth within the Boys’ Brigade in Scotland. We think this is particularly fitting to launch this during 2018, Scotland’s Year of Young People,” says Niall Roland, Communications and Engagement Officer for BB Scotland.

“The support from the Guild will allow us to grow the organisation in three distinct areas: Growth in Faith; Growth in community engagement; and Growth in membership.

“Today, the Boys’ Brigade and the Church face the same challenge of being more visible in our outreach and engagement with local communities.

“The BB has a unique role to play as a mission partner for the Church of Scotland – reaching out to young people, their families and their communities. For many churches the BB provides a bridge into communities that they otherwise might find difficult to access.

“We believe passionately in the work the Boys’ Brigade does across the country each week - in shaping young lives and giving young people opportunities to learn, grow and discover through membership of the Boys’ Brigade.

“The ‘Faith in Young People’ project will help us to provide additional support to our volunteer leaders. We want to support our volunteer leaders in faith development, equipping them to share and explore Christian faith confidently with young people. Specifically, we aim to develop new materials, introduce more training for leaders and also provide an online library of resources.

“With the support of the Guild we would like to introduce a new community engagement and partnership strategy. This would mean we could promote the voice of young people nationally and locally and increase the Boys’ Brigade’s profile within the church and across local communities.

“We would like to see more young people join the organisation. This will be achieved by partnering with local churches to grow the number of adult volunteer leaders through our training programmes and succession planning. We would like to have our development staff working alongside more of our groups – supporting them to welcome more young people into the BB family and offer our groups a small grants scheme in support their programmes.”

The Boys’ Brigade