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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Josephine Wildman, Dr Nicole Valtorta, Professor Suzanne Moffatt, Professor Barbara Hanratty
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).
Interventions that harness local assets to benefit a community are increasingly being promoted to improve health and wellbeing. In practice we know little about how local contexts or reliance on local resources affect the sustainability and scalability of asset-based community developments. This qualitative case study documents the development and implementation of a novel asset-based community development project. Based in a large mainly rural county in North East England with relatively high levels of socio-economic deprivation, the project aimed to prevent social isolation among older people, using a range of food-related activities. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with service users, volunteers, project partners, project development workers and senior staff. Interviews explored the project’s design and implementation process, outcomes for participants and the wider community, and project sustainability and scalability. Thematic analysis of the data identified four factors likely to be important for creating sustainable and replicable asset-based community projects. These factors are 1) recognising and harnessing assets among local people who may be otherwise marginalised due to age, geographical isolation and/or socio-economic deprivation; 2) identifying assets that can be provided by local businesses; 3) genuine project co-production to develop activities that meet local needs and inspire enthusiasm among all stakeholders; and 4) on-going organisational support to meet the challenges to sustainability that exist in socioeconomically-deprived areas. We conclude that successful asset-based community projects require extensive community in-put and learning captured from existing programmes can facilitate the replicability of programmes in other community contexts.
Author(s): Wildman JM, Valtorta N, Moffatt S, Hanratty B
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Health and Social Care in the Community
Year: 2019
Volume: 27
Issue: 4
Pages: 1102-1110
Print publication date: 17/06/2019
Online publication date: 12/03/2019
Acceptance date: 09/02/2019
Date deposited: 11/02/2019
ISSN (print): 0966-0410
ISSN (electronic): 1365-2524
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12735
DOI: 10.1111/hsc.12735
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