“Sometimes I feel down in the dumps, but since coming to this place my life has changed completely,” says Tony Lamb of Action for Gipton Elderly (AGE). He is 80 years old, lives on his own in Harehills, Leeds, and has diabetes complicated by mobility problems.
For people like Tony, AGE – and its Monday social club – is a lifeline. It is one of the city’s neighbourhood networks and is managed by Karen Woloszczak, a “community builder” whose role is to forge the links that make a community tick.
Through the Seniors Network Support (SeNS) scheme, volunteers known as “community connectors” are tasked by Woloszczak to make contact with isolated older people. “When we first came across Tony, he was very depressed but I knew a young couple who were community connectors and willing to offer him support,” she says.
Asset-based community development (ABCD) is popular in Leeds and gaining traction elsewhere. Community builders recruit the volunteer connectors, who fan out across neighbourhoods helping people to identify their strengths (“assets”) and assisting them to develop activities.
“Connectors are friendly, chatty people; people who know people and aren’t afraid to strike up conversations with strangers,” says Trudie Canavan, SeNS enterprise development officer for adult social care. “They talk to people about their interests, skills, things they would like to do, become involved in or initiate, then support them to achieve their goal.
“Sometimes it involves a small amount of seed funding, sometimes it doesn’t cost anything at all. One group of older people wanted to set up an indoor bowling club and could have applied for funding for equipment to set it up, but through a connector talking about it, someone donated the equipment.”
Tony gets a lift to a Monday social club at AGE; they go on seaside trips and they’ve arranged for his brother to visit from America. “I’m a good mixer and I appreciate the company,” he says. “I just feel that I’m wanted.”
