Definition
A group of people who share something or have something in common, for example people who live in the same area, are from the same place, share the same culture, identity, interest, profession…
The bigger picture
‘There are lots and lots of different communities, but often in social care we talk about “the community” in terms of a place, rather than communities of people. We refer to “living in the community” to mean people who don’t live in residential care homes, or “accessing the community” to mean ‘going out’. There’s no sense of connections and relationships in this way of talking. It’s about place, not people.
Saying it differently
Try to think and talk about communities rather than ‘the community’. Refer to places people live using everyday language like home, their street, neighbourhood or area, and focus on the connections, relationships and things that matter to people that mean they are, can remain in, or can become, part of communities where they belong.
What people say
“I think we all inhabit different communities, all at the same time if that makes sense. And the different communities we all inhabit are all different… And we all intersect in really interesting ways and I think there’s all kinds of possibilities for connections there. Workers I think need to think very deeply actually there, about that, and finding out about the different communities a person inhabits is I think a really important aspect of that assessment process that happens when we’re seeing how we can help people.” -Martin Walker
“For me and for other people, community means our neighbourhood, our connections, our neighbours, the people we know, the people we care about. If we walk in a pub, the folks who know our name. If we join a club, the folks who would notice if we didn’t turn up. People of a like mind, people who share our politics or our values or our sense of place, space. And I think that’s what we all hear when we hear the word community. But I worry sometimes that the system, social care world, it’s a whole code for a whole load of other things. I’ve heard community talked about by a lot of social care provider organisations or workers. They will talk about somebody being in the community today, or they will talk about somebody accessing the community tomorrow. What they mean is going out.” – Angela Catley