Accord Equality & Fairness Annual Report 2018
• Work with many of the participants who are on low income and in the process of
becoming ‘job ready’ via our Building Better Opportunities programme and also
learn how to budget for meals and how to make new meals out of ‘leftovers’.
The Care & Support directorate employs an integrated model where customer
engagement dovetails with other work streams and where there is a focus on creativity
and innovation in line with the wider Care and Support Strategy. • Use leftover food in the CEC’s garden compost bin, which is then used to fertilise
the vegetables grown in the garden which, in turn, are used in the cookery classes.
This circle of production provides a real sense of personal achievement and worth
for not just for the individuals but for the groups as a whole.
Accord Care & Support services are diverse. They cover a range of customer groups across
a range of service settings.
The challenge for the Accord Customer Engagement approach is to identify meaningful
methods of engagement that can be tailored to individual customer groups and offer
solutions that maximise inclusion and engagement through the use of innovative and
creative means.
• Witnesses that people attending the cookery and gardening clubs have reported
a definite increase in their general well-being and confidence and look forward
to attending their weekly sessions. Some also go on to volunteer for us or other
organisations, which again evidences their increased confidence and a new sense
of wanting to be more involved in their local communities.
• Helped other groups use our facilities, such an Asian Women’s Support group and
a social support group for both male and female women. Food is again a central
theme for these groups with participants going on to access other activities within
the CEC.
Customer Engagement - Age Matters
• Enabled the formation of strong friendships with people coming up with new ideas
for activities they would like to run – such as an arts and crafts group, which they
are happy to organise and lead themselves. Age Matters provides the venue and
any initial support they may require, but then leaves the group to continue and
sustain itself.
The inclusion of Age Matters to the directorate portfolio, brings a wider scope of services
including a number of projects with specific aims around bringing older people together
and promoting engagement and inclusion.
Case Study:
Age Matters (formerly Age UK Walsall) joined Accord in 2017 and run lunch clubs at their
Community Engagement Centre (CEC) in Walsall. These projects support people aged 50+
back into work by gaining new skills and increasing confidence with meeting new people
etc.
Much of this work includes people from diverse communities coming together to take
part in activities and classes. A significant by-product of this is that their English language
skills improve along with their general confidence in socialising etc., enabling them to
look at learning English more formally.
This in turn supports people to become more active members of their community by
turning to volunteer roles, forming new peer support groups and so on. Accessibility and Locality Working
Age Matters have specifically: Community is at the heart of what we do and all the Directorates within Accord have been
working now for the last two years to deliver our pro-active locality working model. This is
supported by our Digital Inclusion strategy and the roll-out of technology and upgraded
website and “Chat-bot” features to enhance our service offering and mean we can truly
work from anywhere and be more responsive to our customers.
• Established activities within our Community Engagement Centre (CEC) which is situated
in the south of the borough within high density Asian communities
• Arranged activities which range from exercise classes, social engagement activities,
gardening clubs and cookery classes which all help bring together people from a wide
variety of cultures and communities.
• Helped to overcome barriers to social engagement due to language barriers by
supporting people to engage in group activities – e.g. cooking – and the need to
support each other with the various tasks.
• Helped deliver a cookery class where participants take turns to produce a signature
dish from their cultural background, which also provides the opportunity for people
to try new foods they may never have come across before. Within a session led by a
Chinese lady, there was an English gentleman who’d never seen fresh ginger before.
20
There is therefore a range of options, from informal to formal and we use a range of
means to provide opportunities to engage; including creative methods of engagement in
addition to more traditional models. We will look to maximise the use of technology as
well as using means such as music and drama to maximise engagement opportunities.
Customer Engagement - Care & Support
21