Social program evolving to fill more gaps
A lack of awareness in the community is among early findings of a social connection pilot and it’s led to training up champions to help.
With some basic training and a welcome pack, supporters of social connection project Connect Local are helping to spread word about the program through their community.
Connect Local is a social connection pilot underway from Bolton Clarke Research Institute for older people living in Glen Eira in Melbourne.
It aims to fills gaps in people’s knowledge about how to connect to things that would make their lives better, said Dr Rajna Ogrin, a senior research fellow at Bolton Clarke Research Institute.
“We’re supporting them to connect into their community by having a trained community connector that finds out what matters to them and works out what’s available in the community,” Dr Ogrin told Community Care Review.
“Then they come together with a plan that supports them to link to those activities and then follows up to make sure that it’s meeting their needs and supporting them to be better connected for holistic wellbeing.”
Dr Ogrin and her colleague Elizabeth Robinson presented early learnings from implementation aspects of the project at the Australian Association of Gerontology conference last week. Issues identified included awareness raising.
“And so now we’ve started a Friends of Connect Local who have gone through or are interested in engaging with us and they’re now spreading the word,” she said.
Speaking to CCR at the conference, here Dr Ogrin provides an update on the project and its findings to date:
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