MHCLG Community Champions Programme - Oldham
Background
In January this year, Oldham Council was awarded funding from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s (MHCLG) Community Champions programme.
MHCLG’s stated purpose of the funding is to “support people shown to be most at risk from Coronavirus (COVID-19) including those from an ethnic minority background, disabled people and others to follow safer behaviours and reduce the impact of the virus on themselves and those around them.”
Our aim is to use this funding to support engagement and communication with those communities most at risk from Coronavirus. Here in Oldham, that means our South East Asian, Roma and African communities, as well as people with learning disabilities, people with sensory disabilities and any other vulnerable community that is identified through data and insight during the delivery of the programme. We will be investing £300,000 funding in grants to voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise groups and organisations who are at the heart of the communities who are most at risk from coronavirus.
This will support our wider Covid-19 response strategy; including communications around changes to national and local guidance, health protection and infection control messages, promotion and education around vaccination and testing and awareness of the local humanitarian support offer.
Our intention is to build community capacity which supports this strategy but also build resilience, trust and insight which will be sustainable within the Oldham ‘one response’ model in future.
We will do this by:
- Expanding and developing our Community Engagement Network through small and medium-sized investments to the Voluntary, Community, Faith & Social Enterprise (VCFSE) sector
- Identifying gaps in our current engagement strategy and routes
- Co-designing and developing training and targeted communications tools for VCFSE and community leaders, and using more culturally appropriate and accessible communications channels
- Capturing community insight in order to inform our engagement strategy and behaviour change
Councillor Arooj Shah, cabinet member for Covid-19 Recovery and Deputy Leader of Oldham Council, said: “Community Champions is a really important programme that is helping us in our considerable efforts to reach and engage with our most vulnerable communities here in Oldham.
“Throughout the pandemic, we have been working alongside our community partners, going out into our communities, knocking on doors, delivering leaflets and engaging with our residents, to deliver crucial public health messages and offer support to those who need it the most.
“This funding enables us to ramp up this important work and give community organisations across the borough the resources they need to make even more of a difference. By working together across Team Oldham, we can be more than the sum of our parts, and do all we can to ensure no communities get left behind.”
Community Engagement Network
The Council is working with Action Together to invest in the capacity of community organisations to participate in the network.
Small grants will be awarded (up to £5,000) to enable community groups and organisations to support Team Oldham to deliver it’s Covid-19 community engagement strategy within communities most at risk from Covid19.
This might include engagement with members, networks or beneficiaries through existing channels, supporting testing or vaccination sites locally, doing additional telephone or online engagement and sharing Council or CCG comms through social media channels.
We also plan to make larger investments in the capacity of community anchor organisations who are well established within a community of place or identity who are most at risk from coronavirus. We want to build on already significant contribution of organisations who have reached into those communities identified as most at risk to ensure they are able to continue that work, as well as extend the reach of messages into all our most at-risk communities.
It is the proposed to bring these organisations together as a Community Engagement Network, to share practice and capture insight, as well as providing support to them through the wider Community Champions programme in the form of communications tools, training and network facilitation.
What next?
Watch out for more news about the small grants, how to apply via Action Together and link into the network.
We will reach out over the coming weeks to community anchor organisations who may wish to work with us on the programme.