York Neighborhood Approach

Researchers have recognized that loneliness is a major health and social policy issue. Loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, is worse for you than obesity, and can increase your risk of death by 29 percent.1 In the United Kingdom, the Office for National Statistics and the British Red Cross estimated that between 5-18 percent of adults feel lonely often or always.2 Loneliness and social isolation also add to the challenges cities face delivering community services.3 

As loneliness is a deeply personal experience it can be a challenging issue for policymakers and service providers to tackle. Identifying who is at risk can be difficult. People may be socially isolated but not lonely and vice-versa, or they may not feel comfortable revealing information they consider embarrassing, especially to public officials. Further, because effective responses hinge on strengthening social connections, they need to be adapted for each individual and the specific community that surrounds them. Given this, a growing number of local governments like the City of York are seeking to foster more community-based approaches for reducing loneliness. 

In 2011 the City partnered with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a national social change organization, in Neighbourhood approaches to loneliness, a three-year action research initiative that explored how neighborhood activity could affect loneliness. Through the program the City trained local residents to become “community researchers” who spoke with more than 1,000 residents about loneliness and possible solutions. Community researchers also engaged stakeholders through Partnership Action Groups, which facilitated program support such as venues, childcare, training and helped raise community awareness about the issue of loneliness.

Small groups of residents then formed neighborhood teams and used the findings to develop responses with the City, partnering NGOs and community groups.

According to Joe Micheli, Head of Commissioning at the City, a big advantage of the approach was that community researchers could speak with fellow residents as peers:

:The type of conversation that’s going to take place between a single Mum or single Dad, or somebody that’s unemployed, and one of their peers, is naturally going to be different to one with a public servant...often the responses [were] more honest, more grounded, more trusted… people let the boundaries down."4 

Buoyed by the community response, the City strengthened its focus on “the power of community and people acting together” in the following years, making it a key driver for its citizen wellbeing strategies more broadly.5 

The result? Community researchers involved in the three-year action research program identified a range of potential causes of loneliness such as bereavement, family break down, being older, moving house, sole parenting, social isolation, and bad weather. This enabled the two participating neighborhoods to tailor responses to local priorities. In Acomb, concerns about anti-social behaviour and the lack of natural meeting spaces led to a “community cafe” being held at a local church so that residents could have a safer place to connect.6 In New Earswick, where there was a high proportion of over 60-year olds, the “Less Lonely Initiative” aimed to create a group of older leaders who could reach out and help other older people build new friendships. The New Earswick Less Lonely Initiative has grown and it continues today. An evaluation of the research program also found that the benefits of the neighborhood approach extended to community volunteers themselves, with many crediting the experience as a source of confidence for furthering their education or helping them gain skills that led to employment.

The City’s involvement in the research program spurred interest in expanding the neighborhood approach to loneliness which now includes:

• Community Health Champions who help people in their neighborhoods to get involved in healthy social activities. 
• GoodGym York, which offers regular runners the opportunity to make a social visit to an isolated older person - their “coach” - a part of a weekly run. 
• A 12-week Connecting Communities program where volunteers work alongside trained staff to provide practical and emotional support to lonely people, helping them to re-establish social networks. 
• Ways to Wellbeing, which works with local doctors to reduce appointments for social problems such as loneliness by meeting with the patient at the surgery and helping them to plan ways to improve their wellbeing.  An evaluation of the first full year of the operation of this “social prescribing” service found that 75 percent of people using it felt more confident, 80 percent improved their wellbeing, and their doctor’s appointments decreased by 30 percent.7 

To share wellbeing information and resources the City has also created the Live Well York web portal.

In the absence of a nationally-recognized measure for loneliness, the City of York Council has monitored data from individuals self-reporting their loneliness through ‘outcome stars’ (a method widely used in the UK). This analysis found an 85 percent reduction in levels of loneliness over an 18-month period spanning 2017-18.

The range of initiatives continues to be responsive to learning what works, and Joe Micheli points out that understanding what does work is increasingly driven by qualitative as much as quantitative evidence because:

That mix needs to be recognized to connect with people around these agendas… the power of an individual's story, and how they responded to an issue of loneliness through being supported to build on their agency and capabilities to turn their lives around… can often be more impactful.8

Figure 1: Kev and Simon connect over a cup of tea in York’s Tang Hall neighborhood. The power of conversations and building connections in safe community spaces is at the heart of the neighborhood approach (Credit: City of York Council).

 

How does it work?

The City of York Council’s adoption of the neighborhood approach to loneliness and wellbeing has evolved over the past decade. It began with its participation in the action research program that ran from 2011 to 2014. Through that program the City built a foundational capability in the use of well-structured participatory approaches to research and collective action that included:

• Building awareness of the program within neighborhoods
• Recruiting a cohort of community researchers representative of the broader community, ensuring that people of different ages, race and ethnicity, gender, and diverse family situations are involved
• Training community researchers in peer research 
• Using ‘natural’ connection points for discussions with residents, such as bus stops, clubs, parks and shops, to encourage more open conversations with residents
• Partnership days in participating neighborhoods where community researchers can share findings and possible solutions with City leaders, potential partners, and the wider community
• Prioritizing actions, establishing local groups to drive them, and assigning responsibilities for implementing solutions.

Over time, the City has built on this experience and community-led approaches have become a way of doing things in York that has “gone viral.”9 

Through a network of Local Area Coordinators the City helps communities develop and implement neighborhood responses to loneliness that draw on local strengths and assets. This includes the skills and experiences of residents, existing volunteer group activities, free community meeting places and other services provided by NGOs and the City. The City also offers small seed grants that help to get promising community-led projects off the ground. 

Active citizen participation and collective action is also built into city-wide plans for addressing loneliness and wellbeing. In 2017, the City launched the People Helping People strategy in partnership with local universities, health services, and NGOs. The partnership covers more than 6,000 volunteers and focuses on “impact volunteering” to mobilize the talents of residents in the pursuit of city-wide goals.10 Similarly, the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy identifies addressing loneliness as a key priority that residents can help address through “volunteering, befriending and other opportunities to share knowledge and experience.”11

Why does it work?

1. Matching the nature of the problem and the solution: From the outset the City identified loneliness as an intensely personal issue and matched it with a response involving a higher degree of personal involvement (i.e. neighbors and peers) than is normally possible in public service delivery.
2. Leadership style: The approach in York consciously adopts a leadership style that creates space for volunteer residents and partners to research, select, design and contribute to initiatives that can leverage local strengths and assets rather than be reliant on City resources.
3. Integrating the approach at multiple levels: The neighborhood approach is integrated with multiple levels of the city’s operations, ranging from small groups of residents who may be supported by a small seed grant, through to local area coordinators who help connect people and services in distinct geographical areas, and to city-wide, multi-year wellbeing strategies.
4. Strong NGO presence: York has an above average presence of NGOs which, combined with contributions from philanthropy and the City, provides fertile ground for community-driven programs.
5. A history of collaboration: York has a history of collaborating with residents in innovative ways dating back as far as the 1990s when the City introduced participatory budgeting.

Listen to the podcast episode with city planner Joe Micheli here

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1. “The Facts on Loneliness,” Campaign to End Loneliness (website), accessed February 18, 2020, https://www.campaigntoendloneliness.org/the-facts-on-loneliness/. 
2. HM Government Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, A Connected Society: A Strategy for Tackling Loneliness - Laying the Foundations for Change, October 2018, 6, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/750909/6.4882_DCMS_Loneliness_Strategy_web_Update.pdf.
3. Local Government Association, Combating Loneliness: A Guide for Local Authorities, January 2016, https://www.local.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/combating-loneliness-guid-24e_march_2018.pdf. 
4. Joe Micheli (Head of Commissioning [Early Intervention, Prevention & Community Development] at City of York Council), interview, Nov 27, 2019.
5. Joe Micheli (Head of Commissioning [Early Intervention, Prevention & Community Development] at City of York Council), interview, Nov 27, 2019.
6. Healthwatch York, Loneliness: A Modern Epidemic and the Search for a Cure, September 2014, https://democracy.york.gov.uk/documents/s92462/Healthwatch. 
7. York CVS, “Introducing...Ways to Wellbeing: York’s Social Prescribing Service,” (powerpoint presentation), accessed February 18, 2020, https://democracy.york.gov.uk/documents/s116810/Annex%20A%20York%20CVS%20Ways%20to%20Wellbeing%20HWB%20Presentation%20V2%2015%20August.pdf. 
8. Joe Micheli (Head of Commissioning [Early Intervention, Prevention & Community Development] at City of York Council), interview, Nov 27, 2019.
9. Joe Micheli (Head of Commissioning [Early Intervention, Prevention & Community Development] at City of York Council), interview, Nov 27, 2019.
10. York CVS, People Helping People: Volunteering in York: Our Strategy, November 2017, https://www.yorkcvs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/CVS_People_Helping_People_A4_V1.pdf.
11. City of York Council, York’s Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2017-2022, accessed February 18, 2020, https://www.york.gov.uk/downloads/file/1234/joint-health-and-wellbeing-strategy-2017-to-2022.