Reciprocal Relationships
Pandemic Kindness Movement
The Pandemic Kindness Movement was created by clinicians across Australia, working together to support all health workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. This webpage contains links to curated respected, evidence-informed resources and valuable services to support the wellbeing of the health workforce. You can explore the pyramid by selecting the different needs: basic needs, safety, love and belonging, esteem, contribution and leadership actions.
The Whole Child
Children’s mental health cannot be separated from the broader contexts of their lives. There are many interacting influences that impact on infant and child mental health, not least of which is children’s relationships with their parents and their immediate family environment. Our video, The Whole Child, seeks to highlight a holistic view of children’s social and emotional wellbeing.
Australians Together
The relationship between many Indigenous people and the land is one of reciprocity and respect – the land sustains and provides for the people, and the people sustain and manage the land through culture and ceremony. Because of this close connection, when the land is disrespected, damaged or destroyed, this can have real impact on the wellbeing of Indigenous people.
Love Is a Wonderful Feeling
This video is the result of a research project Exploring support for people with learning disabilities to find loving relationships, which took place at the Tizard Centre, University of Kent 2018-2019. The research was funded by NIHR School for Social Care Research. In the video you will hear people with learning disabilities talk about the importance of loving relationships and the kinds of support they want and need.
The 3 R’s of Social Care Reform
How constructive risk taking, respectful relationships and a sense of reciprocity characterised a positive response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper draws upon the TLAP Insight Group report, A Telling Experience and subsequent meetings with regional ADASS branches, as well as interviews with people for the case studies. It also draws on some of the rich conversations from the Social Care Future Festival, the National Children and Adults Services Conference (NCASC), as well as the ‘fireside conversations held with TLAP Partners, all at the end of 2020.
Relationships Project – Turning to The Light
Relationships are essential to all of us, in all walks of life. From schools to GP practices and big businesses to grassroots organisations, everything works better when relationships are nurtured. Find out more about the importance of good relationships through our bank of case studies or our collaborative blog.
The Relationships Framework
This kit of resources is designed to help councils sustain and enhance the community relationships that emerged during Covid in a way that empowers rather than controls citizens. It is also intended to help councils look ahead to reimagine their organisations and services with relationships at their heart.
A World of Good Relationships
The Relationships Project have set out a plan in this Prospectus that takes us through the months of reflection and recuperation post Covid, into a period of renewal and new building and on towards a vision for a generation. More than ever, the big questions in 2021 are all about relationships. Their substance and character will determine the direction and quality of our lives. Imagine a place where good relationships are the central operating principle, the starting point for all decisions, the mechanism by which change is realised, the outcome we all strive towards. Think of your place, an organisation perhaps, a neighbourhood, a school, a council: what would change?
Family Charter – Stronger Together
A group of families who are part of the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group (VODG), have spent time together getting to know each other and understanding what good looks like in terms of working together to ensure people get the best possible support. Relationships are a key part to living a good life for anyone and everyone. Roles and relationships between families and support providers can at times be blurred, not understood, at times in conflict. Relationships can also be strong, mutually supportive and based on shared vision and equality. This resource outlines the steps to build a Charter that establishes agreed upon norms and guidelines, rather than rules, to help create an emotionally safe environment.
Towards Resilience: Making community matter in social care
This report summarises findings from an event co-hosted by Think Local Act Personal (TLAP) and Local Trust. It explores the fragility and fragmented nature of adult social care both before and during the pandemic. It highlights how community focused initiatives are key to a more resilient future for all those that draw on, provide or commission adult social care support. “We recognise that community is not a place, it is the quality and diversity of our relationships with others that help define our purpose and place in the world; a theme amplified throughout this report.”
Growing Peer Support: Peer-Led Crisis Support in Mental Health Services
People Focused Group (PFG) Doncaster has emerged as one of the most powerful and inspirational versions of peer support in the world. This report is based on a range of confidential interviews with people working in mental health services, people using services and members of PFG Doncaster. PFG is a founding member of Citizen Network, a global cooperative dedicated to advancing citizenship for all. PFG has shown that it can respond to new challenges and continually raise our expectations of what we can all do – when people help people.
Co-Production: It’s a Long Term Relationship
Co-production is an equal relationship between people who use services and the people responsible for services. They work together, from design to delivery, sharing strategic decision-making about policies as well as decisions about the best way to deliver services.
Everyone at the Table
For 40 Years, Chatham-Savannah Citizen Advocacy, has hosted an annual Covered Dish Supper, to celebrate the relationships that have formed through connecting people with developmental disabilities, who live on “thin ice” at the edge of community life with people who live on “thick ice” in the safe centre of community. This gathering has grown into a celebration of inclusion, and a community that reflects the diversity of life in Savannah.
This is a Street Association!
Making UK streets a friendlier place for our friends and families. A small core group meets over a coffee four or five times a year to come up with ideas and then makes things happen. Street Associations are at the heart of a new initiative, called As One, which is taking root in various parts of the UK. The campaign will lead to neighbourhood events which facilitate streets to start their own Association.
Social Relationships and Health: The Toxic effects of Perceived Social Isolation
This paper reviews selected evidence on the nature of social relationships and focuses on one particular facet of the connection continuum – the extent to which an individual feels isolated (i.e., feels lonely) in a social world. Evidence indicates that loneliness heightens sensitivity to social threats and motivates the renewal of social connections, but it can also impair executive functioning, sleep, and mental and physical well-being
Building Relationships, Strengthening Neighborhoods
This article examines systems change efforts that focus on boosting social capital and collective efficacy through building relationships within communities. Most non profits operate in sector silos and focus on one social issue, considering any work on the underlying social dynamic beyond their scope of responsibilities. But a handful of organizations seek to reform underlying architectures by addressing the web of relationships neighborhood by neighborhood. They begin with the assumption that individual well-being and social outcomes depend on a foundation of healthy, place-based relationships
Weave: The Social Fabric Project -The Relationalist Manifesto
WEAVE: The Social Fabric Project began with the idea that America’s social fabric is being ripped to shreds by ditrust,loneliness,alienation, inequality, racism, spiritual emptiness and tribal enmity. But we also knew there are people fighting these scourges, successfully, at the local level all across America. We wanted to learn what they could teach us. We wanted to shine a light on their examples and magnify their effect.
Open Social Innovation
For more than a year, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented a societal challenge: It affects us all, but it affects us differently. Like other societal challenges, such as the climate crisis, economic inequality, and racial injustice, it magnifies old and new social problems and brutally exposes weaknesses in our systems. What would an experiment where all stakeholders in a society – citizens, civil society, social enterprises, companies, foundations, philanthropists, and public administration—collectively participated in an open process of social innovation look like?
The Power of Virtual Communities
The online environment is an increasingly vital part of social life, and its importance is unlikely to diminish in the foreseeable future. It would be foolish to be complacent about its impact on human wellbeing. This report has been written in the belief that such a beneficial outcome is possible. It shows how groups on Facebook and other online platforms can create communities that give their members a powerful sense of connection and belonging. This report seeks to open a conversation about the role and impact of online groups and the factors that make some of them successful communities.
Chris Klein – Building Relationships through the Tools of Communication
Chris uses augmentative communication to help support his work as a Motivational Speaker, and to be an active member of his community. Chris lives independently in Holland, Michigan and strives to live his life to the fullest.
Microboards: Social Capital and Quality of Life
A Microboard™ is a small group of dedicated friends and family who work together to help an individual plan their life, brainstorm ideas, advocate for what they need, monitor services, and connects the individual to their wider community.
Microboards™, Social Capital and Quality Of Life
Plain Language Executive Summary: The main characteristics of Microboards identified in this study—autonomous, person centred, empowering, and interconnected—contribute directly to both social capital outcomes of friendships and relations and community inclusion as well as the Quality of Life outcomes of safety, stability and self-determination.
Microboards™, Social Capital and Quality Of Life
Final Report of a Two Year Qualitative Inquiry: While distinct concepts, social capital and quality of life have multiple intersections. Social connections and relationships are a critical variable in quality of life outcomes. This research project sought to examine through qualitative interviews with Microboard members how MBs may help to connect people to their communities and serve as a means to enhance and sustain social capital and quality of life.
Being Me Being You: How I need you to be, to be with me.
This reader has been made to help people and their supporters to talk together about the different ways we can be with each other. It aims to help start a conversation about the different ways people with developmental disability and complex communication needs want others to be around them.
An Exploration of Valued Roles and Relationships
The theory of Social Role Valorisation (SRV) posits that if someone is in valued roles, then it is more likely that they will have access to the good things of life . This article arises from a deep concern at the disparity seen in services and in families where there is a wish for the development of friendships but an absence of theory and strategic practice that is likely to lead to relationships with people who are not paid to be in the person’s life.
With a Little Help from my Friends
An Inclusion Classic – 1988 featuring Marsha Forest at work. This award winning 1 hour video describes (1988) the basics of creating schools where all kids belong and learn together. In three parts, listen to Grade 7 & 8 students describe the impact of inclusion on their school and their lives. Observe teachers doing the same. Then see hands on strategies at work including MAPS and Circles of Friends. This classic video is ‘dated’ and simultaneously remains brand new. The freshness in the voices of students who talk from their hearts about inclusion and building circles of friends is classic.
Friends Info Guide 2020 – Easy Read
This is a guide about friends.
It will help you
• Understand why friends are important
• Know who is a good friend
• Find out how to meet new friends
• Be a good friend
5 Steps to Being Neighbourly
Neighbour Day is Australia’s annual celebration of community, encouraging people to connect with those who live in their neighbourhood. It is held on the last Sunday of March each year. This flyer outlines tips for how to build a small connection with your neighbours, so on Neighbour Day, you already know everyone well enough to host a friendly event.
Feeling at Home In Our Own Home: Reconciling Indigenous Belonging
In this presentation Jessica Bolduc reflects that before we come together to seed new relationships and engage in dialogue around reconciliation, we need to reflect on the path that brought us here. The 4Rs Youth Movement is a youth-driven initiative that was launched to change relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous young people in Canada.
Strategies to Help Build Relationships
Janet describes ways to create, develop and encourage the opportunities in which relationship is more likely to happen and grow in peoples lives.
Why Are Relationships So Important?
Janet discusses how relationships bring enrichment and opportunities, and how important this is for safeguarding the lives of people with disabilities.
Community Circles
A Community Circle brings two or more people together around someone who wants a little help to make a change in their life. That change can be anything – from getting out and about more, to starting a new hobby or restarting an old one, or creating opportunities to spend more time with friends or family.
Community Circles
A Community Circle brings people together to help someone to live a more connected life, Community Circles support people to do what matters to them. They are about finding out what is important to the person, and thinking together about how to turn that purpose into meaningful action. It is also a way to help people self direct their lives through supporting their decision making, ensuring choice and control.
Belonging to One Another
This resource talks about ways in which informal safeguards, like personal supports and community connections, can be nurtured. Having people in your life that care about you is one of the most important ways to feel safe and valued.
Relationships, Community Living Project
The Community Living Project Circles Initiative has a focus on supporting people to build strong relationships. A Circle of Support facilitator works in partnership with a person and their family to build freely given relationships which strengthen opportunities for an inclusive life.
Sean-Developing Circles of Friendship
Lisa Bridle talks about how Sean has deepened his friendship circle with the support of his family and community.
Why Peer Support is Awesome
This publication describes how Peer Support Networks such as Communities of Practice (CoP) and Communities of Interest (CoI) are helping people living with disability lead a good life.
Homeshare UK: Annual Sector Report 2021
Homeshare is proving slowly and steadily to be a resilient, stable and sustainable solution to many key policy issues, tackling loneliness and unaffordable housing by bringing people from across the generations together in a simple but effective way. The key groups of Householders using Homeshare in 2021 were older single people and older couples between the ages of 70 and 90. The network reported on other Householder groups including people with life limiting illness, people with disabilities and people with learning disabilities.
Romance, Relationships & Rights: A Community Creation
Romance, Relationships and Rights confronts misconceptions about adults with intellectual disabilities. Audiences are challenged to think differently about how we value, respect, and support self-advocates’ rights to romance and intimate relationships. The production is based on research by the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship and was co-created with self-advocates supported by the Community Living Society.
Romance, Relationships & Rights: Theatre for Social Change
This short film introduces the community theatre production Romance, Relationships and Rights. Shown in May 2019, this public performance was was created by and with self-advocates.
PLAN: Al Etmanski talks about PLAN Networks
Relationships are the core of what we do. Work with us to give your loved one a network of caring relationships, a sound financial plan, opportunities for contribution and supported decision-making, and a place to call home….
Village In The City #6: Rekindling Democracy with Cormac Russell
Cormac Russell speaks about the importance of bottom-up community building, relationships with institutions and professionals, and answers questions from participants.
Right Relationships
Michael Kendrick speaks at a presentation from Family Advocacy’s 2012 Odyssey Conference.
Is it possible to create a partnership between families and services that really works?
Bridging Communities with Art
Shawn Dunwoody is a local artist and activist born and raised in Rochester, New York. Early in his career he found success in galleries and at universities. But he’s now returning his focus to his own neighborhood, hoping to ignite conversations through art to create changes in the community. He shares Brief But Spectacular take on bridging communities for our arts and culture series, “CANVAS.”