by Joanne Harding
Roll up, roll up, there’s a new show in town.
We are going to do things differently now, we are going to call it PLACE BASED WORKING. This just makes me want to breathe into a brown paper bag as I think, here we go again.
Another slogan, more jargon. Can’t we just keep it real and talk about what we really mean?
Communities and people.
The word community means something to all of us.
A sense of belonging, a sense of togetherness and at the heart of it lies people.
As we recover from the past, horrific year we must surely recognise the value and importance of communities and people.
I am therefore making a plea to Labour, under Keir Starmer’s leadership, to put community front and centre in all the policies we develop. Labours policies need to be genuinely relatable to the people we aspire to govern. Speaking a language that we all understand. Let me make myself really clear here, I do not mean Labour Party community organising, I mean genuinely listening to people.
As executive lead for adult social care, I see regularly first-hand just how amazing people are. From the huge outpouring of kindness as the pandemic took hold, the letters that were dropped through neighbours’ doors with an offer of shopping, collecting prescriptions, walking the dog. Those WhatsApp groups that became known as “ mutual aid networks” (subtext: people, communities stepping up and finding their own solutions) , the Marcus Rashford campaign to make sure children didn’t go hungry during school holidays, people and communities stepping up and helping each other.
Here in Trafford I was proud to be part of a team that led on the setting up of 6 community hubs. Hubs that have proved to be a lifeline to the people they have supported. We broke down barriers in the space of ten days that in ten years as a councillor had caused endless hours of frustration.
