Grapevine Cov and Warks

#TuesdayThoughts 💭 Would you call yourself a "relational worker"? Who exactly are relational workers? In Rebeca Sandu's latest Substack article "I am a relational worker": ⭐ They are people safe within their own skin. ⭐ They are not over concerned about status and income. ⭐ They know how to listen. ⭐ They are available to the people they help. ⭐ They accept people when people cannot accept themselves. ⭐ They look beyond the disadvantage. ⭐ They see the person for who they are, and who they can be. ⭐ They don’t try to fix. ⭐ They relate. ⭐ Most of their ‘work’ comprises everyday conversations about life. Is this you? Our deputy CEO Mel Smith and Rebeca are exploring how relational workers gain legitimacy as they sit on the border between civil society and the state, helping people who are facing difficulty recover a sense of self and agency. To add your thoughts and experiences to this piece of work, please follow the link below 👇 Join us in making our people and communities fairer, stronger and more connected.

What incredible feedback for our #ShiftingPower team leader Laura Fisher on sharing her #CommunityOrganising work at Grapevine and her own personal journey with Survivor Sanctuary with these students. And thank you to Laura and Sophie Thornton for reminding us of the "full circle" moment where the audience was shown a film about Grapevine made by last year's Coventry College students! 💜

We are pleased to announce a continuation of our Teenvine Plus Next Steps intensive development programme, thanks to a £60,000 grant from Warwickshire Freemasons. The grant enables us to support around 35 more teenagers aged 13 to 18 over 12 months, all with special educational needs and #disabilities (#SEND) and many who are not currently in school due to a lack of provision for their needs. We focus our support around each young person’s talents and skills, as opposed to their needs, examining their EHC plan (education, health and care) if they have one and working with them to identify their own ideas and solutions to the barriers they are facing. Through: 💪 Person-centred plans 💪 Building their skills and networks 💪 Peer support  💪 Advocacy 💪 Wider support for the whole family where needed. Our 12-month Next Steps programme works with dreams and aspirations - advocating for solutions to returning to formal learning, creating opportunities to enjoy normal teenage life and nurturing a sense of identity and the ability to self-advocate. The grant from Warwickshire Freemasons comes through the Masonic Charitable Foundation, which is funded by Freemasons, their families and friends from across England and Wales. A huge #WeAreGrapevine thank you to them. Learn more about this #StrengtheningPeople work via the link below.   In the photo, left to right, are Asst. Provincial Grand Master of Warwickshire Howard Smith with Ethan, a participant of the Next Steps programme, Grapevine project worker Paul Kedwards and Warwickshire Freemason, Andy Staker.

At Grapevine, we believe people should be in the lead of improving their lives and their communities. Our #HealthyCommunitiesTogether partnership in #Coventry – one of five The National Lottery Community Fund funded programmes in England (with learning partner The King's Fund) – supports genuine partnership working between local people, the voluntary and community sector, the NHS and Coventry City Council to improve the #health and #wellbeing of Willenhall’s population. But how can #CommunityOrganising, power-building and #LivedExperience help unstick some of the most persistent #HealthInequalities from a starting point of simply looking out for one another? This is Willenhall woman Dorothy’s story in her own words. With our community organiser Edwin's help, Dorothy started Willenhall’s Waka Waka Fitness in 2023 as a way to help herself and others with their mental health through exercise and friendship. (That's Dorothy in the photo in her red tracksuit in September with 50 Waka Waka Fitness members, friends and family in the Peak District for a community away day, walking the Dovedale and Thorpe Cloud circuit.) Dorothy says: "When people talk about weight loss, I often ask myself, what WEIGHT are they talking about? "Because there’s body mass weight and the type of weight that I was carrying on my shoulders during my trying moments. "Diet and exercise wouldn’t take that weight off, and no scale is strong enough to measure it. "We are slowly standing on our own feet but at the moment, it’s thanks to Grapevine that we are still here." Read Dorothy's Waka Waka journey now on our website: https://bit.ly/3NveRk6 Also tomorrow (22 October) our CEO Clare Wightman joins Sir Michael Marmot's panel on health inequalities for Turning Point’s 60th anniversary ‘Health and Care Futures’ event series. She'll share some of this recent shifting power work with Sir Michael and the audience.   #ShiftingPower #MentalHealth #SystemsChange Join us in making our people and communities fairer, stronger and more connected.

At our annual Board Away Day last week, we had lots to talk about - a 13-page agenda to be exact! In our 30th year now, we are one of the UK’s longest-established, place-based charities using community organising and power-building. We have seen the power of this approach locally but it is set against a difficult backdrop of hollowing out of public services, widening inequality and poverty and deep structural injustices.  There was much to discuss at the Board Away Day. As always though, we made room to be human with flexible session timings to ensure useful discussions aren't rushed to an early end, regular breaks and an environment where everyone could join in and give their best - including our wonderful trustee Jess Cordingly who Zoomed in from home during a break from intensive treatment for her health. To warm up we shared our first jobs - Jed Francique working the shopfloor at Littlewoods in Oxford Street, Naomi Madden aged 16 on conservatory telesales and Mel Smith enquiring about "salt and vinegar?" at #Coventry's famous Parson's Nose eatery. If you're a Coventrian, perhaps she served you once upon a time! What followed were in-depth conversations, context and planning around how Grapevine can continue to develop and adapt to the changing landscape – a new government and an evolving funding environment. Trustee and Chair Jed Francique said: "We are confident about the future of the organisation and are committed to developing a 10-year strategy to help build on Grapevine’s excellent track record of making people’s lives better." Over the next few months, our trustees will also be spending time with the team to gain more first-hand experience of Grapevine's "magic" in action. Thanks also to Sarah Cutler who helped kick off our strategy session. Left to right – Rachel Heilbron (Governance Advisor), our Director of Projects Naomi Madden, our Deputy CEO Mel Smith, trustee and Treasurer Douglas Howat, trustee Jess Cordingly (on screen), our CEO Clare Wightman, Jed Francique and trustees Si Chun Lam, Joanne Finney, James Harrison and Nukey Proctor. #StrengtheningPeople #SparkingCommunity #ShiftingPower #WeAreGrapevine

It's rare a "Page" can show emotion but this post brought a tear to our eye, Jess. Thank you for your kind comments but most of all, for using some of your energy to be with us yesterday to offer your expertise 💜

NEW Connecting for Good #Impact Report reveals what we are learning about #ShiftingPower to communities. Please dive in for a peer-led, mixed approach evaluation of Coventry's social movement against isolation and marginalisation - a few headlines below. Full report: https://bit.ly/3XZ652T

It's National Work Life Week, an opportunity to have conversations about work-life balance and #FlexibleWorking for all sorts of people in all sorts of jobs. At Grapevine we offer a friendly workplace with a strong culture of helping people uncover their potential. And we love welcoming each new person who joins our #WeAreGrapevine team, getting to know more about them as they embark on their new role. Today we welcome Holly Thurgood to the Help and Connect team in #Coventry, working alongside autistic and learning disabled people to help them make a plan, get connections, get work, stay healthy and stay safe. As a connector on the project, Holly says she's looking forward to her new role as 'detective' - finding out what people's dreams are and investigating all opportunities to help them move closer to those dreams. This is the perfect #Autumn interview with Holly's tales of life on the farm and making the most of her vegetable patch to cook up a tasty range of jams and chutneys with the family 🍂 Meet Holly: https://bit.ly/3Yf2gb7 We're looking forward to seeing what seeds Holly sows with the people she's supporting, followed by a good harvest coming after six months of #StrengtheningPeople. Help and Connect is funded by Coventry City Council, helping to equip local people not receiving statutory support with the skills, knowledge, support networks and readiness for self-management and onward opportunity. Explore case studies on our website https://bit.ly/GVstrength And join us in making our people and communities fairer, stronger and more connected 🍇

📣Launching Survivor Sanctuary Warwick📣 We’re proud to announce that our newest peer support group will be launching in collaboration with University of Warwick on Thursday 17th October. A huge thanks to the Report and Support team past and present for helping us to make this possible. If you’d like to know more about what our peer support sessions are you can go to the FAQ section of our website. https://lnkd.in/erYT2xAr We’d be grateful if the Warwick community could share this news with your networks/departments and most importantly, your students

Our CEO Clare Wightman is looking forward to joining Sir Michael on the #HealthInequalities panel later this month to mark 60 years of Turning Point. She'll share how we are shifting power into local people's hands in Willenhall, #Coventry to create #HealthyCommunitiesTogether. This programme is one of five partnerships nationally exploring different ways of bringing local people, the voluntary and community sector, and public services together to improve population health and wellbeing. Funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, with learning partner The King's Fund.