"We’ll meet again - don’t know where, don’t know when" Supporting Community Visiting in Essex Care Homes

Essex County Council is working to support community engagement in care homes. Alongside the developments described in the companion paper “It’s a Lovely Thing”: Commissioning Relationship-Centred Care in Essex (Granville, G., 2013) the Council has fostered the development of a Community Visitor (CV) pilot, operated by the My Home Life Community Association (MHLECA)
This report describes the results of a year-long evaluation of the Community Visitor pilot, conducted by researchers at the University of Essex. It was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), and forms part of a wider programme of work by JRF in the field of risk and relationship in the care sector.
The report describes how the CV pilot was established and its impact on the lives of older people, the culture of the care home, and on the volunteers themselves. It goes on to discuss wider learning from the pilot and makes a number of recommendations to inform future planning.