Scotland’s community link workers are to be recognised next week at an awards ceremony at this year’s Scottish Community Link Worker Network Conference hosted by Voluntary health Scotland. The only person to be nominated under two categories is Calum Barry, a community link worker employed by the charity Health All Around in collaboration with Edinburgh Health & Social Care Partnership, who is based at two medical practices in Edinburgh’s Sighthill.

Calum’s citations in the Partnership of the Year and Outstanding Link Worker of the Year categories recognise the work he does to identify needs and develop solutions for hundreds of people in the community he and his colleagues serve.

Specifically, the judges cite his role in helping to establish a flexible crisis support fund that provides ‘rapid and compassionate assistance to people facing financial hardship and other urgent needs’.

“When I originally started working at one of our practises ten years ago, I was called a Community Activity Mentor and, about seven years ago, that role grew into becoming a community link worker,” says Calum.

“Over the last year or so, with lots of cuts to services, my community link worker colleagues and I were finding the options for ways we could support people were becoming increasingly limited, it was getting more and more difficult to give people the help that was going to be best for them. That was particularly the case when it came to financial support.

“About the same time, a local company Grant Westfield, who are based literally a few doors down the road from us, approached us saying they wanted to support work that would directly help local people.

“With their ‘no strings attached’ donations and ongoing fundraising, we have been able to set up a fund to give crisis grants to those in acute need. They’ve also organised a toy drive for local children to get presents last Christmas, and help with clothing donations.”

Calum and his two neighbouring Health All Around link workers now have the option to provide a cash grant to people referred to them. The needs of the people who receive these grants are very varied, says Calum:

“We have helped a victim of domestic abuse to buy a Ring doorbell. One person who we’d been able to get a gym membership for after finding that was the best way to help them admitted that they didn’t have a pair of shoes or gym wear, so we were able to refer them to the clothing bank and fund them to buy shoes.

“Most often we buy supermarket vouchers because people often need to buy a few more things before they can make the meals they want with the items they are able to get from food banks.”

Calum says what gives him most job satisfaction is being employed by a locally-based charity that responds to the insights of its community link workers and listens to feedback from local people – then seeks to provide the services and support that patients need most. As a result, Health All Around has set up tailored local services, including counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy that are only available to those referred by their community link worker:

“I used to be a housing support worker which meant I had quite a very narrow focus in terms of what I could do for an individual. At times, that used to be quite frustrating because I could see the other issues that were going on in an individual's life that were having a big impact on them, but the solutions were essentially off limits. But, in this role with Health All Around, you have many more options. It's quite liberating that nothing's off the table – you can consider anything that is going to help an individual.”

Continue shouting

Calum says that, while community link workers enjoy a higher profile than they did when he first became one, many people still do not understand the role they play:

“It is still not uncommon for me to encounter people working in both primary healthcare and secondary care who have never heard about community link workers. But, when I then talk about what we do, they’ll usually say: “That’s a brilliant service – that would be really useful for the individuals that I work with”.

“So, I think it is really important that we continue to shout about the work that we do because the more people who know about our work, the more people can be referred to us and the more positive outcomes that we can help deliver.”

 

See more about the Scottish Community Linke Worker Network Annual Conference and Awards.

Read more: Community Link Workers reducing stress on GPs; Film series showcases power of link workers; Awards to spotlight Scotland’s link worker teams; Meet the secret weapons of GPs

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