Ipswich service manager Julie Mayhew explains how her team worked together to come up with a unique community engagement plan for someone they support…
We’ve been supporting John Deri for 21 years. He’s an extremely sociable man and someone who would happily chat all day long, but he has been very set in his ways and doesn’t like to try new things.
We wanted to find a way for John to get more engaged with his community, so looked at what he already liked to do at home. One thing that came up was his passion for recycling.
Every six weeks or so, John would gather together all of the glass and bottles from the rest of his housemates and take them to the nearby recycling centre. Once there, he would get a real buzz out of dropping the bottles into the bins and hearing the smashing sounds – as someone who is partially sighted, he was always excited about sensory experiences.
We thought we could try turning his interest in recycling into a more interactive activity by setting up a community recycling scheme. We spoke to John and he was keen, so we started to draw up a plan.
We then worked out what needed to be done before we launched, coming up with the following plan:
- Count the houses on one side of the street (to make sure John wouldn’t get overwhelmed) so we knew how many flyers would be needed to advertise the idea
- Design the flyers with John
- Print off the number of flyers needed
- Deliver flyers to the houses
- Go and meet the neighbours who responded and arrange details of collections
- First collection round.
Before long, we were ready to go and I’m pleased to say it was a real success. John loves the act of recycling, so is pleased to have it incorporated into his weekly activities. And he has got to know his neighbours so much better.
He has an excellent memory, and uses this to ask each neighbour about how they are when he knocks – he remembers who has dogs, or what country they come from. People now take the time to talk to him if they see him, and one even sought him out at the local shop to ask if he would take her bottles too.
Now we know he can do it, we’re getting ready to send out flyers to the other side of the street. He’s even been given a Small Sparks grant to get equipment to make recycling easier for him. But without a good plan, this idea would never have got off the ground.
