Registrations open for Community Led Support spring festival

This popular online festival returns for another year. Anyone can register to attend, you don't have to be part of the Community Led Support (CLS) network.

Highlights:

• Extending the Community Led Support approach to work with children and young people's services.

• Demonstrate the impact of strengths based, community led approaches with a range of tools and resources.

• Independent research on the role of community spaces

• Cross-council and cross-system approaches to Community Led Support

Full programme:

Thursday 22 May 2025

What is CLS, 9.30am-10.30am

Community Led Support (CLS) is a values led, evidence based transformation programme. It supports statutory authorities and their partners to collaborate with people and communities to design new ways of working that strengthen independence and wellbeing. If you're new to CLS as a concept join this overview that will explain what it is, how it works in practice and some of the developments over the past year in extending the reach and capturing impact of the approach.

CLS for children and young people, 11am-12noon

The NDTi Community Led Support approach has proven itself to be an effective programme of change when implemented and embedded in a collaborative way across adult social care, health and communities. The approach uses strengths-based practice at its heart for all adults regardless of age, circumstance or location. Colleagues from across the CLS team and NDTi’s children and young people’s team have been considering and testing the approach further to reach into the education and children’s social care sector.

Amanda Nally and Jo Gibbs would like to share this with you and welcome your thoughts on this exciting development.

Demonstrating impact, 1pm-2.30pm

An integral part of CLS is being able to capture the difference it is making and to use this information to celebrate and demonstrate its success and to inform future direction by learning what works, and what doesn't.

CLS is iterative and we take a system wide approach to measurement, evaluation and learning and ensure it is an integral part of change. In this session Mike Richardson will share a range of developments. We will look at how network members are gaining evidence and intelligence through the use of system data, stories, surveys and feedback. Only by truly understanding how changes in the way organisations work are impacting positively on local people can we progress further.

Friday 23 May 2025

Community spaces learning and research, 9.30am-11.30am

An integral part of CLS in many areas is the ability for people to have conversations and gain information and advice in welcoming community spaces. This session will initially explain the model, how it is applied across the network, sharing the learning so far. We will hear from Doctor Chloe Waterman (KCL) and Professor Robin Miller (Birmingham University), and members of the Research Lived Experience Group who will outline the study underway. We will explorie the impacts and running of these spaces, building upon on the research published in 2024.

CLS total place, 1pm-2pm

CLS is effective in improving the experience and outcomes of people who are, or who otherwise may need to be, in receipt of support from adult social care services. But as CLS increasingly becomes more focused on wellbeing and healthy, thriving communities, it is clear that this is beyond the scope and remit of just adult social care. This session will describe some of the work happening to date across the network that is taking a whole council, whole system approach to CLS.

All sessions are free to attend. Register here.