Community of Practice Round Up (June 5th 2025)
- alexfisher36
- Jun 10
- 7 min read
Updated: Jun 11
A summary of all the speakers from this week's COP, with external links included
Kings Church – Colin Orr
Colin Orr welcomed us to Kings Church a Christian church in Birkenhead. Kings Church are preparing to gear up more children’s work over the holidays by introducing a family games morning on Tuesday morning’s throughout the holidays. King’s Church has a heart for children with a third of their church currently being kids and want to offer the community around them opportunities to have something to do with their kids over the holiday. Colin also highlighted another example of healing they have seen through the church since it last hosted.
Colin also wanted to express his thanks to everyone in the room as the expression of love that is shown by the community in this meeting is so powerful and a privilege to be a part of.
Alysha Hughes - NHS AAA Screening team
Michelle and Alicia from the NHS, introduced their work on abdominal aortic aneurysm screening. They explained the screening process, which involves a simple ultrasound scan to detect aneurysms in the aorta, a condition that is often symptomless but potentially fatal if untreated. The importance of raising awareness and increasing uptake of screening among men, who are more susceptible to this condition, was stressed.
Dr Hannah Mckay, Retired GP - Primary Care Update
Hannah, a recently retired NHS GP, provided an update on primary care. She highlighted the challenges faced by GP practices, including increased patient lists without proportional increases in staff or resources. Hannah emphasised the need for flexible systems to better serve patients, particularly those without access to digital devices, to avoid exacerbating health inequalities. She mentioned her new role as a Reiki master and the importance of self-advocacy for health, particularly around preventable conditions like type 2 diabetes and COPD. Hannah advocated for non-pharmacological approaches to health and well-being, such as community engagement and tackling loneliness, which can have significant positive impacts on health outcomes.
Micha Woodworth - CVS Update
Micha provided updates on Wirral CVS, detailing her interim development role and the organisation's efforts to support local groups. She announced the recruitment of new staff, including a volunteer programme manager and office coordinator, which will enhance support for community organisations. Micha highlighted upcoming events,
10th June – Volunteer Managers Forum: A support network for volunteer managers to offer opportunities to share, gain best practice and pool resources.
23rd June – Small Grants programme launches: Up to £5000 for small groups and charities with a turn over under 10K
24th June – Faith Forum in Person: An Inter-faith forum for understanding the faith sectors response to societal needs.
4th July - Community Assets Meeting: For people who own community assets and/or have been through community asset transfer programs to come together to support each other.
She highlighted some upcoming training on the Volunteer Portal as Micha has been in touch with TeamKinetic to organise that and will let people know when it’s on. Micha encouraged attendees to participate in making waves for volunteering, emphasising the value of volunteers in community work.
Zel also mentioned that the next round of the Household Support Fund is due to begin soon.
Mark Webster - Transition Town West Kirby Update
Mark provided an update on Transition Town West Kirby, an environmental organisation focused on reducing fossil fuel use and promoting local sustainability. He highlighted their recent efforts to reduce plastic use, citing alarming statistics about plastic waste and its impact on the environment. Mark encouraged local organisations to join the plastic-free campaign and provided resources for further information. He also mentioned the importance of reducing single-use plastics to mitigate long-term health impacts, such as increased cancer rates.
Louise Harland-Davis - Resilient Programme Update
Louise Harland-Davis introduced Resilient, an organisation supporting young people (16-30) with additional needs, disabilities, and mental health challenges. She shared her personal motivation for founding Resilient, inspired by her daughter's experience with autism. Louise outlined the Resilient programme, which focuses on self-care, health and well-being, budgeting, independent living, and employability. She highlighted the importance of volunteering as a pathway to employment and shared success stories from the programme. Louise announced new funding for the programme and described collaborative efforts with other organisations, such as the Salvation Army and Open Door Charity.
Tim Brunsden - Friends of New Brighton Marine Lake
Tim provided an update on the Friends of Marine Lake in New Brighton, detailing efforts to improve water quality and biodiversity. He described the group's volunteer activities, fundraising efforts, and collaboration with the council. He reiterated that they are not experts but are collaborating to do what they can in order to share the space learning as they go. Tim also mentioned the Floral Civilian project, which involves planting opportunities to enhance the local environment. He highlighted the importance of community involvement in these initiatives and encouraged attendees to participate in upcoming volunteer days.
Vicky Forfar, Russell Kennedy and Kieran Murphy - Together All Are Able
Vicky introduced herself and her colleagues, Russell and Kieran, and provided a brief overview of their recent activities, including upcoming meetings with Public Health as lived experience advisors and the addition of a new member experienced in campaigning. The group has also been involved with several campaigns, including Happy Times, Happy Together, and Speak Up Be Heard, which focuses on self-advocacy for day services. Jenny Carter was asked to deliver a speech at the ADASS (Associate Director of Adult Social Services) Spring seminar on working in partnership for the national co-production advisory group. Vicky mentioned internal meetings to build strategies and workshops, press interactions about benefits changes, and preparations for upcoming members' meetings.
Together all are able are also currently looking for space to operate from. They are looking for both office space and space to hold activities for their members. If anyone is interested in hosting Together all are able please contact alex.fisher@wcvs.org.uk
COP – Feedback and Birthday
Amy shared that after listening to the feedback from both the COP Birthday and the feedback received through Wirral CVS that there where some things that the COP team are hoping to change and opened up to the meeting the possibility of the following.
There was a desire to begin sharing an attendee email list with the email addresses of anyone who attended the meeting that was happy to share their information. This was to support the ability to get in touch with people who you may not have time to make a connection with in the meeting but would still like to talk to.
There was a conversation about how the meetings were structured to allow for a break in the middle of the session to allow some networking as people highlighted that often by the time came to the end of the session people would have to shoot off. It was also highlighted to support those who may need to take a break and not miss anything.
In celebration
Message from Chris:
After Chairing, and Co-Chairing Wirral COP with Amy for 12 years, it felt really good to be back last week. After missing several meetings and The Birthday to hear of pending tweaks and improvements in the structure of the mornings as proof of COPs durability and evolution.
So, as well as thanking Colin and the team at Kings Church for their warm hospitality and his introduction to its activities and how it has, sometimes miraculously, changed local folks lives by the power of being in such a positive and caring community.
The passion for community on Wirral was again evidenced by the speakers proving again that the ABCD philosophy of bringing together folks from Wirral's big and specialist Institutions and public services - NHS/local authority/DWP/police/larger charities and combining these resources and specialisms to the passion and talents of associational groups and projects (faith/local community groups/CICs/smaller charities) and tapping in to the gifts and talents of individuals where every part of the whole community of residents and their services can meet and equally share their messages has been really powerful for Wirral through economic and political upheavals and unprecedented pandemics where projects/community groups and charities proved their essential front line role in supporting hard-pressed public services.
So unlike old days of competitive tendering where the way local services were often institutionalised and set often against each other in competition for resources, The ABCD model proves how much healthier it is to stick to its simple model:
1. Move at the Speed of trust - encourage interdependency and not just commercial growth.
2. Leadership by stepping back - COPs Advocacy role is to highlight potentials not to steer or manage interactions by setting workshops or sub-groups - that's for other folks to do to shape relationships and agency.
3. Focus on what's Strong and not what's wrong - tapping into new and emerging positive energies - enabling older and established expertise to evolve and flourish to change old deficit/dependency models into "can-do" relationships tapping into the gifts of local communities and individuals.
4. Making the hidden visible - creating a space where big and small agencies and services can highlight what they do to larger audiences and local groups (and commissioners) - stuff that wider communities and individual practitioners might not know?
5. Leave a space at the table for strangers - being open and inclusive to new comers and receptive to their energies and ideas - essential for community connectedness and steering old established ways of Service and support from staling or falling into Group-think.
So if COP espouses the above then it can continue to play a central role in how Wirral and its communities, at grass-roots level, adapt and respond to coming wider societal changes
Poem created at COPs 12th Birthday Party – Written by Abi Horsfield using words from the gathering.
Today coming together in a different way
To celebrate.
Portraits of talent
Chatting cheering, storytelling cheering.
12 years of vibrant committed conversations.
Thank you for the network, improvement, resistance
Thank you for your willingness to stay present
Staying with it,
Musing on how community is self-discovery
Honing awareness of external and internal asset management.
A journey, our journey
COP helps us travel with companions through interesting times,
Invaluable relationships, strength of community
Strong in community.
Making news about a future of Hope
A vision for this Peninsula.
Celebrating the drop ins, well-being, volunteering, stories, local heroes doing so
much.
Leading by stepping back, generosity.
Embracing goodwill and trust.
Seeing, noticing, hearing the small things, the significant things
Changes
Co-production
Making friends for life
Hearts and brains connected.
Human, unique, wise
Looking forward to the next 12 years.
A glass half full.
The next COP is at Kings Church Birkenhead on the 16th July 2025.
Click the link below to register:
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