Social Development - About-Us - Upstream

Social Development

The rationale and success of the mentoring service is underpinned by many priorities of social development work, evidenced by the Upstream evaluation: 

• To improve the quality of life for people at greatest disadvantage through age and isolation; to identify effective ways of engaging and empowering those who are excluded; and to benefit communities by increasing social capital.
  
• To change people’s lives by raising expectations, encouraging independence, arousing enthusiasm, restoring self-worth and self-confidence, revealing skills, renewing social networks, giving hope and helping people to sustain all this.
• To tackle entrenched negative social attitudes to older people by revealing their potential – to themselves and their communities, so that participants themselves and their communities recognise that people regardless of age can try new things, take risks, share pleasures and contribute to the community.
• To encourage enterprise: by helping people in sustainable groups to make the most of their skills, with social and economic benefits; by increasing demand to improve local transport facilities, by making greater use of local venues, purchase of resources and expertise; by developing people’s self-confidence in making decisions, helping each other, taking responsibility for social networks, sometimes by revealing commercial talents; above all, by expanding public service provision  - by developing a cost-effective service that will produce substantial savings in statutory provision in the long-term by contributing to the health-promotion and ill-health-prevention agenda.
• To bring about institutional change and promote equal access for all: by identifying the barriers to social inclusion (transport, psychological, etc.), signposting existing services, involving communities in affordable ways to enjoy stimulating activities, encouraging skill sharing between participants and communities, and by working with public (e.g. health services), private (e.g. care homes) and voluntary (e.g. local cubs) organisations.
• To enhance public service provision and, by tackling underlying issues about dependency and healthcare costs, to bring about lasting change in policy and practice nationally.
• To promote and share good practice, through research and evaluation, and reports aimed at replicating the service elsewhere.
• To encourage quality in our services, through an emphasis on stimulating and individually meaningful activity, developing and sharing skills and experience, using professional artists, and continuous action research to improve the service.