A focus on wellbeing from a community development perspective

Crossroads understands ‘living gloriously’ as living to one’s full potential, encompassing wellbeing, security, connection and power over one’s circumstances.

It is our understanding that the three vital determinates for living well and flourishing in community development terms - status (the respect we receive from others), control (influence over the things that affect our lives) and affiliation (sense of belonging/connection) - are also core determinates of better mental health & well-being.

Confident individuals who share respect with each other and feel connected are cornerstones for any strong community. We encourage critical awareness and foster a can-do attitude through our youth work promoting agency and the power of collective action. We encourage active engagement in matters that affect young people and families. The youth work service has been developed alongside Crossroads’

youth committee, and past youth committee office bearers now sit as Directors on Crossroads Voluntary Management Board. We don’t take people’s problems away from them by solving them ourselves, but we fully support them in learning how to deal with the problems themselves. This is a lifelong skill which opens the door to people living well together.

Bringing people together in a community-led project who have all experienced similar issues can act as a catalyst for change and can in itself be a pathway to recovery; knowing you are not alone, developing an understanding that there are often structural causes to private problems; and determining with others solutions to shared issues, are powerful motivators for community action as well as being key steps in individual recovery.

If positive change is to take place, particularly in structures like statutory services, then individual experiences must be translated into collective action. Evidence needs to be extracted from individual encounters in a process of uncovering themes. And the evidence for change needs a platform from which those who need to be engaged to engender change can access it or are incapable of ignore it.