Strands of Compassionate Inverclyde

Compassionate Inverclyde has many interdependent strands within the overarching movement:

No-one dies alone

This initiative trains and supports compassionate citizens as companions for people and families in the last hours of life. Initially developed to support people at end of life in hospital it is now spreading to support end of life care in the community, initially in care homes. Read more...

High-five programme

This programme has been adapted and delivered to school pupils, college students, youth club, prisoners, community groups and a local business. Each five week programme focuses on the five ways to wellbeing and helps people to understand how they can be kind to self and to others.

Back home boxes

This initiative aims to support people who live alone as they return home from hospital. The boxes are gifted by a local business and are filled with community donations of essential food items, hand crafted kindness tokens, a get-well card made by local school children and a small knitted blanket made by local people and community groups. Volunteers organise collecting the contents from the local community and distributing the Back Home Boxes within the local hospital. Read more...

Back home visitors

This is a new development based on neighbourliness whereby a volunteer visitor and a young person will visit an older person who lives alone and is socially isolated.

Beravement cafe and support hub

The initial drop-in bereavement groups in two community cafes have been superseded by a volunteer led support hub in a local Church. The Hub offers a meeting place for volunteers and a friendly haven for anyone in the community who is experiencing loneliness, loss, crisis, or bereavement. The synergy between each of these community initiatives amplifies their effect, improving the lives of the people of Inverclyde and enhancing the wellbeing of the community. Each day, many people facing bereavement, loneliness, illness and survivorship benefit from community acts of kindness and support that improve their wellbeing, irrespective of age, condition or circumstances.

Text taken from: Compassionate Inverclyde Evaluation Summary Report, p7

Further Reading

More information about all of these initiatives is available within the three evaluation reports on the Compassionate Inverclyde website.

Photo by Karly Santiago on Unsplash