The Compassionate Cities Approach
The Compassionate Cities model was developed by Prof Allan Kellehear. It provides a helpful way of thinking about the different people and organisations that should ideally be involved in work to create a more compassionate community.
The Compassionate Cities Charter defines what a ‘compassionate city’ should include, and can be used to ‘map’ the key areas of the city that should be involved in work to create a Compassionate City - businesses, schools, churches/temples, cultural and recreational institutions but also public spaces, social media, and marginal and hidden sectors of a city (the homeless, refugees, travellers, prisons, etc). Health and social care services are involved, but only as simply another set of players and partners.
The charter guides some of the areas that need to be addressed, but doesn’t specify how the charter should be implemented. Importantly, the charter guides communities to join up top down policy support with bottom up community engagement and development.
If you are interested in using the Compassionate Cities approach in your area, you can read more detail about the theory and ideas behind Compassionate Cities in Public Health Approaches to End of Life Care, A toolkit
Several cities across the world have been awarded the title ‘Compassionate City‘ by Public Health Palliative Care International. More information about these cities is available on the PHPCI website: Compassionate Cities.
Further reading:
Allan Kellehear: Compassionate Cities: Public health and End of Life Care (2005)
Karapliagkou A. & Kellehear A. Public Health Approaches to End of Life Care, A toolkit
Abel J, Sallnow L, Murray S and Kerin M (2016) Each community is prepared to help: Community development in end of life care – guidance on ambition six
Photo credit: Vitaliy Paykov