Citizen Advisors - Turning Point

Turning Point Connected Care Report 32
6.3 Community Agents
Black and minority ethnic (BME) groups can find themselves isolated and
unable to find out about and access local services. Individuals from minority
ethnic groups can find using services problematic due to language, cultural and
transport difficulties. This was identified as a particular problem in rural areas,
such as Gloucestershire.
Community Agents follow in the footsteps of Village Agents in Gloucestershire,
but they provide support to specific BME communities and encourage them to
engage with services. This model is not necessarily restricted to rural areas, and
can be applied across both urban and rural districts. In Gloucestershire, there
are six Community Agents for groups including the Chinese, Polish and Bengali
speaking communities.
The agents are community based and spread themselves across large
geographical areas. There are some questions regarding the efficiency of this
approach, since the community agents must spent considerable amounts of
time travelling in order to cover the whole county. Furthermore, whilst the
community agent may have in depth knowledge of the issues of their ethnic
group, they may have less knowledge of the services available in all the areas
across their designated region. It could also lead to the agents having too great
a workload in order to provide an effective service to all clients.
In Bolton, Link Workers provide an advisory and translation service directed to
support the health needs of Asian people. Since this service is provided in an
urban area with a high concentration of Asian people, the link workers do not
face the same difficulty of combining service focused and ethnic community
focused support.
Summary of the model:
Community agents provide service-focused support that is tailored to the
specific needs of different communities.
Community agents are paid and trained by the provider organisation.
There is an issue regarding the geographical coverage of the agents and
whether it is possible for them to have an in depth knowledge of particular
places where communities reside.