Tackling Poverty & Inequalities through System Convening
- April 2024
- Lead Member Greenwich Royal Borough
- Categories Community
Generations are coming together across the Royal Borough of Greenwich with a series of activities bringing nursery children together with elderly residents.
The benefits of intergenerational activities, such as reducing social isolation and fostering community links, have been known for quite a while now. The Council’s Early Years’ service has brought together a number of nurseries and care homes to help develop regular joint activities.
Children from Bo Peeps Nursery in Blackheath have been visiting the Westcombe Park Care Home on a weekly basis since November 2018. Activities at these sessions see the elderly residents interact with the children by singing songs together or doing arts and crafts. Since January 2019, a group of children from Waterways Nursery in Thamesmead has been visiting Lakeview Court weekly to take part in craft activities, story reading and cooking classes. Children at Vista Field nursery are now going on a weekly trip, since Easter 2019, to a nearby community centre to join older people at their activity session, again to share stories, art and craft activities as well as songs and rhymes.
These visits have had a positive impact on the residents of these care homes by increasing their levels of social interaction and reducing levels of social isolation. For the children, it supports their personal, social and emotional development, enabling them to develop positive relationships within their local community.
These schemes have been delivered through a partnership made up of the Council and private sector partners, for example the Westcombe Park Care Home which is operated by BUPA and Greenwich Leisure Limited. This work has demonstrated how this form of public and private partnership working can produce real benefits for the residents in the Borough.
This scheme is one of the recommendations from the Council’s Social Mobility Strategy which aims to improve the social mobility of our residents across a range of policy areas. This co-operative approach is essential in delivering a number of the recommendations that will hopefully improve the lives and opportunities for our residents.
