During the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation circulated among communities and there was some distrust of the council. Communities reported feeling disengaged from official sources. Through Community Champions – trusted voices from the community – Staffordshire County Council has built trust and capability within communities and used existing community networks to relay important health information. Areas with champions increased take-up of COVID-19 testing, adhering to national and local vaccine guidance. The champions programme has since grown, with champions leading initiatives in the community and the council’s role has evolved into mentor. The relational approach was so successful, the council expanded their engagement into citizens’ inquiries in two other communities in their county.
The place
Staffordshire has around 876,100 residents and is a mixture of affluent and deprived urban and rural areas. East Staffordshire has had the highest growth, which increased by 9.2 per cent between 2011 and 2021. Burton within East Staffordshire has a culturally diverse population. Non-white minorities represent 13.7 per cent of the population. Newcastle-Under-Lyme and Tamworth both have strong mining and industrial heritages, with high levels of deprivation and poor health outcomes. Furthermore, many communities in these areas have poor levels of health literacy, poorer health outcomes and a distrust of professionals and public services.
The challenge
The context for community engagement in some Staffordshire communities was challenging. In some communities there was a mistrust of local authorities, stemming from a misunderstanding of what councils do, and engagement was viewed as tokenistic. In addition, those in more affluent areas of the county were perceived as having more of a voice in decisions than those in deprived areas.
Low literacy levels – in multiple languages – as well as the ability to understand, interpret and apply public health advice and guidance, meant that council information was not easily understood by all groups in the community equally. The complexity of public sector infrastructure further exacerbated this problem, so people did not know where to go to ask questions or seek advice. There was also the added complexity of different religious faiths, requests for help from local politicians, and so on.
The COVID-19 pandemic compounded these issues at a time when clear communication was vital. The council became concerned about non-compliance with COVID rules, poor uptake of testing, low vaccine uptake and health misinformation in areas such as Burton. Information about the locations of vaccine clinics was also confusing, leading to people queuing for the jab in the wrong locations. All this resulted in low take-up levels in at-risk communities and the need to reach residents in a different way.
The solution
To counteract misinformation and improve vaccine take-up, the council sought out volunteer leaders from the local community to act as ‘trusted voices’. Building on the Burton Community Leaders group already convened by the council, a Community Champions Network was formed by building trust and encouraging a two-way dialogue with ongoing collaborative engagement with local community advocates. Trusted voices were active members of their communities, who could share reliable information and be a reputable contact point for questions. Importantly, they spoke the same language as their communities – both in style and language, and on recognizable platforms (such as: social media, mosque radio).
Trusted voices not only provided accurate health information to their communities but were able to test the council’s public health messaging. As a result, the council could reach networks which had otherwise been closed to them. Through building trust and adopting a more flexible approach, the council was able to provide more mobile vaccine clinics in places that communities accessed and used, with tailored messaging to suit local needs.
The impact
Vaccine take-up in the areas with community champions nearly doubled compared to similar demographic areas. Building capability within communities has meant that more residents have been able to navigate the complicated landscape to achieve positive outcomes for themselves.
Watch a video about Staffordshire County Council's Community Champions initiative
It has taken a year for the council to build trust with these communities. However, the council’s relationship with the champions has now evolved to be one of mentor. For instance, one of the community champions recently initiated and led negotiations to provide health checks for communities in a local mosque. While these had been offered by the council before, attendance was usually low. With the champion driving the initiative, 71 people over three days attended. It was clear that this approach was so effective as the council had taken the time to build trust and prove their intentions to work with communities by empowering Community Champions to take local action.
How is the new approach being sustained?
The approach has been so successful that the council has explored further co-production in two other towns – Newcastle-under-Lyme in the north of the county, and Tamworth, an ex-mining community in the south east.
In these towns, two citizens’ inquiries were completed to explore a more structured method of engagement on health and wellbeing. Through the citizens’ inquiries, trusted voices were identified and recruited to be Community Champions and the events enabled more inter-community connections, developed further voluntary community and social enterprise (VCSE) partnerships and connected different teams working on health and wellbeing prevention.
While the time-intensive support on this project will not be sustainable across the whole of the county, using the learnings from these three towns the council is exploring how to best use the relationships with the VCSE sector to marshal resources on the ground and enable alternative models to evolve and ensuring longer term sustainability.