Shaping Places for Healthier Lives: Doncaster Council

The long-term vision for Stainforth is a community that supports everyone to be happy and have good mental health"

This will mean it will be a place that will support good mental health for generations to come. This will involve building a community where the wider determinants of mental health are enhanced to support local residents.

Working with the community, Stainforth has allowed Doncaster Council to develop a clear vision of a community that supports good mental health. The agreed way forward builds on the assets that the community have, embeds long-term thinking and is evidenced based to ensure meaningful change to people and place.

Currently, Stainforth residents feel more depressed than the average in Yorkshire and Humber (Y&H) and residents also have a lower life satisfaction and lower sense of self-worth than Y&H comparators (Acorn Data 2020). Doncaster’s vision is focused on improving self-worth and life satisfaction by creating community pride and enhancing residents' capabilities.

The aim is to make the physical place look different, with streets and green spaces that are clean, safe and used by everyone; people will travel actively and will be outdoors and engaging with their community. All ages will be playing and socialising together and enjoying life. Residents will have the right to play without fear of safety. Access to good work will be possible in a thriving local economy and many young people will no longer want to leave the village to seek a better life elsewhere. It will be a just and fair place, where people have a right to the same aspirations as other communities. Our vision will work to create this right for residents by connecting and building relationships that create agency.

Their focus is on intergenerational building, to tie a current disconnect between young people and older people. This disconnect is currently creating a Stainforth that does not enhance good mental health, by leading to an environment of distrust and lack of community cohesion. They will work with young people as a primary focus to build the seeds for local social mobility. Collectively, the community will support generations to grow and this will build the conditions for people to live in a community conducive to good mental health and allow for the building blocks to reduce local health inequalities.

Read more about their progress so far and the lessons learned in the Shaping Stainforth case study.