Can asset-based approaches deliver better health and wellbeing?

The Animate partners are strong advocates of an asset-based approach, where the focus is on the strengths and potential in people and communities, rather than their deficiencies. Here our partner Jo Kennedy tells us about an 18 month research programme she has been involved in looking at how such an asset-based approach can support community health and wellbeing:

Today (19 November 2015) sees the launch of a report which is the culmination of 18 months research into asset-based approaches in four separate Scottish communities.

‘Positive conversations, meaningful change: learning from Animating Assets’ documents the findings of a collaborative research project, performed by a team including the Scottish Community Development Centre, Glasgow Centre for Population Health, Research for Real and Animate.

Sponsored by the Scottish Government and local statutory funders, the Animating Assets programme was, at its heart, a process of engagement, facilitation, co-creation and learning. Using this approach we supported communities to develop asset-based approaches to a range of health and social wellbeing issues.

Ultimately we wanted to know whether an alternative approach to the deficit model, which sees more services as the answer to deficits, could affect real change to existing health and wellbeing systems and processes. And could it, as a consequence, deliver tangible and sustainable improvement and outcomes?

You can find out in the ‘Positive conversations, meaningful change: learning from Animating Assets’ report.