Star Project (Renfrewshire) - holistic community development project delivering a range of creative services to tackle poverty
Category
- Fully Validated Effective Local Practice
Poverty impact
- Mitigation
Poverty driver
- Provide benefit in-kind (material)
- Provide benefit in-kind (experience)
Keywords
- Accepting
- Universal
- Mental Health
- Food insecurity
- Creative approach
Aim
The aim of the project is to tackle poverty by building stronger and more resilient community members through a creative, person-centred and trauma informed approach.
Summary
Star Project is a holistic community development project in Paisley that takes a person-centred approach to deliver a range of services to tackle poverty. The services include for example counselling, a Befriending Scheme, workshops, Men’s Shed for mental health support, targeted activities for children, a community fridge and a pantry. Community members with lived experience of poverty are involved in the development and delivery of the project shaping the direction of Star. Star Project utilises creativity, culture and playfulness, and they take a trauma informed approach. Star’s mental health support is popular in the community, and the Project has contributed to forming a lived experience panel to inform the Renfrewshire Council on policy.
What difference does it make?
The Star Project is a charity that provides comprehensive support to the Renfrewshire community. They recognise that this support is not just based on individual components but are comprehensively connected. They are person-centred and operate on a case-by-case basis, recognising individual needs. Star Project contributes to research outputs and local governance structures through for example their participation in informing the Renfrewshire Council on the establishment of a lived experience panel and contributions to Renfrewshire Tackling Poverty Commission’s research on local poverty issues. Their positive impacts on local mental health issues are evidenced through provision of services like the Befriending Scheme where service users have reported increased confidence to access other forms of support and social spaces as a result of the Scheme.
Key take-aways
- The commitment to universal service provision is useful to the Project where the service users rarely only have one area in which they are in need of support. With a universal approach Star can signpost service users to other areas of support.
- Actively listening to community members and engaging them into the provision of holistic support services can lead to useful insight into where support is needed the most. For Star this engagement led to starting ‘Men’s Shed’ which provides specialised mental health support for men after identifying a need for it in the community.
- Strong community links can support the longevity of projects like Star in informing them on the areas where they need to reform or adapt.
How to guide
Additional information that may assist others to adopt this local practice
Learn more arrow_forwardOrganisations
Star Project
Location
Renfrewshire, with some referrals from Glasgow, Ayrshire and Falkirk
Status:
LiveStart date:
1999No planned end date