#ThroughTogether: CB Plus - the power of partnerships

CB Plus is an award-winning independent infrastructure and community development organisation working across London.

Their partnership network spans over 700 voluntary, community, and faith-based organisations, allowing them to reach and impact nearly 2.4 million Londoners.

For over 40 years, CB Plus has been dedicated to building connected and empowered local communities, starting in the London Borough of Barnet and expanding to other boroughs. Including Brent, Enfield, Hammersmith & Fulham, Harrow, Hillingdon and Newham.

We spoke to Julie Pal, Chief Executive, and Selina Rodrigues, Head of Strategic Development about how CB Plus is helping to strengthen the capability of community organisations in difficult times for the sector.

Infrastructure is the core purpose of CB Plus, but Julie adds, “We find ways to empower communities to do more. We have been doing a lot of work around increasing access to information and resources to support residents, whether that’s supporting food banks, or increasing access to IT equipment for diverse communities.

Alongside this support, CB Plus delivers direct services, as Julie explains. “We deliver what we would describe as early intervention and prevention services, including mental health services. The Barnet Wellbeing Service is one such programme, where we deliver community-based interventions to people to prevent the need for statutory services further down the line.”

“We are constantly working on better understanding people’s experiences and using that to inform our decision-making.”

CB Plus has around 35 staff members, a mix of full time and part time. Volunteers are a vital part of their delivery, particularly those with lived experience who can provide support to their peers and their communities. CB Plus delivers Healthwatch in Newham for example, where trained community volunteers with lived experience of physical or mental health conditions undertake community research and review the quality of health and adult social care services.

Supporting minoritised communities is core to CB Plus’s approach. Julie outlined how the organisation has been funded by the National Lottery Community Fund to deliver wellbeing services.

“We know that many people from minoritised communities do not feel confident in mental health services, particularly at the start of their support journey. We’ve brought together community organisations who were delivering wellbeing services and we have used our funding to upskill those organisations.”

It’s a three-year programme of training and capacity building, where organisation staff are trained in mental health qualifications and work with individuals to develop a wellbeing plan. Eventually, participating organisations become providers of community-based interventions. Communities get to be supported by people that reflect their ethnicity and faith, that they know and trust, and the organisations providing support become more sustainable in their own right.

Selina described the programme’s reach; “The feedback we got from staff, volunteers and members of these organisations was that mainstream services were not trusted and were not culturally appropriate. This new service is delivered by trusted organisations, who speak community languages and who can navigate cultural requirements and considerations such as sensitive wording for different conditions; techniques to address stigma; responding to the importance of faith when considering life values and choices; and support for people fleeing conflict and war.

“We’ve seen organisations help people from so many diverse communities, such as African-Caribbean elders, Romanian people, African refugees, parents of children with complex needs, and the Farsi speaking population.”

Like many in the sector, the CB Plus team are working in a challenging environment. Faced with short-term funding contracts, the cycle of reviewing and renewing contracts can be exhausting as well as stressful for staff. Staff recruitment is an ongoing challenge, especially when in competition with statutory services. Burnout across teams is a concern.

Organisations like CB Plus need to continually demonstrate impact, a challenge when there is no set formula to calculate savings to the public purse.

“In terms of delivering community-based mental health services, we can clearly see that the voluntary sector can pick up people well before their mental health deteriorates and they require access to statutory services, including expensive crisis services”, Julie explained.

“There needs to be a better and more consistent methodology to calculate cost benefit. By delivering through our sector, for example with the work we do in the Barnet Wellbeing Service, we estimate that for the funding we receive, we are saving the NHS £2.8 million through reduced presentations to emergency services. This has recently been endorsed by an academic partner who reviewed the social return on investment for the service”