Outside the Box

Projects which are based on the approach of circles of support aim to introduce more friends into the lives of people who are vulnerable and have few people around them.

Some people got together to look at what is already happening to enable people who tend to be especially isolated to have more people in their lives who care about them, and whether it might be useful to draw on the approaches and experience developed around circles of support to benefit other people. We particularly wanted to think about whether these approaches could be useful as a way of supporting people with mental health problems and their families. This was around several situations:

• where people could have a better quality of life if they had more people in their lives
• where people needed to have more people around them over periods of crisis, or when they were particularly unwell
• where families were also isolated and had few people around to help support them and the person with the mental health problem.

There was an initial meeting to explore the ideas at an initial meeting in Dundee in May 2004, and other people have fed in ideas in other ways. The meeting was co-hosted by Circles Around Dundee and by Little Wing, which are 2 voluntary organisations based in Dundee. It was organised by Outside the Box. Communities Scotland gave financial support through a Seeing is Believing grant.

Al Etmanski and PLAN in Canada

For more information, please visit www.plan.ca