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John Lord

Belonging – New Story Group

We all want to belong, to feel accepted and included. This universal human experience applies across all cultures and relates to our connections with family, friends, neighbourhoods, and workplaces. We know there are negative consequences when people do not belong, when they are excluded or isolated from community life.

The New Story Group of Waterloo Region is a grass roots group that is committed to belonging within the context of community and social inclusion. In the fall of 2013, the New Story Group sponsored two days of conversations about Building a Community of Belonging. This important community work is being supported by the K-W Community Foundation in collaboration with a number of community partners.

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The Integrated Circle of Care is a fluid and collaborative approach followed by workers from different agencies weaving through St. John’s Kitchen. Within this approach, staff members from each agency are aware of their specific personal roles. However, the high level of collaboration between workers means that people can approach any worker, without knowing their agency association or specific role, and still receive support – either that worker will support the person directly, or they will introduce the person to another worker who can support the person more appropriately.

This approach makes relationships more natural and support more accessible. Workers from different agencies are easily approachable, meaning that people build relationships with multiple workers. Having relationships with different workers is important to a person’s support – it makes support from a trusted source easy to find, and means that people have a choice of worker to approach in any given situation.

In order to maintain a circle of care around a person, workers from different agencies ask for consent from the person for information to be shared between workers. Continuous communication between workers helps to ensure that people do not fall into gaps between services, and also that services are not duplicated.