The Clarendon Way

Our group "The Clarendon Way" is a group of patient volunteers from the Clarendon Medical practice, supported by a social worker, and social work assistant and Yellow Wood. Our group originally formed to improve the mental and physical health and wellbeing of the 12,000 patients of Clarendon Medical group, to remove isolation and break down the barriers to connection and wellbeing. Early stage investment from the Ideas fund helped our initial programmes to grow. Most of the work that we have done has been facilitated by peer support programmes, using innovative ways to address difficult topics. These programmes, run using volunteers and a shoe string budget ,are very successful. Despite the lack of funding we have used our passion and commitment to extend our activities to other groups within the city. All of the programmes are co-produced and inclusive of all. Through research and co-production, we have used our findings to advocate for policy change across Northern Ireland and beyond. Colin Turbot's 2024 book, "Community Social Work" has a chapter dedicated to the Clarendon Way method. This chapter along with the Connection report and Zine that we have produced are now used as teaching materials in the Social Word degree programme.