Community Development & Health Workers

These job roles were new within UCHT in 2006, with funding from Investing for Health and the Local Health and Social Care Group. The jobs are are designed to complement activity in the community, voluntary and statutory sector in the Ards Borough Council area. We want to raise awareness generally of the fact that all aspects of our lives have an impact on our health and well-being and that the communities we live in can play a very positive role. It’s this social model of health that informs our work activity.

With the overarching aim of addressing health inequalities in Ards, (Health inequalities refers to, for example the fact that we are more likely to die earlier and suffer from ill health if we have less money, low educational achievement or are unemployed) the Community Development and Health Workers’ activities include the following:

Researching and profiling the Ards Borough at each ward level, to establish some base statistics and guidelines to inform us where we ought to be targeting our resources; ie. identifying where the greatest health and community development needs are in the borough. This profiling involves paper and internet research, as well as more anecdotal evidence from residents of the areas and workers from different organisations and sectors who have experience and/or knowledge of the area.
Working to develop relationships with community representatives and activists in Ards. We do this in several ways:
We host a quarterly forum in Ards to bring together workers and volunteers to provide opportunity for networking and to discuss the community development and health issues of the groups they represent.
We get out and about and meet workers and volunteers to identify projects and/or pieces of work that we can come together on.
We work alongside some groups to deliver activities and programmes that aim to contribute to the community development needs and the health needs of specific communities.
We are organising a series of ‘good practice’ study visits. These trips, which will be fully funded will consist of visits to community development projects that address health needs. We hope that this will provide opportunities for a group from Ards to learn from others’ experience and spark ideas for development back home in the borough.

We are working to identify communities and/or groups who would be interested in working with us, attending the study visits or our forum meetings. We welcome ideas and suggestions as to how we should target our resources. If you are interested, or know someone who is, please contact us on the above telephone number, or email us at: