A NEW project that aims to meet health and social care needs in hard to reach areas of Dorset has been launched.

Under the Community Catalysts scheme, work will be undertaken with with local people who want to develop small enterprises and ventures offering highly personal care and help at home to older people and others that need support in their area.

Dorset County Council has learnt from the success of similar projects in other parts of the country and will be progressing its own scheme here.

Helen Coombes, Transformation Programme Lead for adults and communities at Dorset County Council said: “We have watched the achievements that Community Catalysts have made in many parts of the country and are excited to work with them to achieve similar success in Dorset. The project is about helping local people to help local people.

“We will work with local communities, primary care, voluntary sector and community groups to help people to support each other. We are starting in areas of North and West Dorset where we have the greatest difficulty matching people’s needs with available care, with the aim to bring this approach to life across the whole of Dorset.”

Work will start in the Sherborne rural and Three Valleys areas in West Dorset and Blackmore Vale and Winterbourne in North Dorset, where increasing the number and range of homecare and support options available to local people is seen as a priority.

As well as helping people to set up new businesses, the partners will also advise existing community enterprises established in Dorset looking to diversify or extend what they offer.

The project will build on things that already work well, and value and nurture people, groups and organisations with strong local knowledge and expertise. It also aims to capture learning and actively use this to develop local system and culture change – working hard to improve the way that health and care works for everyone in the county.

The project in Dorset and a parallel initiative in Shropshire are supported by a partnership with technology company Bronze Labs and their Tribe web platform.