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COMPASSIONATE BIRMINGHAM
Fostering Community Strength and Support
Who We
Are
Compassionate Birmingham
Organisations working in Birmingham were some of the first in the country to actively engage in compassionate communities nearly twenty years ago. These organisations advocated for a compassionate communities’ approach being key as part of a wider palliative and end-of-life care strategy. However, it was difficult to gain traction. Other local hospices also started to advocate for and build public health approaches. The focus remained on clinical pathways and the many challenges associated with reducing deaths in hospital, early identification of people who would benefit from palliative care and advance care planning.
There was little interest in compassionate communities becoming a key strategy or policy driver across the city. However, the impact of COVID created the necessary political and organisational will to move forward on this initiative. Key people from healthcare, hospice and adult social care started to reshape compassionate communities as a whole population approach that did not reside within just hospice or palliative care services.
Because of the earlier work and the activities of a range of organisations including Brum YODO (you only die once), a CIC that aims to create a society that talks openly and honestly about death and dying, there were already many examples of compassionate communities’ activities that demonstrated progress against the components of the Compassionate City Charter.
A network of individuals and organisations worked together gaining support from the Informal Cabinet of Birmingham and the City’s Health and Wellbeing Board along with many other senior key stakeholders. The city was awarded compassionate city status in February 2022.
Since then, Public Health Birmingham has supported the ongoing development of compassionate city, compassionate communities and how these approaches connect to other city initiatives such as Age Friendly Cities.
The characteristics of Birmingham make it challenging to work in because it cannot be approached as one area, but instead, it must be approached as many smaller communities. This hyper-local approach must then be connected at an organisational and service level where organisations are often working in several communities or city wide, and at local government level to influence policy and change.
One of the many community tools implemented by Birmingham City Council are Neighbourhood Network Schemes. These are funded by Adult Social Care and Public Health departments within local government. They aim to provide support for people to live happy, healthy and independent lives in their own homes and communities and are ideal catalysts for compassionate communities. The local approach works alongside city wide initiatives such as the annual festival A Matter of Life and Death (AMOLAD), organised by Brum YODO and a strategy for a city wide approach to bereavement (Roberts and Hodges, 2026).