Community care: someone’s role in the local community greatly impacts their wellbeing.

As a community worker or other social profile within the government, you’re probably interested in all members of the local community, their roles within society, and their mutual relationships. A private local network such as Hoplr can definitely be of aid. In this article, you’ll learn 10 ways in which you can use Hoplr for community care. From local residency to a caring community. 

1. Bring citizens together for stronger social cohesion
2. Build a community care network: neighbours as first line support
3. Be a part of the network
4. Make use of the neighbourhood switch
5. Capture help requests and refer if needed: second line support
6. Organise activities and invite more citizens
7. Connect help requests and offers
8. Chat with citizens
9. Enhance social inclusion
10. Rely on the Hoplr-team

Tip 1: Bring citizens together for stronger social cohesion

A positive community feeling is not just great for the neighbourhood itself, the individual can benefit immensely as well. Citizens can count on their neighbours to ask for help and expand their social circles. Hoplr makes these interactions a lot easier. 

A digital, private network allows citizens to go farther than just their immediate neighbours; it’s really easy to reach all members of the local community at once. Moreover, the threshold to post a message is a lot lower than ringing someone’s doorbell. Face-to-face contact is what’s most important of all. However, bringing together all members of the community is the first step towards warm and inclusive community care. 

In a short period of time, many inhabitants have subscribed to their virtual neighbourhood. This goes to show there’s a need for a platform to enhance community feeling in the neighbourhoods. Before the launch of our community work, we were looking for a system to match citizens’ supply and demand. With Hoplr, this turned out to be achievable. Hoplr helped make Olen a warmer and more caring community. 

Liesbeth Lathouwers, community worker Olen

Hoplr is not just an ideal website and application to unite citizens; you can count on our team to take care of all community building and management as well. We print all invitations to the network and convert between 15 and 40% of the targeted community. 

Tip 2: Build a community care network: neighbours as first line support

If we bring together citizens within a context in which it’s normalised to ask each other for help; people in need of care will not feel as stigmatised and won’t hesitate to ask for it themselves. By stimulating these people – or their caretakers – to do so, you’ll enable the community to take care of small help requests as a first line support. With Hoplr, people in need of care and their caretakers can: 

• share an alert or help request with the entire neighbourhood;
• take part in group conversations with for instance members of an organisation or care center;
• send private messages to specific members of the community.

Tip 3: Be a part of the network

In order to enhance community care, or be able to understand the social situation of a person in need of care, it’s important to be in touch with the dynamics of the local community. With Hoplr, you’ll find yourself in the unique situation of effortlessly staying up to date with all local developments. Moreover, you can easily reach each registered member. And if needed, they can reach you.

Tip 4: Make use of the neighbourhood switch

On Hoplr, cities are divided into neighbourhoods of about 1,000 – 3,000 households. Verified community workers have a very handy neighbourhood switch at their command. With it, you’ll be able to switch neighbourhoods at any given time. This way, one overseeable account will be enough for you to consult all local communities, registered citizens and posted messages. 

Tip 5: Capture help requests and refer if needed: second line support

Some questions cannot be resolved by a citizen. Think of matters that require more knowledge, like medical or professional care. In that case, community workers can refer to the right parties and help the citizen in need after all. You can capture the question, answer it, and/or get it to the right person. This way, you’ll play the role of second line support within the community care network.

Tip 6: Organise activities and engage more citizens

Possibly, you’re aware of some issues specific to a part of the local community. Perhaps citizens would benefit from insight into a certain topic (think of how to deal with neighbours who suffer from dementia). With Hoplr, it’s easy to take action by actually bringing citizens together physically as well: street parties, info sessions, cleanups,… The neighbourhood calendar was put into place, specifically to stimulate social cohesion and community care. It’s possible to leave the date of the activity open, so you can figure out what works best for all interested parties. 

Tip 7: Connect help requests and offers

We’ve noticed within our communities, members don’t only use Hoplr to ask for help, they love offering it as well. Besides that, they often like to share their occupation, background and hobbies, which you can consult in the neighbourhood list. This makes it easy for community workers to get an overview of all local talent and skills and match those who are looking for help to those who can offer it. With the help of the neighbourhood switch, the borders of a neighbourhood shouldn’t hold you back either. 

Tip 8: Chat with citizens

Hoplr offers both a private chat and a group chat. This is not only useful for chatting with citizens you’re already in touch with, it also allows you to reach other people or groups of which you don’t have any contact info. Perhaps you’d like to inform people living near a care center or elderly person. In that case, you’re can start a group conversation by simply entering the relevant street name(s) and adding all members. 

Tip 9: Enhance social inclusion

Our team has started a trajectory to make the citizen network as user friendly, accessible and inclusive as possible. Soon, Hoplr will meet the most recent AnySurfer and WCAG2.1 standards for people who have a disability, are in need of care, have a visual impairment or who don’t master the languages Hoplr natively offers. In some local service centers and libraries, updates from the network are frequently (physically) posted, for those who don’t have access to internet. 

Tip 10: Rely on the Hoplr team

By working with Hoplr, you’re not only acquiring a social network for citizens. You’re getting an entire team to back you up on board as well. We’re always happy to give info sessions and demos to both citizens and you and your team anytime. We offer 24/7 support and are always monitoring and looking to improve the health of every single of our (over 1,000) communities.