Are we the right service for you?
Our Team Can:
- Provide brief, over the phone, support with finding local groups, activities and services e.g. nearby social clubs, help accessing food, energy advice, services that can support your mental health.
- Provide short term, face to face, support to explore changes you wish to makes and help you find relevant groups, activities, services in your area e.g. exercise classes, social clubs, faith based groups and health related groups.
- Make referrals for you, when appropriate, to local support services e.g. to Adult Social Care, Food Bank.
- Help you find employability support, volunteering opportunities, training courses, and adult education courses.
- Accompany you on your first visit to a new social group.
- Complete a community transport application with you e.g. Dial a Ride
- Help you to overcome digital exclusion by introducing you to free IT groups who can loan equipment.
- Help you feel more connected to your local community.
Our Team Cannot:
- Provide Housing support - unfortunately we are unable to help with your housing needs such as completing applications or arranging repairs. We recommend your first point of contact should be your housing provider or Lewisham Council. If this is not helping to resolve your issue, then please feel free to phone us and we will do our best to point you in the right direction.
- Carry out benefits check or advise you on how to complete benefits application forms – we can however signpost you to local organisations that can help.
- Book appointments for you – We do not have the resources to book appointments on your behalf but will be happy to provide the appropriate contact numbers or web forms for you.
- Support you through a mental health crisis – If you are in crisis, please call the Crisis Line (0800 731 2864 and choose option 1). We can, however, give you the details of local mental health support services.
- Arrange personal assistance or carer support – our staff are not able to act as, or directly arrange carers or Personal Assistants for our service users. When appropriate we can make referrals to Lewisham Adult Social Care to request an assessment for care or Occupational Therapy. However, we recommend you contact Adult Social Care directly on 020 8314 7777
- Offer Dementia Specific support – our team does not have the necessary expertise to directly support residents diagnosed with dementia, however we can provide information about the services, groups and activities that exist in the borough.
- Offer Befriending services to clients who are misusing drugs or alcohol and/or have a history of violence – this is purely to safeguard the welfare of our volunteers and a requirement of other befriending services that we refer to. We can however, help such persons through signposting and referring to a number of relevant organisations.
If you need support with any of the above, then you can also check our Factsheets to see if there are more appropriate services for you.
If you are not able to find any, or are unsure of what services are available, then please do give us a call and we can point you in the right direction.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Community Connections Lewisham run its own groups and activities?
In simple terms, no. Instead, Community Connections helps Lewisham residents to discover what’s out there in their community and help them access these things more easily, whether that be social groups, healthy activities, or specialist support services. However, we do run a group activities table at our weekly Drop-in, which takes place from 10:30am-12:30pm every Thursday at the Lewisham Irish Centre. Anyone is welcome to come along and join in with our group activities. These are focused on improving health and wellbeing and include arts & crafts, board games, and group singing.
What is the waiting time to get support?
This depends on the type and amount of support you (or the person you’re referring) require. If you need specific information about local groups/services or need a quick referral (e.g. information about a local service) then you can get immediate support by calling our phone line on 0330 0583464. If, however, you require more in-depth support (up to 8 weeks of one to one support) then the current waiting time for this is around 3 – 4 weeks.
How long will you support someone for?
We offer same day support to residents who call our phoneline. If you need more in-depth support then we can refer you to our Wellbeing Plan service, involving up to 8 weeks of continuous support. Please note that due to the high demand for our service we cannot provide longer term support like that of a Personal Assistant or support worker.