IF YOU WANT TO GO FAR
When we established Connected Lives it was always our vision to set up a network of delivery hubs across the UK in order to give more people across the country access to the attachment-based groups and programmes that we run.
We are utterly delighted to be able to announce that from January 2021 there will be a Connected Lives Hub in Cambridgeshire! This is a very exciting development for us as a charity. A brilliant team of people in Trumpington led by Dr Helen Bell have drawn up a plan for delivery across the county and together we have successfully applied for funding to get this up and running. I’m not going to lie, it has been a lot of work, and it hasn’t always been easy to find the time along with all the other things we have been doing as an organisation, supporting families in the middle of a pandemic. But every single zoom planning meeting, logic model draft and conversations with a wider network have brought us to this point. Helen and her co-hubber Kate Logan are both tenacious and courageous people and even if I had wanted to stop pursuing this I’m not sure I’d have been able to! So I want to take a moment to celebrate this achievement and look forward to all that is to come.
There is an African proverb which says:
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far go together.”
I’ve seen the profound truth in these words this year. At Connected Lives we want to go far, we want to help partners and parents across the UK get the help and support they need at the earliest possible stage. We know we can’t do this alone so we are committed to pursuing partnerships and working with brilliant people and organisations across the country. We commit ourselves to doing it together. Will it take us time to work these things out? Indeed it will! Will I have moments of regret and annoyance, almost certainly! But going far in this context helps a far greater number of families which makes the striving, and even the occasional times of slowness and frustration completely worth it.
Jenny Peters
16/12/20