Redeeming Our Communities (ROC)

Redeeming our communities (ROC) has been commissioned to deliver ROC Conversations/ROC tele mentoring and ROC Mentoring across Reading, Milton Keynes and Oxford.

ROC’s main aim is to bring about community transformation by creating strategic partnership between statutory agencies, voluntary groups and churches. These partnerships form new volunteer led projects that address a variety of social needs.

Due to COVID-19, the focus of the ROC project has changed slightly, and ROC are now working to introduce remote mentoring using their “coach” programme, which is an evaluated and quality assured scheme. ROC Tele-Mentors will help families better cope with the situations they find themselves in, and recover with a firmer foundation for the future.

Milton Keynes

An example of some of the work being done in Milton Keynes are the ROC conversations that occurred in Milton Keynes in February, with over 500 people attending. After the events, three action groups of community members were set up and each group has identified a focus:

  • Action Group 1 – Mental Health and Wellbeing
  • Action Group 2 – Social Justice (housing poverty unemployment)
  • Action Group 3 – Youth narrative/ Youth Forum/ Youth Survey

These groups will work alongside statutory agencies such as police to add community context and help problem solve. The youth forum and survey are being backed by the action groups and in conjunction with four test bed schools.

Alongside this they hope to develop a counter narrative through an artwork project whereby students develop a piece of art within their PHSE sessions representing the way they feel about growing up in Milton Keynes. The hope is that this will be exhibited at the same times as the Knife Angel arrives in Milton Keynes.

We are also looking at establishing referral pathway services with the healthy relationships project for family mentoring so that families who aren’t meeting the statutory threshold with social care are able to access mentoring through ROC to help and support families navigate through the community to find resources to better support themselves and become more resilient.