Mapping Care Wealth
The Clapton Care Circle map reveals an abundance of informal, gifted, and community-based care within the local network. This “care wealth” includes a wide range of support activities that are often undervalued or invisible within traditional models of health and social care.
What is 'Care Wealth'?
Care wealth refers to the rich ecosystem of unpaid or gifted care that helps people live well - everything from emotional support and community meals to skill-sharing, gardening, and transporting neighbours. This wealth flows through the relationships that individuals, groups, and organisations have with one another. By mapping these connections, we aim to make visible the generosity, trust, and relational power that sustains community life.
Care is fundamentally a relationship. “Care wealth” exists not just in services, but in the connections between people.
Types of Care Identified
Across the Clapton network, 20 different types of informal or gifted care were identified. These range from emotional and social support to practical help and community enrichment. Some of the most frequently mentioned types of care include:
Wellness, Emotional & Mental Health Support – mentioned 30 times
Social Connection & Engagement – 24 times
Recreational & Leisure Activities – 10 times
Education, Training & Skills Development – 10 times
Advocacy – 5 times
These types of support often require fewer resources than formal care, as they are rooted in relational quality rather than professional infrastructure.
A fuller breakdown of care types, their definitions, and examples is available here.
Who’s Providing This Care?
Of the 42 elements listed in the map (people, groups, or organisations), 76.2% (32 elements) were actively offering informal or gifted care and support to either the Clapton Circle as a whole, or one of its five participating teams. Only 10 mapped elements had no direct caregiving role in the project.
The most common care types offered across the network include:
Wellness, Emotional & Mental Health Support – 27 mentions
Social Connection & Engagement – 26 mentions
Recreational & Leisure Activities – 15 mentions
Advocacy – 14 mentions
Coordination and Logistics – 12 mentions
This variety highlights the community’s capacity to meet a wide range of quality of life needs - especially those often left out of task-based social care models.
Generative vs Inactive Connections
In mapping this ecosystem, we assessed not just who was connected to whom, but how active those connections were. Every link between elements was classified into one of three categories:
Generative
Active and facilitating the flow of care and support
42.2%
Engaged
A known relationship exists, but not currently generating support
26.5%
Inactive
A prior or potential connection with no current interaction
31.3%
While nearly half of the relationships were generative at the time of evaluation, the remaining connections represent untapped or underutilised care wealth. In total, only around 37% of all mapped connections were both sustained and generative.
What Does This Tell Us?
This analysis highlights both the depth of caregiving capacity in Clapton and the challenges in sustaining it. The Circle's aim to create a more integrated, responsive, and community-rooted model of care clearly tapped into a wide base of support, but maintaining that support over time proved difficult.
To strengthen care flows in future, a more focused strategy may be needed, prioritising deeper engagement with a smaller number of trusted partners, and building long-term collaborations that are easier to maintain and more impactful overall.
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