What is a community?

The word community means ‘group of people’ or ‘collection of individuals’. Communities often define themselves and people often belong to more than one community. It is important to recognise some people may not define themselves as belonging to a community by choice and not all individuals within communities will share the same needs, views and aspirations.

Communities can be ‘communities of place’ where people identify with a defined geographical area like Erdington or Sparkbrook. It could also be a housing estate or small neighbourhood. Communities can also be ‘communities of interest and belonging’, where people share a particular experience, interest or characteristic; such as carers, service users, young people, faith groups, older people, disabled people, ethnic groups, or lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people.

One person can belong to several communities at once. The communities to whom the Trust provides services are very diverse, with any one community containing members from other communities.

Our Community in Birmingham and Solihull

Birmingham contains around 1.07 million residents making it far larger than any other local authority in the West Midlands.

Birmingham is also one of the most diverse areas with 47% of the population being from ethnic minority groups. The largest of these groups are Asian Pakistani (13.5%) and Asian Indian (6%) with the largest Black Caribbean group in the West Midlands (4.4%)

Birmingham has a young population with only 54% of the population over 30 years old, and a small elderly population with around 17% of the population above 60 years old, and a mean age of 32,  which is well beneath the national average and 12% of Birmingham’s population are under 7 years old.

Birmingham is very religiously diverse with less than 47% of the population being recorded as Christian, a large Muslim population (21.8%), the next largest religious group is Sikh with (5%). Birmingham has a total of around 9% of the population whose day to day activities are limited a lot by disability which is lower than average in the West Midlands.

Click here for more details on Equality Diversity and Inclusion at our Trust.

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