The work beneath the work: the importance of quiet, shared humanity

This article was featured in the SCDC Weekly - 8th July 2026

In this powerful blog, Lainy Bedingfield, Managing Director at Kingsway Community Connections, discusses her experience and learning from managing a community-led organisation.

Kingsway Community Connections is a community development anchor organisation based in Glasgow which provides a range of support around health and wellbeing.

This support makes a huge difference to the local community and is “relational and deeply human” Lainy says: "It involves listening to stories of loss, trauma, poverty, and isolation, and doing so with real compassion over long periods of time."

It’s this work, these small human moments, that sustains people instead of targets or performance measures.

The article also explores the issue of funding, and the uncertainty that comes from short term, insecure funds for services which often offer a lifeline to people who truly need it. 

Lainy concludes: "That is why community-led health matters. Not because it is easy or efficient, but because it is human. It is carried in relationships, in trust, and in the willingness to keep showing up for one another, even when the work is heavy."