As work gets underway on the Thriving Places element of the new Single Outcome Agreement for Glasgow, GCPH in collaboration with Glasgow Community Planning Partnership held a seminar to share information and evidence of what works (and what does not) regarding community engagement, community development and/or developing assets to address persistent inequalities and create more resilient, sustainable communities.
This event created a learning environment by showcasing examples of good practice from around the UK, including presentations from Newcastle, Preston, Warrington, Stoke-on-Trent and Glasgow.
Hi everybody I’m John holding and I’m one of the principes in public health in Warrington I’m not actually the lead for neighborhood working in Warrington that’s a lady called Jane kitley who unfortunately couldn’t be here today so I do the short store as it were to come
Along today to talk to you about stew um strong stronger together is a concept of neighborhood working and it started in warington in the most deprived aspects of the Town it started in 2006 which seems like an awful long time ago 7 years ago which it is
Actually that’s a little bit of what Warrington looks like so Warrington is a very quite unusual town in that it’s an old industrial town and if you look at it it’s got some of the Ws some of our Wards are in the most deprived 10% nationally but some of
Them are in the most affluent so we have very rich areas sat next to very poor areas the the poor areas are the wards that are in the inner town so as the town grew it grew outwards and be richer so that’s how the town looks today and
Shu that’s I’ll call it throughout this project was centered on those most 10% deprived Wards those Wards were the biggest problems as it were we’re all familiar with that that is what affects our life our well-being our health our outcomes and it’s everything that we go through from the minute we’re born the
School we go to to the food we eat our parents everything that affects us and our life chances and that’s where stronger together came from it was about trying to improve all of those aspects to give those people the best possible chance of living well what is quite Stark in warington is
The inequalities and the life expectancy between the people who live there I live in grapp andol and I’m probably going to live 11 years or 9 years longer than somebody who lives 2 or 3 miles down the road and that is quite Stark and that is what we wanted to reduce in public
Health so we started in 2006 and the idea was to shift the cultures and mindsets of the public sector in some ways the public sector had kind of not well it hadn’t turned its back on the more deprived areas but there was areas in Warrington that didn’t see any public
Services there were deserts and what we wanted to do was put a focus on those areas those 10% so as I say there the end point would have been Community budgets so giving the people the power to take control of their own money and their own Public Services shift the
Attitudes and expectations of the people living there to get them to think about what what is delivered to them how they use it what their expectations and aspirations are for their lives and for the lives of their children that they were bringing up what do they want for
Those kids and openly recognize that the life inequalities that existed in the town that was a big issue you’re s in one of our leafy suburbs you don’t want to really know that 6 miles down the road there’s people living a lot less years than you because of X wiin Ed and
We wanted to be very explicit about that especially in public health this is a little bit about the governance of stronga together six seven years ago we we reported to the local strategic partnership we had a a strategic set of delivery Partners they were the PCT Health Services police etc
Etc and then here is the governance of stronger together so we had a board and that board was made up of a third residents a third elected members and a third Partners so strategic partners that could make decisions underneath that was a set of subgroups that span
The issues within those areas so access to skills access to good jobs yeah um Health Services education there’s a whole range of them about six seven and those those themes came out of all the questions and consultation that stronger stronger together did so that just talks about the makeup
Of the boards and who was involved in the discussion it was quite difficult in the beginning to get people to the table to talk about this because fundamentally meant a shift of their resources which isn’t always easy so we worked quite hard on getting people to engage in the
Debate terms of community communication and engagement an awful lot went on with those 10% most deprived communities and the elected members and those that had a a say and and were able to play a part in delivery onto those and from that came the neighborhood plan as we’ve
Talked about before there was a neighborhood plan six years ago that directed the work stronger together we look at proof of the pudding is in the eating isn’t it and they did an an Ann a resident survey in the beginning and they did one each and every single year they went through the
Four years crime and safety came top of the list in the beginning and it went from 40% of residents who answered the survey said it was a huge issue for them they were scared of going out at nights Etc in 2010 only 31% thought that crime
Was a big issue in in their areas opportunities for young people again we changed people’s perception by the work that was done what I think is really interesting is Health in the beginning nobody put Health as an issue they didn’t think that the inequalities that we didn’t even realize the inequalities that
Existed but they didn’t think that access and them having a healthy lifestyle was an issue we managed to change that by a lot of the work that we did education nobody thought it was an issue so education for their kids and the schools they went to wasn’t wasn’t a
Big thing by the end of it 1% of those sample thought that it was so in terms of what we actually physically did there’s a whole stream of work over the four years that that made those perceptions much better at the end there was a warden scheme and just going back a
Second there was this whole governance structure but underneath that was the the team the neighborhood team and that was made up of a coordinator a set of wardens um pcsos a whole stream the and the other um key thing was they all work together in one Center so we brought
Staff together to share the issues to learn from each other to work with residents and to know who the people were they were working with so a whole set of issues there opportunities for young people Junior Warden scheme we brought youngsters on board to take control and
To become a bit more empowered about their communities and to get involved recycling profs classes a whole range of actions that we took to get the youngsters involved improving health and wellbeing my colleagues from public health will talk shortly about the health inequalities project that we LED
Um but the first thing that we did we had a massive big or we called it in 2007 a big breakfast where we invited as many residents that wanted to come into the room and ask them what they thought the issues were with the health services
And their health and out of that came the health inequalities project which we’re going to talk about shortly so from my perspective as lead for health sat on that board it was about reducing inequalities in health reducing that Gap that’s a little bit of one we did on
Education skills so we had job clubs who worked with residents to upskill them and to get them access to decent jobs instead of jobs that just pay IMM medial wage we try to empower these people to think a bit broader parenting skills and budgeting whole range um in terms of how
We were assessed in 2002 was a 4-year project 1.6 million went into that project from government in 2006 significant amount of money um we had three external Assessments in 2010 one from the national support team for health and inequalities that came away saying we believe that what you’re doing
Is making a massive difference to your communities and the top one as we called it the 100 top civil servants came down in 2010 and looked talked to lots and lots of residents lots of PE Partners who engaged in the program to ask how it went again they were very impressed and
I think the outcomes of that influenced fur the work that um the new government have issued about neighborhoods one of the most fundamental pieces of the work that was done was the London School of Economics came down because we wanted to look at the cost value of this has this changed
Impact on Health Services on Social Services on police etc etc and unfortunately when they started off in 2006 they never put a very clear evaluation framework in place which is one of the things I would say if you’re going to start this from day one you
Know where you want to go to new yor to measure it we didn’t do that but London School of Economics came in and they did some work and it was a best guess it was that it was an estimate but they put monetary values on some of the work that
We’ve done now given that those residents live right next door to our local hospital and I’ve been accused in the past of using it like an a GP service because they sit next door to it you know we managed to change some of their thinking about us de you can see
There there’s 830 ,000 a year saved from those communities onto Hospital services and again in terms of crime 463 excuse me 463,000 there significant amounts of money and it’s that money that we would hope to shift into Services more locally um so where are we today we
Learned from the pilot and it was rolled out across Warrington we’ve now got five or four neighborhood um teams some of them a light touch on the most affluent areas we have a very light touch on the more deprived areas it’s more Hands-On and it’s more staff um more partners are
Now engaged in the activities because they see the benefit of this our health visitors work on a neighborhood basis so everybody’s aligned to the neighborhood um we are going through significant Cuts in the council and we are hoping that we can keep and retain neighborhoods it’s not mandatory that’s
The issue if it was mandatory we’d have a catting Health chance it’s not so we are hoping to God that the good work and the outcomes will speak for themselves so I’ll pass on now to my colleagues in public health Golden Gates so I’m Katy Donnelly this is cin
Cell we going to look a bit like a choir but we promise not to sing well you can I’m not um Jan’s giving you a really good overview of some of the overall work that’s going on in in Warrington in terms of of neighborhood working all the words that
We’ve heard today Community assets Community de development what we’re going to talk to you about specifically now is a project um through one of the major housing providers in Warrington um through Golden Gates Housing Trust so we’re going to give you a bit of a story of
That project where it’s come from how it’s developed and Hazel is going to give you some um real case study work some specifics from the project and some feedback from local residents that have been involved in the project so I won’t labor on that janz or
To give you a bit of an overview of of Warrington and what Warrington is like in terms of some of the lifestyle data we’ve recently just done a lifestyle survey in Warrington um just literally getting the report through this is probably not too dissimilar to a lot of
The areas that all all of you working one of the the major thing the the starkest thing is the whole inequality issue that that um Jan’s already mentioned and even now still um compared to the 2006 data we’re see seeing still a real Stark inequality difference um there’s just some stats there social
Inequalities in inequalities around mental health emotional well-being smoking prevalence obesity all the key ones that you probably see within the areas that you work in okay so Golden Gate Housing Trust with the biggest social housing provider in Warrington we control about 70 to 80% of the stock and as Jan was saying
Before some of our housing is based in what clusters the most deprived areas in Warrington and that’s about 65% of our total housing stock are based in areas where if you live in one postcode you can live 10 years less than if you live in another um the landscape that we kind
Of operate in we’ve got an agent population as I’m sure many of you have in the room we’ve got about 29% of our customers who’ve got a disability um we’ve got an increasing Eastern European population with low literacy and eacy levels you’ve got high percentage of lesbian G bisexual customers compared to
The Northwest average and we’ve also got issues surrounding things like the welfare benefit changes as well which is a huge impact on our services and how we operate now the vision for us is to be a lead in hous and provider creating Quality Homes and neighborhoods where
People want to live but how can we do that if we don’t address the link between housing and health um we’ve got the aims to deliver the vision here as well and as you can see about there’s six um as there and four out of the six
Can be linked into our health objectives um especially something like improving the quality of life for customers and also being a leader in Energy Efficiency things like fuel poverty have got a real impact on customers lives and now we’ve got public health and health inequalities team will actually promote
Our Energy Efficiency Services in the work that they’re doing in the communities as well okay so so that’s a bit about Golden Gates itself from the other partners people that are key to this project are are Public Health in warrant as in most areas uh Public Health we’ve moved into the local
Authority now and we’re actually sitting within the families and well-being direct trip which brings lots of positives in terms of wider determinance of health and embedding within departments within the local Authority that may not have looked at Public Health before so we’ve got lots of Public Health opportunities to move our
Work forward also with being us being in the family’s directorate it gives us that life CL approach and more influence across all all divisions really um for we’ve then got the neighborhoods and communities team that John’s give a really good description of one of the the teams within within the
Neighborhoods and Community teams is this health inequalities team that came out of the stronger together in Warrington work now when I say health inequalities team that makes it sound like it’s an absolutely enormous team it’s three people one of whom’s on currently on maternity leave so we’re
Not talking about a massive resource or a massive team but what that team do do is work and enable across a partnership approach and and sort of capacity build both across the a community level as well as across organizations um what we’ve done with in within Public Health working with
Partners is developed a healthy lives healthy people plan which is a plan not too dissimilar to lots of plans that you’ve heard about this morning covering the wide determinance of Health focusing on the 20% most deprived areas and looking across the partnership how as a collective with no additional resource
How are we truly going to address health and equality issue and and narrow that Gap I’ll that so in terms of this specific project as as Cam said ggh HT Golden Gates Housing Trust will refer to it as G GT um are committed to the public health agenda um we were
Approached by the chief executive of golden gates Housing Trust to to work with those from a public health point of view um as Cam said ggt have done loads of work improving the the quality of the social housing stock lots of G regeneration work in specific areas I
Mean that’s what we lead on we are you know strip everything back we’re a landlord we’re a Housing Organization but we understand the link between housing and health and keeping people healthy in the properties means that at the end of the day we can actually keep our Revenue there we can get people
Staying in the properties for longer which is keeping us running as an organization obviously linking back into our vision we want Happy health heal communities as well yeah so what what happened at that stage R was an agreement and and uh ggt gave 40,000 to the public health Team and and the
Health inequalities team to do some specific targeted work with ggt tenants and staff which is where we’ then developed a ggt health inequalities plan we’ve got a number of clear objectives around that that the main ones for me really are to develop ggt as a setting for health this isn’t just about about
Oneoff Project work it’s about a mixture of strategic work as well as high visability Project work but it’s about embedding within a an organization and a culture a whole different way of working um so there’s Public Health opportunities within every contact really that that staff there make and
That’s internally and externally as well you know we’re training up our staff who’ve got a background in things like housing management or neighborhood management and we’re training them to be able to to spot indicators for things like basic mental health suicide awareness training as their financial distress increases with the things like
Welfare reform these are integ integrally linked in terms of monitoring um we have formal monetary meetings don’t we count quarterly there’s biscuits and um so we we have like a monitoring framework that we complete that’s like a quantitative framework that know all all the data but we don’t want to be too
Sort of someone mentioned earlier set by targets and and that’s all it’s about we have got a whole qualitative approach that whole quality of life approach what differences this made to communities what what capacity building is being done so it’s not just solely about totally being Target driven it’s it’s a
Lot broader than that we also have update meetings monthly regular communication and contacts really good working relationship um across all organizations involved so we have got a bit of a ministering group um and we try and feed into wider strategic groups so for example the Mental Health Partnership
Board or the older people’s board to make sure sure the work’s embedded within that broader structure really and ggt as a Landscapes change dramatically we’ve got people in our organization who now sit on the kind of alcohol partnership dementia um dementia partnership and also healthy eating all
Of these different things that have an impact on health that we weren’t necessarily involved in before we’re now using and report them back to development and feed them to relevant Partnerships as well so in terms of just trying to give you some sort of lessons learned from from ourselves and some positives and
Also we’re going to go on to some challenges and opportunities we talk faster stres um obviously the commitment to work across organizations we’ve already said that difference of expertise different agendas coming together into one place the information showns been fabulous because ggt have in lots of information
About the tenants so if we want to Target older people for example uh with winter warm messages or whatever the campaign can be ggh HT can run a search on their properties to see where we need to targets we’ve got direct access to people most at need in the communities
Where we want them where we’re where we’re addressing which is always an efficient use of services as well so it’s obviously you can justify the money that you’re spending because you’re targeting the people most in Need for the particular project yeah obviously it has got challenges and opportunities at
All levels that we as Cam and I have already ackn knowledge there our different priorities we’re here to improve health and look at lifestyle change we’re a landlord so it’s trying to bring the two agendas together across all levels within both organizations working with staff to
Enable them and give them the skills to think about public health and public health opportunities within the work that they’re doing in the day-to-day job in terms of evidenc in the work there are issues around data collection specific to ggt properties because we could have a a street um within a
Deprived area that not all the houses on that street will be ggt properties so trying to do a postcode match won’t work because we’d need the house number as well so there are some technical difficulties like that and the one of the really important bits which ggt have
Been great around is not to exclude non non ggh tenants within a street so if Fred that lives at number four isn’t a ght tenant that doesn’t mean that we can’t work with him really whizzing through really quickly so we can get on to Hazel there’s loads of different outcomes of
The project we’ve got a whole um report that we we we’ve written together about what the outcomes have we’ve achieved from the project which we’re happy to share with you there’s some specifics around the Ivan which is a cancer van big yellow F 23 foot Hazel that goes
Around the estate gets people on um their around like cancer screening one of the key things there 44 People level four intervention is needs to go to your GP quickly with a response within two weeks so it is a way of picking up um signs and symptoms that people might not have
Gone to the GP about and that’s only in the last 12 months as well so that’s not over a long period of time that’s just 12 months U there’s loads of work that we’ve done on smoke free homes ght have done loads of door knocking working with the health inequalities team um got
Loads of people to sign up to the smokefree homes agenda loads of different initiatives some of which you’ve heard other people talk about today I think is a as a an O an overall the outcomes that we’ve achieved and the tenants that would not have come on these groups and courses
Previously were getting them to come um so it’s that in itself is really really positive Hazel is going to give you more specifics of one of the more in Innovative projects C I don’t know whether you just want to give a brief about process actually move on to Hazel
And what we’ll do is make sure that this is circulated it’s just that we’re getting really behind but I want hael an opportunity because she’s terrified it’s a challenge hi I’m Hazel I’m one of the um support workers that work on the health and equality team so I’m one of the
Three that oh let’s just clip through all I’ve got is pictures I’ve got no other slides apart from pictures this is so removed from my day job it’s untrue I can’t believe I’m actually standing here so what the women’s group is this is a picture of the women group doing a TI it
Session it’s a 10 week group um where the women come along and they come to us two sessions a week and we do a whole wide range of um things with them it’s healthy e zumber taiichi we go on walks oh which is that’s one of the ones they
Go on the walk um what it’s about it’s about to try and inspire people to make Behavior changes through a combined focus of education and motivation the education is done in a fun and vibrant manner as well it’s not like your normal education anything like that anyone
That’s seen me do a healthy eating session I can tell you I’m completely covered in the food that we’re cooking they know what we’ve cooked when I’ve got back to the office um it’s also to try and increase the feelings of confidence and self-esteem in the women
That come to these groups as well a lot of the women that we’ve worked with it’s a normal day for them to get up get the kids to school they’re still in their pajamas they go back to bed they think that’s okay and that’s that’s what life
Is that’s what their life is about so it’s about for us to say to them you know there is other opportunities out there and to give them that confidence idence um is also to introduce the women to a wide range of Partners as well so we have another about 12 to 15 partners
That actually deliver on this group with us we’re kind of like the facilitators we have the actual other people that come along and do the actual delivery um because for us a lot of the times for people try and access any lifestyle services or make any sort of changes to
Their well-being it’s a big barrier to meet a stranger it’s a huge barrier so if they’ve met that stranger already in a group where they feel safe and comfortable they’re more likely to access that service afterwards um so some of the key things I’ve just got
Some names here just to remind me who I was going to talk about um in one group in particular couple one of the women said her family had actually started seeing her them again so basically she become isolated from her family and her friends because she lived in such a
Chaotic depressive negative cycle that they just didn’t want to see her so by her coming to this group they actually started calling on her again and inviting her to family attendances and things like that which you just can’t explain that to somebody unless you seen them go through that process of change
Another one they cooked for their family for the first time never cooked a meal at all for their children and actually cooked a meal for them but for me this is one of the groups from Longford what they wanted to do with the women themselves they wanted to set up their
Own group that they could carry on meeting um so they’ve constituted with one of the Community Development officers um and they’ve also started recruiting other women that could come with them as well they’ve all just gone through um a 3 we four-week voluntary um training with the local voluntary Center
This is them taking them to um a green space which they wouldn’t normally access with the kids but they do that all themselves they’re getting the funding themselves and everything but this is what I really wanted to talk about in the Longford group um a girl
Came on the first session bit like me probably today absolutely petrified with fear and her only words were I’m here that’s all she said her family support worker couldn’t believe that she turned up fast forward 10 weeks she came to every session might not have enjoyed
Every single session but at the end of each group we run a celebration event where the women can invite their friends family we invite all the agencies that have delivered and this girl actually this is she wrote this herself and she read it to us in front of 30 OD people
To us as workers to say this is what we’ve done for them fantastic that’s it okay