Northwest Public Wellbeing Conference 2009

Date of the event: 10th November 2009
Organised by: NHS NW and the Regions For Health Network
Venue: Midland Hotel, Manchester
Reported by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator (Third Sector)

Above right: Dr Ruth Hussey, Regional Director Public Health

This was the event of the year where all the bigwigs from the NHS across the Northwest came together and discussed Public Health. The conference was also combined with the 17th annual conference of the WHO Regions for Health Network, so there were delegates there from across Europe too.

Groundwork Northwest and Target: Wellbeing shared a stall, which was a great opportunity to speak to lot of senior officers from the NHS in the region about the vital work of Target: Wellbeing and it's projects. We also ran a workshop, which was delivered by Maggie Moody (Target: Wellbeing Portfolio Manager), and Ian MacArthur, Regional Director at Groundwork Northwest. The presentation included case studies of the following TWB projects:

• Workplace Wellbeing (Ellesmere Port)
• Great Outdoors (Knowsley)
• Youth Works (Burnley)

One of the highlights of the conference for me was a seminal presentation by Lynne Friedli, who works across the EU to support the development of public mental health. She gave a wonderful talk about the importance of social networks to mental health, and why the NHS should be more proactive in supporting these.

There was also a lot of fascinating debate about the importance of natural spaces to mental and physical wellbeing, and about limits to growth, and the fact that happiness stops increasing above a certain per capita income. The conference gave me an insight into how public health is addressing the sustainability agenda.

You can see all the powerpoint presentations for the various sessions here: http://tiny.cc/nwphconfpres

Cycling Forum networking event

Date of the event: 12th November 2009
Organised by: Cycling Projects and Target: Wellbeing
Venue: Avenham Park, Preston
Reported by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator (Third Sector)

Photo: River Ribble, looking North from Avenham Park

This was the second regional physical activity networking event, that we have organised for Target: Wellbeing projects, this time with a focus on cycling, and other outdoor activities. Most of the credit for organising this goes to Cycling Projects, who put together the programme, speakers and venue.

This partnership emerged through a realisation that Cycling Projects have an operation up and running in pretty much all of the 10 Target: Wellbeing programme areas, and in those where they do not, there are plans. Our collective aim therefore was to strengthen links between Cycling Projects, and other Target: Wellbeing funding cycling projects in the region, with a view to increased collaboration in the future. This aim was achieved to an extent, with some interesting new links being established between projects.

Cycling Projects put together an excellent programme of speakers for the morning, including:

• Jenny Ashburner from Preston PCT talking about how they support Target: Wellbeing, and cycling initiatives in the City;
• Ian Tierny talking about the work of cycling Projects in the Region
• Yvonne Ashcroft talking about the Pedal Away TWB project in Preston;
• David Jeffreys from Natural England, talking about partnership work with walking initiatives;
• Alasdair Simpson from Lancs County Council talking about how the local authorities are promoting cycling in the county.

Copies of the presentations can be downloaded from Target: Wellbeing’s new web site when it goes live in the very near future.

Food Hubs Event

Date of the event: 9th November 2009
Organised by: Making Local Food Work (MLFW) and Sustain
Venue: Luther King House, South Manchester
Reported by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator (Third Sector)

I have been building links between Target: Wellbeing and Making Local Food Work in Manchester. I was pleased therefore to be able to attend this national MLFW event in Manchester, organised by Sustain, the Alliance for better food and farming.

Target: Wellbeing had a presence at the event through Manchester Food Futures, and the Herbie mobile grocery van. There were some very interesting presentations from food hub projects across the country. This was all good networking, and research and feeds very well into the 3rd sector support that I am providing to TWB projects. I am sure that co-operation and enterprise will form an important part of the sustainable funding strategies of many TWB projects in the future.

Building upon this event, and our links with MLFW, I am planning a regional food networking event with Rice Lane City Farm in North Liverpool, for March 10th. This will be headlined by Mark Simmonds and Sarah Alldred from Co-ops UK / MLFW, and will focus on sustainable enterprise. The event is open to TWB projects and other interested groups.

Forthcoming Targeting Health Outcomes Training

Report by: Nancy Brown

Our projects improve health through lots of different activities and we want to give them the health knowledge to make the projects sustainable, so I am really excited about the new training that will be taking place over November - Febraury, which we designed with MMU's Health and Wellbeing Academy for our projects and other organisations.

I commissioned this course, and allocated a substaintial amount of our training budget to it, because there are no other course I know of which are sepcifically designed for third sector organisations to give them this knowledge and enable them to speak to health commissioners in their own language.

There are 3 sessions:
Session 1 focuses on how health affects people and what affects health.
Session 2 looks at how behaviour is changed to improve the health of service users.
Session 3 will cover pitching to funders and commissioners in their own language and what evidence will be needed to show the benefit of activities delivered.

For dates or to book e-mail rhiannon.davies@groundwork.org.uk

We'll also be looking for a guest blogger to tell us what they think here, so let us know if you're interested in writing a few posts.

NWHPAF Conference 2009

Date of event: 5th November 2009
Organised by: NWHPAF
Venue: Aintree Racecourse, Liverpool
Report by: Louise Robinson, Programme Officer, Target: Wellbeing

The North West Health and Physical Activity Forum are a voluntary organisation whose aim is to promote good practice and networking opportunities for people working in health and physical activity. This is similar to Target: Wellbeing's aims, so it was an interesting opportunity to go along and see how somebody else does it!

My highlights of the day were key speaker Nick Cavill talking about the impact of health on the economy; learning how the Angel Centre in Salford are using a social enterprise model to work in partnership around health and wellbeing and seeing one of the delivery organisations that works with Target: Wellbeing being heavily involved in the day - Cycling Projects. I also had a very interesting conversation over lunch with one of the key speakers about his experiences of living in China!

Also on the day NWHPAF launched their new website - which is a really good resource for people working in this field.

The Benefits of Collaboration

Date of the event: 27th October + 3rd November 2009
Organised by: Target: Wellbeing & GMCVO
Venue: St.Thomas Centre, Manchester
Reported by: Rob Squires, Network Co-ordinator (Third Sector)

For some time now I have been touting the benefits of the national Collaboration programme of support offered by bassac, which includes free training and support from consultants. For many Target: Wellbeing projects, collaborative working may prove to be an important aspect of their exit strategies from the current BIG Lottery funding, whether this be through more joined up and comprehensive services, funding bids, or collaborative contracts from funders. In light of this, I arranged for Morag Rose from Greater manchester Council For Voluntary Services, to deliver the two day bassac Collaborative Benefits training.

The aim of the training was to give participants a good grounding in all things to do with collaboration, but also where possible, to establish collaboration 'champions' who can go on to stimulate and catalyse increased collaboration in their Target: Wellbeing programmes. To that end the training was well attended by 13 people from Target: Wellbeing projects or programmes.

The feedback from the trainig was generally very positive, with many participants reporting that they plan to think hard about how they can strengthen the collaborations that are happening with their projects and programmes. One outcome of this is that the Knowsley Programme leads (Mary Farrell and Shirley King) have arranged for Anne Harpur, who is a bassac consultant, to attend their next meeting in December, and facilitate a three hour collaborative planning workshop. The workshop will involve Target: Wellbeing projects, plus other 3rd sector providers in the area, and will look at collaborative possibilities for the future. It will be very interesting to see what comes out of this workshop, as Knowsley may well be showing the way for similar positive developments in other programme areas.

Another interesting aspect of the training was that Niel Walbrum from GMCVO provided a presentation on the work he is doing to establish a large consortium of commissioning ready third sector providers, for the Greater Manchester sub region. The thinking is that through establishing the consortium, members will be in a position to respond rapidly, and successfully to health and wellbeing commissioning contracts in the 9 boroughs as and when they become available. This is an interesting model that I am looking at, which Target: Wellbeing and its various programmes may be able to learn from, in relation to future collaboration.