North West Public Health Conference 2010

Date of the event: 4th and 5th November 2010
Organised by: Event North and Cumbria and Lancashire Public Health Networks
Venue: Lowood Hotel, Ambleside
By: Maggie Moody, Portfolio Manager

I was at the NW Public Health Conference on 4th and 5th November in Ambleside, followed by a lovely long weekend in a log cabin near Ullswater (and then a nasty cold), which is why I've only now got round to sharing my summary of the conference highlights.

First to say is that it was a really good event in a lovely location, well attended by a mix of people from health, local authorities and the voluntary sector which made for interesting and informed discussion and perspectives.

The highlights for me were:
- the presentation by Ruth Hussey who highlighted the positive opportunities in this time of significant change,
- Andrew Lyon who gave a lively and engaging presentation explaining "3 Horizons"
- Prof Bengt Lindstrom who talked about salutogenesis, an assets approach (although I confess that I did google salutogenesis before the presentation so I some idea what to expect!)
- Oliver James who talked about the evidence from the Human Genome Project concluding "It's the environment, stupid"!
- Steve Wyler really inspired me in his workshop too, which gave examples of community owned facilities and buildings.

Also, one of the Target: Wellbeing projects, Pre School Nutrition in Knowsley, won a NW Public Health Award - excellent!

Here's a photo of us receiving the award, and you can see the rest of the photographs here.

You can see all of the presentations from the day here.

Big Lottery Wellbeing Portfolios in the North

Date of the event: 13/10/10
Organised by: Gillian from the NW Healthy Living Network
Venue: Stockport MBC
Report by: Maggie Moody, Portfolio Manager

Rhiannon, Lawrence and I went to a meeting of the four BIG Lottery Fund funded wellbeing portfolios in the North of England last week.

Represented at the meeting were:
North West Healthy Living Network (NW),
Altogether Better (Yorks and Humberside),
New Leaf New Life (NE),
and, of course, Target: Well-being (also NW).

The opportunity to share experiences, challenges and solutions was invaluable, and the openness of the discussions and willingness to share information was very refreshing. Networking at its best!

Whilst the portfolios are all working towards the same objectives to increase physical activity, increase healthy eating and improve mental wellbeing, the diversity of the portfolios and their projects is amazing. There's also huge innovation around evaluation and communications, just to mention a couple of examples, and the Altogether Better work with Health Champions is an inspiration.

I will endeavour to highlight forthcoming events and opportunities, but I encourage you to visit their websites (links above) and sign up to their newsletters, etc. to find out more.

Listen, Value, Invest Conference

Subject: Listen, Value, Invest conference
Date of event: 3 weeks ago
Organised by: VSNW
Venue: Manchester Conference Centre
Report by: Rob Squires

This conference was attended by lots of emminent people from the Voluntary and Community Sector. One of the main objectives of the day was about how the profile of the sector
can be raised in these difficult times.

During the day I gate crashed the ED's workshop, which was jammed with EDs and other gate crashers like me. The main topic of conversation was EDs expressing dismay at the "Big Society", and the various threats it presents for their organisations.

However, at the end of the day, Neil McInroy from CLES really stole the show with a very witty, relevant and ultimately optimistic presentation on the role the Voluntary and Community Sector has to play.

All the presentations from the day are available here.

Places Training Preparation Event

Date of the event: 14.10.10
Organised by: Target: Wellbeing and Mark Ellison from GONW
Venue: Foxton Centre, Preston (a Target: Wellbeing project)
Report by: Nancy Brown

This session was to develop the information we need to tell the story of
the Foxton Centre for the training on place based data we're running on 22nd November.

It was a session involving local service users, volunteers, workers, and
staff to look at how the Foxton Centre has worked within the local
community.

We'll use this to provide a case study for our training in November all
about how our projects contribute to neighbourhoods and how to use data to
show this. The highlights were learning about the work in the centre and the way
people see their neighbourhood.

You can find out more on the training on the events section of our website!

Fit as a Fiddle Conference

Date: 5th October 2010
Organised by: Age Concern
Venue: Burnley Football Club

A week or so ago I was lucky enough to attend the Fit as a Fiddle
Conference in Burnley. This programme, like Target: Wellbeing is funded by
the BIG Lottery Fund, and is currently in its 4th year.

It was really interesting to find out more about their projects that are helping older
people to be more active, eat healthily and to feel positive and engaged
with their community. From food tasting and cooking sessions to tai chi,
the range of activities was impressive! There was a lot of synergy with
Target: Wellbeing, and there were opportunities for me to "borrow" some
great ideas around activities and evaluation too!

Halton Celebration Event

Date of Event: 8th Sept 2010
Organised by: Target: Wellbeing's Halton Programme, Halton and St Helens PCT
Venue
Report by: Lawrence Milner

Why was the event held?
A celebration event providing to find out more about Target: Wellbeing projects funded through the Halton programme. There were displays and presentations from projects, and a chance to learn first hand how people had benefited from the projects being funded. The event also included a range of useful speakers such as Debbie Dolby from Halton CVS who spoke about the challenges and opportunities of the Spending Review for the voluntary and community sector in Halton.

Who else was there?
Representatives from Target: Wellbeing Halton projects, Local Authorities, PCTs and other partner organisations.

What was the relevance for Target: Wellbeing?
The opportunity to find out how projects were making a real difference to the people and communities in Halton.

Find out more about projects taking place in Halton on our website.

Spring Into Enterprise

Date of event: 7th April 2010
Organised by: Target Wellbeing
Venue: Rice Lane City Farm, North Liverpool
Report by: Rob Squires, Target Wellbeing Network Co-ordinator (3rd Sector)

Spring Into Enterprise is the latest Target: Wellbeing regional networking event focussing on healthy eating, which was held at Rice Lane City Farm in Liverpool, on April 7th.

The event was attended by 22 individuals from accross the region, and from a variety of different organisational types, including Target: Wellbeing projects, Liverpool and Ellesmere Port PCTs and nutritional staff from St.Helens MBC.

The main theme of the day was sustainable enterprise for food projects, including those involved in production, access, cooking and nutrition. To this end we brought in Mark Simmonds and Ruth Kelly from Making Local Food Work, who gave respective talks on Governance and Legal structures, and on Food Co-ops.

Many thanks to Rice Lane City Farm, and Roma in particular, for hosting the day, and making everybody feel welcome.

Also many thanks to the Knowsley based Target: Wellbeing funded project called Village Farm Cooks (or Cafe Society), who did a fantastic job cooking for the event.

Following lunch, we had a workshop session. Despite the fact it was the dreaded 'graveyard shift' and that we were in a stiffling polytunnel, we managed to have an interesting discussion about how to make food projects more sustainable and mutually supportive.

It is nearly a year since I last visited Rice Lane. In this time the horticultural area on the farm has been transormed, as a result of the Target: Wellbeing funding. I am very excited to see how much this project will have progressed by the end of TWB, and what will happen to it after that. Rice Lane is a brilliant project that has been running for 30 years, with the support of the local community, in a difficult economic environment. Walking around the farm, and the woodlands, I could not help feel that there is still much untapped potential for this land. Financial constraints, and the capacity of the small team of dedicated staff are major limiting factors here. I hope that Target: Wellbeing, in addition to providing funding, can help this project, by encouraging statuatory bodies and funding bodies to see the huge contribution this project makes to the area, and to continue to support it in the development of all its potential.

You can download resources from the day, including reports, photographs, and weblinks, here at the main Target: Wellbeing website.

BIG Lottery Fund - Wellbeing Conference

Date of event: 4th - 5th March 2010
Organised by: BIG Lottery Fund
Venue: BIG Lottery Fund, Newcastle
Report by: Louise Robinson, Programme Officer

This event was organised by the BIG Lottery Fund to bring together the 17 wellbeing portfolios. The theme of the first day was evaluation, with a presentation from the national evaluators CLES and NEF (who developed the tools) on the first year evaluation findings. This was followed by group work around soft outcomes, social return on investment and engaging people in evaluation with low levels of literacy.

The second day kicked off with an opening speech from Dr Alan Billings (of Radio 4 - 'Thought For the Day' - fame) and was followed by an informative presentation around sustainability and social enterprise in the Olympic Fringe. The focus of the workshops was sustainability, best practice and the portfolio model as a way of delivery.

The event was an excellent opportunity to build relationships with our lovely colleagues at the BIG Lottery Fund and network with the other wellbeing portfolios. It was a relief to discover that the other portfolios are facing challenges with their evaluation too and provided an excellent opportunity to share areas of best practice, discuss common problems and swap evaluation tools for those projects who are not using the PHO questionnaires.

To find out more information about the BIG Lottery Fund and the other wellbeing portfolios visit BIG Lottery Fund's website