New Public Health Arrangements in Manchester

Date of the event: Tuesday 1st March 2011
Organised by: Manchester Aliance for Community Care (MACC)
Venue: Cross Street Chapel, Manchester
By: Rob Squires, Wellbeing Newtwork Co-ordinator (Third Sector)

"The era of full cost recovery may be over before it even began .."
~ Mike Wild

This was the response from the director of Manchester Alliance for Community Care, when I asked a question about how much resource organisations should be putting into evidencing their outcomes in order to win public health contracts.

I was at a public meeting organised by MACC, bringing together Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) organisations with David Regan, who is the new Director for Public Health in Manchester. The purpose of the meeting was to hear first hand from Regan, about the broad changes that are happening within public health, and the implications of these on the VCS. Although there are positives to the government's white paper, Healthy Lives, Healthy People, such as increased committment to preventative services, all this is to be achieved within the backdrop of severe funding cuts. Hence Mike's comment that whilst there is increased pressure on organisations to evidence their effectiveness, the probability that there will be a suitable budget to finance this, is slim.

Mike Wild is to sit on the new Health & Wellbeing Board for Manchester, as a representative for the VCS. The board is to be chaired by Cllr Richard Lease, leader of MCC, and amongst other things, the Board will play a role in scrutinising GP commissioning in the area. Mike is pushing the idea that there should be some kind of agreement between commissioners and the VCS about what will constitute valid evidence, and that they should be less emphasis on 'does the VCS work?', and more on 'how does it work?'.

For more information visit MACC's web site.

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.

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

New Lifestyles: Pychology of Health Behaviour

Date of Event: Tuesday 23rd June 2009
Organised by: Hampsons Solutions
Venue: Haighton Manor, Preston
Report by: Nancy Brown

This training session focused on the psychology of behaviour and how we can encourage beneficiaries to take up services we provide by marketing it in more appealing ways by using different language to attact people to the experience of taking part in the service. It was really useful!
www.hampsonsolutions.co.uk