We help create healthier, greener places to live, run community activities that encourage healthier living and support people through practical volunteering to improve their wellbeing and manage health conditions.
Good health is about more than individual actions – it’s also about changing our local environments to be greener, more walkable and less polluted. We also know that some people lack the social connections and financial resources needed to make healthier choices. We recognise these challenges by working both to create the conditions needed for us all to be healthy while enabling those with particular challenges to take their own positive steps towards wellbeing.
Simple and cost effective community-based interventions have the potential to change lives and save the NHS billions of pounds a year.
We work in partnership with GPs, Clinical Commissioning Groups, charities and other health and wellbeing professionals to create initiatives, including on ‘social prescription’. Our services ‘create health’ by helping people increase their contact with nature and build their confidence, control and connections.
Our work includes:
- Reducing isolation and promoting wellbeing: we bring people together for group activities in community settings, including initiatives targeted at isolated men, young mothers and older people.
- Creating healthier neighbourhoods: we involve people in improving their local parks and green spaces, creating routes for walking and cycling and using green infrastructure to tackle air pollution.
- Encouraging physical activity: we encourage people to be more active by taking part in practical conservation volunteering, and we use sport and physical activity in many of our youth programmes
- Making homes warmer and healthier: we install energy efficiency measuresadvise on saving money on utility bills, check for damp and other problems and refer vulnerable people to specialist agencies.
- Enabling healthier eating: we give people the chance to learn about and grow their own food in a sociable setting, demonstrate healthier cooking and broaden people’s culinary choices.
- Providing one-to-one advice: we work with people managing long-term conditions or dealing with issues such as substance abuse by providing tailored advice and specialist support as they find new pathways towards training, volunteering or employment.