‘Prevention Demonstrator’ - GM Live Well

England’s First Prevention Demonstrator: Opportunities for Greater Manchester and its VCFSE sector

Greater Manchester has been chosen as England’s first Prevention Demonstrator, an initiative announced in the Government’s 10-Year Health Plan earlier this year. It marks a step toward transforming public services with a more ‘preventative’ approach.

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) was named as the first prevention demonstrator in the UK Government’s 10 Year Plan for Health in July. It will take a community-led preventative approach to the provision of public services which means fixing the foundations of a person’s life – such as housing, and access to education and employment opportunities – as a means of preventing ill health from social and economic detriment and improving lives, as well as reducing pressure on acute and crisis services.

The Prevention Demonstrator will be building on the Live Well Model of service delivery, which brings together services such as health, employment support and debt advice at a neighbourhood level working with the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise (VCFSE) sector, providing a blueprint for the rest of the country.

Warren Heppolette has been appointed to lead this work, seconded from NHS Greater Manchester where he was Chief Officer for Strategy, Innovation and Population Health. Warren has been closely involved in the GMVCFSE Leadership Group’s Commissioning and Investment sub-group which aims to improving standards and practices for the benefit of the VCFSE sector.

Continued ...

Lucy North, Communications and Policy Officer. Published: December 5, 2025

⍚

'Sustainability' and 'sufficiency' (as per the previous post) are words of the moment. Policymakers want change to have a permanent quality, which ironically means individuals within a population benefitting from initiatives like this have a mindset that makes them flexible to future changes and challenges.

As Camilla Cavendish notes in 'Andy Burnham will need to play a new card now', Manchester's prevention demonstrator has echoes of David Cameron's Big Society and the Troubled Families project. There are two other words that can work for individuals and populations: impetus and momentum. Within this through Hodges' model we can equip people and communities for lifelong learning. We can also highlight, as Prof. Kevin Fong did at RCN Congress 2026 in his marvellous keynote - that resilience is found between people, not within individuals.
 

See also: Presentation - Prevention, Health and Good Growth: Realising Our Prevention Ambitions

Philip Britteon, Alfariany Fatimah, Stephanie Gillibrand, Yiu-Shing Lau, Laura Anselmi, Paul Wilson, Matt Sutton, Alex J. Turner, (2024) The impact of devolution on local health systems: Evidence from Greater Manchester, England, Social Science & Medicine, Volume 348, 116801,
ISSN 0277-9536, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.116801.

My source: Camilla Cavendish, Opinion: Andy Burnham will need to play a new card now, FTWeekend, 20-21 June, 2024. p.12.

Previously: 'prevention' : 'big society' : 'troubled families' : 'social prescribing'

2009 March Manchester, UK: 4th Oekonux Conference - Free Software and Beyond...

Call for Contribution - to the 4th Oekonux Conference in collaboration with P2P Foundation

During the past decade the phenomenon of Free Software has become successful and well-known. It is still amazing how in the realm of software the creativity of so many volunteers leads to products which are useful for the whole mankind. In 1999 the Oekonux Project [http://www.oekonux.org/] started with analyzing this phenomenon and trying to understand the special features of Free Software as a social and political enterprise.

Today, beyond the Free Software world, projects based on a similar approach of peer production are rapidly emerging, including Wikipedia and many more. It is time to look at peer production from a broader perspective.

This is the goal of the 4th Oekonux conference [http://www.oekonux-conference.org/] which is done in collaboration with the P2P Foundation [http://p2pfoundation.net/]. Under the title

Free Software and Beyond The World of Peer Production - we are planning a conference where

o researchers and activists meet
o intensive discussions are possible
o experiences can be shared and learned.

We are calling for contributions about the big world of peer production.
Possible themes include (but not limited to):

o Reports from peer production projects such as -

o Wikipedia
o Blogosphere
o Design communities
o OpenAccess movement
o Open Music
o Free Culture
o Sharing platforms like Flickr and YouTube
o Free Software

o Peer production and capitalism

o Theoretical approaches on their relationship
o Peer production and commercial interests
o Peer production and the state
o Peer production and political approaches of the past

o Peer governance

o Theoretical approaches to governance in peer production
o Peer ownership
o Maintainership and conflict resolution

o Material peer production

o Existing projects
o Theoretical approaches

If you want to - give a talk - prepare a workshop - moderate a round table discussion

Please submit a short outline of your idea (~300 words) together with a short bio to projekt AT oekonux DOT de. (Mails to this address are archived on the web. Please ask there if this is a problem for you.) If you want to add some other kind of contribution or have other questions please also don't hesitate to contact this address.

About Project Oekonux: In Project Oekonux different people with different opinions and different methods study the economic and political forms of Free Software and other peer production phenomenons. An important question is, whether the principles of peer production may be the foundation of a new economy which may be the base for a new society.

About P2P Foundation: The Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives researches, documents and promotes P2P practices in every domain of social life. It's a global cyber-collective and aims to be a knowledge and internetworking platform for open/free, participatory, and commons-oriented initiatives on a global scale.

IssueLab - where non-profit research is brought into focus

The following resource may be of interest, especially as the rise of the third sector in health and social care plus the drive for social enterprise calls for new approaches to research.

Welcome to IssueLab, where nonprofit research is brought into focus. Each day nonprofits worldwide produce insightful and valuable research on complex social issues. IssueLab makes it easy to locate, access, and engage with this extensive and diverse body of knowledge.