‘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

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'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'

Caring for babies and young children - what can older children do?

Dear All

I'm delighted to tell you that we have successfully raised funding for the completion of the Children for Health ten poster series.

On completion we will have many more posters than ten as we have other posters linked to projects on Diabetes and Eye Health, Oral Health and Life Skills.

All our posters feature 10 messages for young adolescents to learn and share (on the front) and lots of ideas on how to use the posters and additional activities to get children mobilised on the back. If you haven't seen our posters PLEASE take a look here. They are being used in so many ways!

www.childrenforhealth.org/resources

...and any feedback is always welcome.
Please also share with your networks.

I am looking for specialists in early years to help us revise our existing set of 10 messages on the topic of 'Caring for Babies and Young Children' for the new poster. It is a voluntary role. The process lasts about 3 months as we involve practitioners too and work with schools to get children reviewing the messages. It's usually about 3 rounds of review and then an art work review. I'd be very pleased to hear from those who feel they have the time and expertise to help.

Meanwhile take a look at our posters. We have three new ones!

WASH: https://www.childrenforhealth.org/WASHposter

Coughs and Pneumonia: https://www.childrenforhealth.org/CoughsPoster

Intestinal Worms: https://www.childrenforhealth.org/WormsPoster

HIFA profile: Clare Hanbury is director of Children for Health. She qualified as a teacher in the UK and then worked in schools in Kenya and Hong Kong. After an MA in Education in Developing Countries and for many years, Clare worked for The Child-to-Child Trust based at the University of London's Institute of Education where, alongside Hugh Hawes and Professor David Morley she worked to help embed the Child-to-Child ideas of children's participation in health – into government and non-government cchild health and education programmes in numerous countries. Clare has worked with these ideas alongside vulnerable groups of children such as refugees and street children. Since her MSc in International Maternal and Child Health, Clare focused on helping government and non-government programmes to design and deliver child-centered health and education programmes where children are active participants. Clare has worked in many countries in East and Southern Africa and in Pakistan, Cambodia and the Yemen. In July 2013, Clare founded the NGO, Children for Health and develops health education materials and and works on health education programmes alongside partners all over the world.

https://www.hifa.org/support/members/clare clare AT childrenforhealth.org

Source link: 

https://hifaforums.org/_/XsqxTWgj

C/o FT 'Inside the rise of the mental-health volunteer movement'

INDIVIDUAL

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   INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES              

humanistic ------------------------------- mechanistic

 SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL   

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GROUP

'Amid a surge in demand for psychological support that has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, Blue is one of many people without formal psychiatric qualifications — including volunteers and health workers — who are stepping in to deliver interventions.' 'Sangath became one of the first projects to run a randomised control trial (RCT) of task-sharing in mental health in 2007. “It’s not a compromise,” said Nadkarni, “it’s an idea backed by solid research evidence.”' [FT]

'Known as task-shifting or task-sharing, the trend has grown across healthcare as services grapple with a stark mismatch between resources and demand. The World Health Organization estimates that there is a global average of 13 mental health workers per 100,000 people, but in low-income countries this can fall to fewer than two. But a number of studies suggest that simple interventions, such as benches where people can sit with a sympathetic listener, can be at least as powerful as expensive clinical approaches, easing the burden on specialist workers.' [FT]

'About us - Sangath: Our vision is a world where every person has access to quality and affordable mental health care. Our signature principles are to leverage community and health system resources to deliver psychosocial interventions for the prevention and care of mental health problems. We address a wide range of mental health concerns across the life course, from cognitive development in childhood to self-harm and depression in youth, to drinking problems, psychoses and dementia in adults.  ... Our name: ‘Sangath’ (सांगात) means togetherness and consensus. It signals our mission – to take an integrated and participatory approach to addressing mental health challenges.'

'Health policymakers are increasingly seeking to replicate projects pioneered in the developing world, a process that has been dubbed “frugal innovation”.' '“Every $1 invested in a service like this gives you about $9 in return — both for the individual and the society combined,” he added.' 'Initiatives such as the Friendship Bench and the Common Elements Treatment Approach devised by Johns Hopkins University, a mental health intervention that can be delivered by trained and supervised lay providers in low and middle-income countries, are collectively reaching millions of people and have proved their worth in multiple studies. But funders still tended to focus on setting up clinical projects rather than bringing about systemic change in resource allocation or medical payment models that would drive widespread adoption.' [FT]

My source:

Sarah Neville, India inspires project saving lives in Texas. FTWeekend, 21-22 December 2024. p.4.
https://ft.com/content/a187719c-ccbb-4af9-8d22-8e70b65098cf

n.b. While these efforts are ongoing, there is a crisis and a crisis of confidence in student mental health nursing as a specialty: 

Beyond the Student Mental Health Crisis: A Collaborative Transatlantic Symposium

Virtual 1200-1830 25th March 2025. (Too expensive for me.)

HelpForce the Domains for Change in Social Care

There are many lessons to be found - and as governments continue to learn - trip over, in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The government made a call for volunteers:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/2020/03/your-nhs-needs-you-nhs-call-for-volunteer-army/

 and the public has responded with 750,000 respondents:

https://www.goodsamapp.org/NHS

While of little consequence in the larger world, for me this crisis continues to reveal how the axes of Hodges' model encompass far more than their respective labels might indicate.

Taking the vertical axis:  INDIVIDUAL to GROUP (population) nations have had to resort to law to direct, instruct, force their citizens to stay at home.

Health policy, public health and economics specialists have long sought a means to influence people's behaviour. Nudge theory has joined the basic motivators of carrot and stick.

In the UK the call for volunteers has a long history.

Tom Hughes-Hallet, Your NHS Needs You, The Sunday Times, 26 August 2018, p.22.

HelpForce

individual

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INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

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group - population

An individual's behaviour ...

... and the impact of the same.

THE BIG SOCIETY

"The Big Society was a political ideology developed in the early 21st century. The idea proposed "integrating the free market with a theory of social solidarity based on hierarchy and voluntarism". Conceptually it "draws on a mix of conservative communitarianism and libertarian paternalism". Its roots "can be traced back to the 1990s, and to early attempts to develop a non-Thatcherite, or post-Thatcherite, brand of UK conservatism" such as David Willetts' Civic Conservatism and the revival of Red Toryism. Some commentators have seen the Big Society as invoking Edmund Burke's idea of civil society, putting it into the sphere of one-nation conservatism.   The term Big Society was originated by Steve Hilton, director of strategy for the Conservative Party, and the idea became particularly associated with the party's leader David Cameron who was a strong advocate for it. The idea formed the flagship policy of the 2010 UK Conservative Party general election manifesto and was part of the subsequent legislative programme of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition agreement. The stated aim was to create a climate that empowered local people and communities, building a "big society" that would take power away from politicians and give it to people." WikiPedia

Clearly, there is a macro form of nudge and hopefully this will result in social care being given the attention (funding) it desperately needs, recognising the value and values inherent in the sector.

Also in the Sunday Times article 'The NHS in numbers':
9m - Increase in UK population of pensioners in next 40 years

1942 - When William Beveridge's blueprint for postwar welfare state was published

10,000 - Volunteers supporting 4,000 staff at Marie Curie cancer care charity.

Tom Hughes-Hallet, Your NHS Needs You, The Sunday Times, 26 August 2018, p.22.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Society

Study: Do you have lived experience of emotional distress, neurodivergence, and/or behavioral health treatment? ...

... Are you a Mad Pride, neurodiversity, or psychiatric survivor activist?

A mental health advocate?

WHO: We’re seeking participants who have lived experience of “mental difference,” i.e. characteristics, traits, states, and phenomena that have been categorized as symptoms of mental disorders or developmental disorders, and/or lived experience of behavioral health treatment, and who have engaged in any form of advocacy.

WHY: To help researchers better understand how experiences of mental difference and behavioral health treatment impact activist involvement.

WHAT: A voluntary research study. This is an online survey lasting approximately 20-25 minutes. Participants will be asked questions about their mental health related experiences, involvement with activism, and viewpoints on sociopolitical issues within the mental health arena. Every 30^th participant will receive a $50 gift card up to five cards.

HOW: Contact Emily Cutler at ecutler@mail.usf.edu or click on this link to directly access the survey: https://usf.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_acaniQNBp7Z7f81. The study’s protocol number is #00035052.

Nev Jones PhD
Assistant Professor
NIDILRR Switzer Research Fellow '17-'18

Department of Mental Health Law & Policy
Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute
University of South Florida
e: genevra AT usf.edu
t. @viscidula

George Monbiot & Ewan McLennan - Breaking the Spell of Loneliness

individual

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INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic -------------------------------------------  mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group-population

My source: BBC 2 or C4?

When does art prompt 'total internal reflection' ?

individual

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

group

Stichting Ambulance Wens


Related posts:
Woman says goodbye to beloved horse from hospital bed hours before she dies

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam - health in art : art in health

My source:
The Times, 7 March 2015, 71450: pp.38-39.

Photo source:
http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/terminally-ill-patients-visit-rembrandt-paintings.html