GB-St Helens: Providers to be a hub partner in delivering the Healthy Neighbours Programme (community volunteer health and wellbeing programme)

This Healthy Neighbours project aims to reach out to customers living in our general housing stock in the following areas: Parr, Four Acre, Daneville Estate, Granby Toxteth Triangle, Orford (Grasmere Avenue and Greenwood Crescent), St Elphins Close and St Katherines Way & Braybrook estate, Norris Green, where health levels are extremely low in comparison to national indicators. Healthy Neighbours are local volunteers who are engaged and trained to help and support their communities to improve health, wellbeing and community cohesion. They show how local people can work together with services and providers to improve quality and outcomes for communities. Torus Foundation plans to run the projects across Liverpool, St Helens and Warrington. Where this approach (Community Champions) is implemented already (Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster), Social Return on Investment (SROI) evaluations conservatively estimated that £5 - £6 of social and economic value is generated for every £1 invested through this approach. Healthy Neighbours undertake: •Health and Wellbeing promotion - communicating important health and housing messages to often marginalised groups and individuals which professionals struggle to engage with. •Insight gathering - on health, care, wellbeing, and housing of issues to help the Torus Foundation and Partners understand deep-rooted attitudes, behaviours and perceptions. •Signposting - exploiting their unique position within the local community to signpost friends, neighbours and members of the community to appropriate health, social care, housing, children's, community and voluntary sector services. Healthy Neighbours are recruited directly from the area where they live, and where the project or 'hub' is based and reflect the diversity of the local population. They volunteer their time to connect residents with local services and create engaging and trusted relationships with their communities through the activities, events and campaigns that they run. By doing research, gathering insight, sharing health messages and signposting to local services, the Healthy Neighbours help local organisations understand their communities better and can influence services to make them more suited to local needs. They also make communities more aware of their local services and communicate important health, housing and wellbeing messages.