New opportunity to support better conversations about physical activity with people with long-term health conditions

By GM Moving | 16 June 2022 | TAGS: gm moving in action, GM Moving, Manchester, Trafford

Moving More: Better Conversations

How to have better conversations about physical activity and movement with people with long-term health conditions

GreaterSport, supporting GM Moving in Action

GreaterSport is a Greater Manchester charity based in Manchester at the National Squash Centre. We are one of 43 Active Partnerships working as a network throughout the country to support the local implementation of the Sport England Uniting the Movement Strategy

Our shared purpose is to positively change the lives of people across Greater Manchester through physical activity, movement and sport. More information can be found by reading our Greater Manchester strategy for physical activity: GM Moving in Action

Greater Manchester has been awarded National Lottery funding by Sport England as a local delivery pilot area. Each of the ten localities are testing and exploring new measures to help children and young people aged 5-18 in out of school settings, those out of work or at risk of becoming workless, and those aged 40-60 with or at risk of long-term health conditions to become more active.

The focus of this opportunity is people with a long-term health condition (of any age) in Manchester and Trafford.

Manchester and Trafford Local Care Organisation

Manchester Local Care Organisation and Trafford Local Care Organisation are the public-sector partnership organisations that provide NHS community health services and adult social care services in Manchester and Trafford. This includes community nursing, community therapy, intermediate care, palliative (end of life) care, school nursing, health visiting, social work, reablement (providing short term support in people’s homes) and a wide range of other community-based health and social care services.

The LCOs have a joint leadership team across Manchester and Trafford who are responsible for running community services. The organisations also work closely with GPs, mental health services and the wider voluntary and community sector.

The aim of the LCOs is to improve health outcomes for people. Staff work as one team to support people at home or in the community, aiming to remove the barriers between health and social care so services are better coordinated around people’s needs. The teams work to prevent people from needing to go in to hospital where possible and also work to get people back home as soon as possible with the right care in place if they do need to spend time in hospital.

Many community health and social care staff are based together in teams as part of the LCOs. There are 12 of these teams in Manchester (known as integrated neighbourhood teams) and four area teams in Trafford (where a new neighbourhood model is being developed in 2022).

As well as working together to provide day to day health and care services, the LCOs have a role in working with local people, partners and voluntary groups to improve health and wellbeing in the neighbourhoods – working together to identify issues and develop solutions and engage with the local community in new ways.

Moving More: Better Conversations Brief

We seek to appoint an organisation or collaborative to work alongside ourselves and the Programme Director for Long Term Conditions at Manchester and Trafford Local Care Organisation to increase knowledge and awareness of the benefits of moving more for non-medical staff and people working directly with communities so that it becomes an everyday part of what we do and what we talk about. Examples of who we are talking about could include VCSE sector organisations, public sector staff, non- medical staff within the NHS etc.

We know that activity levels have dropped through the pandemic. We are starting to see signs of recovery, but the impact has been more significant for those living with long term health conditions and staff can often feel uncomfortable starting a conversation about this (especially if we’re not very active ourselves)

Aim: To co-design, manage and deliver an approach that will support non-medical/ community facing staff to have better conversations to encourage people with long term conditions to be more active and build movement back into daily life

Intended outcomes:

• A series of sessions to increase knowledge and awareness of the benefits of moving more, with practical tips for how to have better conversations with people
  • We would suggest that at least five sessions lasting no longer than two hours are delivered over 12 months, although we recommend a flexible and adaptive approach as we acknowledge that levels of interest won’t be fully understood until the work starts
• The collection and development of resources and useful information to support this for facilitators and participants. Our hope is that participants are provided with the skills and information required to spread and share the ideas and methods
• A focus on relationships, connections and building local support networks.
• Hosting a champions network or space for further support, reflection and sense making. This will be supported by the Research and Insight team at GreaterSport

Where is the investment from?

This piece of work is being funded by GreaterSport / GM Moving via National Lottery funding awarded by Sport England

The successful organisation/collaborative will:

• Focus on strength-based conversations that are centred around the person
• Build on what we already have in Manchester and Trafford and act as a connector to add value and not duplicate efforts
• Combine knowledge about the benefits of activity and movement with community insight
• Shift focus from clinical to community
• “Normalise” conversations about activity
• Build confidence to start conversations about moving more
• Make activity a key part of conversations in communities
• Reframe the conversation from sport and exercise to activity and movement
• Focus on the art of good listening, while recognising the difference between good and bad help

The approach will not:

• Duplicate existing initiatives or efforts, or work in isolation
• Seek to impose solutions or adopt a deficit-based approach in an attempt to fix people
• Focus on clinical or medical staff. Specific support is already available for Healthcare Professionals

Role of GreaterSport

• Costs for evaluation do not need to be included, but please allocate time and capacity to work with our Research and Insight team to capture the learning and impact
• GreaterSport will work alongside the successful organisation to set up the booking system and help promote the sessions.  

The Criteria

Value of initial contract: July 2022 to August/ September 2023

£20,000, plus VAT

Funding is confirmed until September 2023. If further funding is required beyond this date, we will look to have the contract reviewed to extend if the approach is successful.

Timeline

Submissions

All submissions must be emailed to [email protected] by: Midnight on Tuesday 12 July 2022

Once received we will confirm via email.

How will submissions be assessed?

• Organisations/Collaborations response to brief
• Each submission will be scored against the criteria
• Shortlisting and decision making will take place with partner organisations
• Successful organisation/ collaborative will be notified
• Feedback will be provided to all applicants

Further enquiries

If you have any further enquiries regarding this brief, please contact Claire Tomkinson, Strategic Lead for People and Leadership: [email protected]