Since 2018 Oldham have been part of Greater Manchester’s Place Partnership with Sport England to build healthier, happier, more active communities.
Over the last five years Oldham’s work has demonstrated the importance of working together, and working with communities, to tackle health inequalities and getting people more active more often.
One of Oldham’s key learnings is the importance of collaborative working. This is supported by the co-designed place partnership principles which set out key ways of working in Greater Manchester. The application of these principles helped improve collaboration and communication across sectors and organisations. This change was first reflected in operational staff, however successes led to these principles being adopted at a senior level. One example of this is the establishment of the Moving More and Healthy Weight Alliance. This brought together new partners around common goals and shared challenges. This principles led approach is now seen in multiple programs such as Active Through Football, Play zones and a Social Prescribing & Active Travel pilot.
To understand more about the approach and its impact, watch the videos below.
Working with Action Together is a key to place partnership work in Oldham. An example of this collaboration is the Community investment Fund (CiF). This fund used a flexible and responsive approach to small grants in Failsworth and Glodwick – two areas with high levels of inequalities and inactivity.
The fund provided support for community groups throughout. This included adapting application processes, and providing training opportunities to upskill community groups. Because of this approach relationships and trust with the local community were strengthened. This also helped the team build greater understanding of the local community and what support they found most valuable; Which in turn allowed the CiF to be adjusted to meet community need. This flexible way of working is now embedded in Action Together’ s One Oldham fund, and recognised as the standard way of CiFs delivery in the borough. Oldham work with their communities to develop their ideas and help bring them to life.
Glodwick was one of Oldham’s first neighbourhoods of focus for the place partner work. The team started by working to build trust, relationships, and knowledge of the community. One key learning from this was although there were lots of good community led work in the area, some of it was done in isolation. To support greater connection the team established an active partnership called Develop Glodwick, bringing together well-established community organisations already doing some great work. This groups aim was to build greater connection between community organisations; While also uniting them around a common goal of reducing health inequity, physical inactivity and improving the lives of their communities. Develop Glodwick helped build a greater understanding of the strengths and need of the area. This knowledge helped the group identify opportunities for training, delivery, communications, and learning. This collaborative approach across organisations resulted in Develop Glodwick securing violence reduction unit funding.
Taking the learnings from Failsworth and Glodwick, Oldham are looking to expand into a neighbourhood in each of their five districts. Oldham’s ambitions for deepening can be categorised into these three overlapping themes.
At a system level Oldham are hoping to embed the place partnership principles across new places and spaces. Key to this is work is better connecting and integrating with the Oldham place-based initiatives (PBI) model. This model is recognised in the council’s corporate plan and aims to better connect public and community services across Oldham. By working with and shaping this model, the team is hoping to expand the reach of place partnerships principles to support more active lives.
The importance of system integration is highlighted as key to place based working and is in line with the national learning.
Building on the success of Develop Glodwick, Oldham aims to create an ‘active partnership’ for each of the new areas in a way that suits them. This will ensure that the local community and local organisations are at the heart of the place work. These partnerships will aim to bring people and organisation together around common goals. While also helping build a greater understanding of the unique strengths and needs of the area.
Oldham also plans to grow and support existing community networks. This includes the newly reformed Sports Club Network and the Active Through Football Network. Through embedding place partner principles within a network Oldham aims to:
The goal of this way of working is to increase the number of community advocates for physical activity. While also strengthening relationships within the communities. By improving relationships with community groups there will be shift in relationships from transactional to relational as already seen in Active through Football work.
Oldham is using a two-pronged approach to tackle deep-rooted inequalities:
At a system level Oldham aims to expand their influence to new systems partners. With the aim of building common goals to support the reduction of physical inactivity and health inequalities.
In Oldham, we’re working to bring communities closer together through local ways of working, like Place-Based Initiatives (PBI) and place partnerships. These efforts help us better understand each neighbourhoods – its strengths, its needs, and the people who live there.
By listening and learning from local communities, we can find better ways to support them. At the same time, we’re helping people build the skills and confidence to encourage others to be more active in their everyday lives.
As more people get involved, we believe they’ll start to see how physical activity can be part of the solution to many challenges – whether it’s improving health, boosting mental wellbeing, or bringing people together.
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