Since 2018 Wigan have been part of Greater Manchester’s Place Partnership with Sport England to build healthier, more active communities.
The partnership aims to reduce inactivity and health inequalities. To do this we take a place-based, approach that brings together people, communities, and organisations to create sustainable solutions to inactivity.
Wigan have seen considerable progress since the place partners inception in 2018, with a particular acceleration from 2021. This was in part due to the Wigan Leisure services (Be Well) coming back under council control leading to greater collaboration within the system. This change in 2021 led to Wigan refocusing their ambitions.
As identified above a key point of change was the Be Well services coming back under council control. This led to previously existing barriers and silos being broken down, allowing for more collaboration between teams in the council especially between Be Well services and public health.
With Be Well back in house the team was then restructured into Neighbourhood Teams. This restructuring aimed to create a culture and system that was driven by local resident need. Upskilling was provided to over 100 frontline staff encouraging partnership working across sectors and organisations.
Another positive from the new joined up approach and restructured team was how quickly the system could respond to local need. This test and learn approach can be seen with Leigh Youth hub. Within six months of youth engagement the hub opened its doors. With the youth hub providing a space for Holiday Activity Funds programmes, employment skills, and bike libraries as well as a safe space for local young people.
One key pillar of Wigan’s place partner work has been their Pivot to Wellness approach. This has helped reinvent and reposition the leisure sector in the borough. This has been achieved through building greater connections between leisure assets and healthcare in the borough, with leisure now taking a more active role in community health building.
One example of the Pivot work in Wigan is through health roadshows. This is where leisure centres have hosted health and wellbeing open days allowing residents to have drop in health appointments.
The success of these roadshows has led to Wigan securing funding to create permanent 5 permanent pivot rooms at one leisure centre. This will enable to leisure centre to widen its offer and have dedicated health spaces.
Wigan is in a unique position of not having a Local infrastructure organisation (LIO) to support their VCFSE sector. Therefore one focus for the place partner work was to strengthen relationship and connections both with, and between organisations in the VCFSE sector. This has predominantly taken the form of community health building.
This approach has been spearhead by Groundwork, and has aimed to create a blueprint for VCFSE sector to play an active role in improve mental and physical health and wellbeing in Wigan. One area of this work has been relationship and network building, to ensure a more connected VCFSE sector and current offer. This focus on relationship building has led to a greater understanding of training need within the sector, wich has allowed to team to design an offer to support local organisations become part of the social prescribing pathway.
Building on their learning over the last 5 years, Wigan have identified several deepening themes.
To support the pivot and well-being work, Wigan have identified a number of activities and workstreams.
There is a desire to strengthen the relationship with Primary Care Networks, and ensure they are connected into VCFSE and leisure organisations within local communities. By building and strengthening these connections it is hoped it build resilience across the system, and support ongoing cross sector work such as Pivot and community health building.
Wigan have secured investment to build additional pivot rooms at leisure centres. The success of current pivot work highlights how leisure and health can work together. The long-term aim of this is creating a more sustainable leisure sector with a strong community health and wellbeing offer.
Wigan want to continue to strengthen and expand their relationships with VCFSE sector. Key to this will be the expansion of the Community Health Building approach (CHB).
Hyperlocal CHB will continue in Westleigh with the new co-designed E-voucher approach being tested. This looks to build an all-inclusive activity offer (‘Be well pass’) for local residents to based on their financial health. The overarching aim of this all-inclusive offer would be to have both council and VCSFE services included so residents have a one-stop shop approach to becoming more active.
Another key element of the VCFSE work is the strengthening of the community offer at Leigh Youth Hub. This hub is seen as key to both cycling activation in the area and as a potential family hub for the area. This is hub currently provides excellent opportunities to engage local young people from a diverse range of backgrounds. The deepening work want to continue to build this community voice to help shape the local offer and build deeper connections into the Leigh community.
To help put in place the deepening plans and “progress with unity” strategy, Wigan have identified a number of workforce development opportunities to support workers. These opportunities will help collaboration across sectors and ensure people are at the heart of decision making.
Firstly, Wigan want to expand and embed matrix-working across council services. Matrix-working has helped council services learn from each other and provided more opportunity to collaborate. By embedding matrix-working, physical activity will be on more agendas, resulting in more resources and collaborative projects aimed at tackling inequalities.
Secondly, Wigan would like to adapt and expand the Be Well staff training to other areas of the council and VCFSE sector. This aims to instil behaviours and place based working principles to other sectors. This will ensure the workforce feels confident in working in communities and help set the conditions to maximise place partner impact.
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