Live Well – Greater Manchester’s movement for community-led health and wellbeing.
What is Live Well?
Being able to Live Well can mean different things to different people:
- Enjoying life;
- having purpose;
- a good job;
- being in a warm and safe house;
- people to spend time with and care about;
- being represented;
- having a voice and a say in decisions about my life.
The neighbourhoods we live in and the communities we are a part of, help us live a healthy, happy life. They help us feel supported, connected and resilient through a variety of information, activities, and networks.
Greater Manchester Live Well event: Growing community wealth, opportunity and ownership
On 21 May 2024, residents, community groups and public services came together to talk about community wealth building. Watch our video from the Live Well event.
Community reporting videos
Some of our communities have given their perspective of what it means to Live Well, sharing their insight, experiences and stories.
Idaraya Life
Idaraya Life CIC explored the ways women in Wigan currently view their experience of their local area and how they feel it needs to change for them to continue to live well.
Made by Mortals
Made by Mortals worked with their community group to share what Live Well means to them.
Together – Elephants Trail Community Reporters
Elephants Trail community reporters asked what health and wellbeing means to people, how community groups support people with connections, help and resilience, and the opportunities to grow more in the places we live and things we do. They called their video ‘Together’.
In this second community reporting video, Elephants Trail raise awareness and understanding of community wealth building, its links with and support for community-led health and well-being, and the potential for solutions to spread. It reflects what it means to local people to grow community wealth, including for community-led health and well-being – and explores what helps them to do so.
This third community reporting video aims to raise awareness and understanding of community power, its links with and support for community-led health and well-being, and the potential for solutions to spread. This video was produced by The Elephants Trail community reporting team, with support from Unlimited Potential.
Too many people face barriers that make it harder to Live Well, for example:
- being short of money;
- what’s available where you live;
- your ethnicity;
- disability.
Communities and local organisations across Greater Manchester are making a huge contribution to tackling these inequalities, but they shouldn’t have to do this alone.
Doing things differently
Public services can do things differently, working with communities, to learn how power, wealth and action can really shift to communities.
The Greater Manchester Model for Health and Wellbeing has people and communities at its heart. We will make the most progress in improving health if the system works to tackle the social causes of ill health alongside our clinical interventions.
Live Well is part of our work to strengthen our communities, so everyone can lead a healthier happier life, to achieve fairer health for all.
Councils, NHS, voluntary, community and faith organisations, people and communities. Locally and across the region are working together to unblock barriers and create the conditions where:
- Everyone has opportunities to be healthy, happy and connected through a variety of activities, support and information;
- Everyone can help make their communities healthier and happier, they are being heard and making a difference;
- All communities have the resources to make change happen.
This will mean shifting power and resources to the people and communities who are best placed to help Greater Manchester residents to Live Well.
The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest community funder in the UK, has invested £1 million in Greater Manchester’s Live Well work to grow opportunities in the places we live and the things we do.
The National Lottery Community Fund grant will help Greater Manchester’s public services tackle these health and wellbeing inequalities.
Salford
Residents in Little Hulton, Salford, have been coming together over the past few years to create new opportunities that improve everyone’s wellbeing. They have developed a bike park, started to build a community pavilion, and they made sure people had food and essentials during Covid. The National Lottery Community Fund grant will enable residents to map all the things that help keep people healthy and well and figure out how to support more people to access these, and how they can continue to grow them. They will show health and care partners how communities can create and sustain more opportunities for everyone to lead a healthy happy life.
Bolton
Bolton’s community champions are people who care about their local community and want to make a difference. They help their family, neighbours and friends get good advice about how to look after their health and wellbeing, and take opportunities to lead active and connected lives, and make sure the places they live help people thrive and stay independent into later life. The National Lottery Community Fund grant will help develop a network of independent voices for the places they live, and work with services to ensure that they respond to what those places really need to prevent ill health.
Rochdale
Residents and community groups across Rochdale have been working with the Council and other partners to figure out how they can challenge poverty and its effects. Their work through the National Lottery Community Fund grant will help them test and learn how power, resource and decision making can really shift to local people, so that collectively they can work to address the root causes of poverty and ensure everyone gets the future they deserve.
Oldham
There are already lots of community groups in Oldham, working within our neighbourhoods to provide activities and support which improve people’s health and wellbeing. The National Lottery Community Fund grant will enable us to bring together public services, community organisations and residents to explore how we can make decisions together about how budgets are used to support that work to continue longer-term.
Tameside
Voluntary and community groups in Tameside make a huge contribution to keeping people healthy and well. The National Lottery Community Fund grant will help system partners make this the basis of a borough-wide approach to doing more together to prevent ill health for all our residents and find ways to resource this for the longer term.
- Thousands of community groups across Greater Manchester supporting people to Live Well.
- A real growth in social prescribing.
2021
- Independent Equalities Commission – Putting health and wellbeing equality at the heart of strategic plans for the City Region.
- Andy Burnham’s Manifesto Commitment to tackle health and wellbeing inequalities.
- Launch of ‘Nature for Health’ scaling up the availability of ‘Green Social Prescribing’ as an option for people, attracting in £500k funding to GM
2022
- Our Integrated Care Strategy – Live Well is a critical driver for how we create ‘Fairer Health for All’ – the health system’s response to tackling inequalities.
- Co-design process to co-create key foundations for how Live Well will respond to this call to action.
- Co-designed programme to invest in changing how our systems support community-led health and awarded National Lottery Community funding.
- First Children and Young People’s offer in schools in Greater Manchester – with pilot work starting in 12 secondary schools across 5 localities.
2023
- Creative Health Strategy launched, galvanising cross-sector leadership to grow creative health options to Live Well.
- National Lottery Community Fund programme began over Winter.
2024
- Movement growing.
- Launch event brought together over 250 people from across public services along with the community, voluntary and faith groups who build health and wellbeing in communities every day. Together, they showcased impactful community-led action and support, from bike kitchens, choirs and neighbourhood groups to public living rooms and peer networks. Watch the launch event video.
