Health and wellbeing

NAVCA is supporting National Voices to deliver the coordinator role for the Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) Health and Wellbeing Alliance (HW Alliance). The HW Alliance is a partnership between 18 VCSE sector representatives and the public sector element of the health and care system. It is a forum where the VCSE sector is able to share expertise at a national level, to improve services for all communities. 

The HW Alliance is jointly managed by the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and NHS Improvement and Public Health England. The VCSE members represent communities who share protected characteristics or are affected by health inequalities. 

You can see a summary of work undertaken by HW Alliance members in 2021/22 here. 

For the year 2022/23, the HW Alliance’s work centres around 4 key themes: mental health, maternal health, social prescribing, and primary care. We believe that it is important for the voice of local to be represented in these conversations and are therefore keen to link our members into this work. If you are interested in getting involved, or would like to find out more, please contact Lydia Warden.

Social Prescribing is part of NHSE's long term plan and is a key component of Universal Personalised Care. It is a non-clinical, person-centred approach to support people to improve their health and wellbeing by referrals into community activity and support, through Social Prescribing Link Workers (SPLW).

NAVCA, in partnership with the National Academy for Social Prescribing (NASP) and Spirit of 2012 have developed a Social Prescribing work stream in response to our members’ increased involvement is this area of delivery.

We aim to create stronger connections between local VCSE infrastructure organisations and stakeholders involved in social prescribing at a national, regional, system and place level, to deliver increased impact and patient outcomes. We are working with our members to identify gaps in the Social Prescribing eco system and to offer solutions. 

For more information or to get involved in the conversations, contact our Health and Wellbeing Manager, Anne-Marie.

One of our members, CVS Tendring, has done some great work on social prescribing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EePFoLXQ9Q

Doncaster Community Arts (darts) has also been involved in some work, connecting people to their local community to improve their wellbeing: https://wearedarts.org.uk/creative-directions-and-we-create/. 

The Integrated Care Agenda presents an opportunity to influence health systems by embedding the local voluntary sector. 

Each Integrated Care System will have a VCSE Alliance, many of which are led by our members. It is really important for us to demonstrate the value of the VCSE sector and support our members to engage at every level.  

We are working with NHS England on the 'Embedding the VCSE sector in ICS Partnership' programme. This programme builds on the work of the ICS VCSE Leadership Programme and offers VCSEs support, as they establish or develop alliances and networks across their health systems and places. We are providing webinars, support materials and direct consultancy to VCSE sectors in each of the ICS areas across England. The programme will support ICSs to meet the requirement to develop a formal agreement for engaging and embedding the VCSE sector in system level governance and decision-making arrangements by July 2022. 

You can read an example of how our members are involved and what the programme is achieving by visiting York CVS’s website.

We recognise that this will be an ongoing process and will continue to offer support to members to integrate into their ICS following completion of the programme. 

In addition to the Embedding the VCSE in ICSs programme, we are working with NHS England to develop a toolkit of resources to support the integration of the VCSE into ICSs. The toolkit will include a bank of templates and examples of a variety of documents, as well as guidance on how to develop a robust VCSE alliance and engage with statutory bodies.

We know our members are the experts on the places where they work, and that expertise and intelligence is immensely valuable. NAVCA participates in several national forums to amplify the voices of our members and to highlight the value of local knowledge when building partnerships and collaborations on health and wellbeing. We work to provide balance between national organisations and the specialist, detailed skills and knowledge of local VCSE and particularly local infrastructure organisations. Our unique perspective enables us to identify potential ways of working well with existing local structures for health and wellbeing development, locally-led volunteering and emergency response.

Forums where NAVCA participates include:

• NHS Volunteer Responders Advisory Board
• Public Health Steering Group
• VCS Emergencies Partnership (which we co-chair, along with the British Red Cross)