Nine years ago today on 9 May, we opened the door to The Life Rooms Walton to support people in improving their health, wellbeing, and social circumstances to help them live the best way they can. Since then, we’ve seen our service expand into new areas and welcomed new teams, and updated our social model of health to reflect this.
Once again, the passion and commitment shown by our services in supporting communities has shone through, and we've chosen nine highlights from the last 12 months to celebrate this:
- We were successfully awarded the contract from Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board (ICB) to provide Individual Placement Support (IPS) services in six Places in the North West. In addition to continuing delivery in Liverpool, Warrington, and Halton, we’re now delivering IPS services in St Helens, Knowsley, and Sefton, supporting service users to find meaningful employment,
- Our Research Team presented at two high-profile conferences: Healthy City Design, and the 5th International Social Prescribing Conference, presenting key findings from our service evaluation projects and showcasing the impact of the Life Rooms social model of health,
- We received accreditation from the Royal Society of Public Health (RSPH) to deliver several of their Learning courses that will support our service users to improve their knowledge of managing their health and wellbeing and build sustainable habits for the future,
- We’re now delivering our Pathways Advice and Learning services in more community locations in Liverpool (with Sefton soon to follow) which will offer more opportunties for service users of Mersey Care clinical teams to access support,
- Walton Library (within The Life Rooms Walton) has been revived and is now a working Liverpool City Council library again that the local community can benefit from,
- Our Community Inclusion Team assisted the UK Health Security Agency’s response to a Hepatitis-A outbreak, providing engagement to increase vaccine uptake, supporting 70 children to be vaccinated,
- Working in close partnership with local partners, our Digital Health Activation Team provided 222 people with digital devices and learning that can support them with connectivity, as part of a Digital Inclusion Initiative in Liverpool,
- Our Healthy Knowsley Service supported 191 children and parents through their Children and Families 5-week lifestyle course, building better habits and helping families enjoy making healthier changes together,
- Our interoperability work with Mersey Care clinical teams, the first of its kind for NHS organisations, is going from strength to strength as we support clinicians and their service users with their social needs, through direct referrals from clinicians to our social prescribers.
We’re proud of our teams and their significant contributions to supporting the health and wellbeing of our service users, and bringing The Life Rooms social model of health to life every day.