Many people in the community are dealing with a range of issues in their lives, which often impact on their health and wellbeing.
Poor and overcrowded housing, a lack of income or unemployment, being an asylum seeker, experiencing domestic abuse or mental health issues, such as anxiety and stress, will all have a negative impact on physical and mental health.
Sheffield City's Council's new Community Wellbeing Programme, CWP (formerly Healthy Communities or HCP) has groups and activities in Burngreave and Fir Vale that are empowering hundreds of local residents to help themselves and others and tackling ill health.
Activities and groups, such as the Pain Support Group, Diabetes Support Group, Women's Emotional Wellbeing Group and Health Experience course, all aim to bring together people's experiences and knowledge, so that people are able to support each other.
Many groups and activities have volunteers, who receive training and are able to enhance their skills whilst making new friends.
The Community Wellbeing Programme aims to build strong and resilient communities, boost residents' confidence in looking after their community and each other and build up ‘social capital’.
The CWP also aims to raise awareness of health and wellbeing issues and work with the community to combat these. This might be by helping people to better manage symptoms of diseases such as diabetes, supporting someone to be a little more physically active, or residents meeting to support each other and build friendships.
CWP activities to support this have included, Domestic Abuse Awareness training, support for International Women’s Day and the Introduction to Community Development and Health course.
Working together
Improving wellbeing and health in Burngreave has been a collective effort. The CWP has worked with organisations such as:
SOAR,
Burngreave TARA,
Pakistan Advice and Community Association,
Burngreave Children's Centre,
Sheffield Mind,
Sheffield Health and Social Care Trust,
Somali Mental Health (Maan),
VIDA (the domestic abuse agency),
SAGE Greenfingers,
ZEST,
St Cuthbert's Foodbank,
NHS Sheffield,
local primary schools.