Coventry Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2023-2026

There is increasing recognition of the key role that places and communities play in our health. For example, our local environment is an important influence on our health behaviours, while there is strong evidence of the impact of cultural factors, social relationships and community networks, including on mental health. Our One Coventry Plan is designed to work with our communities to ensure that they are able to address their health needs and reduce inequalities.

The built environment has a significant impact on population health and as Coventry is ranked amongst one of the fastest growing cities outside of Greater London, considerations to this growth are continuing to be supported by new, high-quality infrastructure to combat congestion and transport issues as identified in the Coventry Local Plan. This plan sets out the blueprint to facilitate the provision of new high quality public green spaces, investment in the city’s education system and enhance the health facilities and opportunities required to support all aspects of the city’s population. A refresh of the Local plan is underway and due to be published in 2024[1].

The evolution of the digital environment has increased opportunities to access services remotely and whilst there are significant advantages to this, there are residents who are at a greater risk of digital exclusion. Lack of access to digital devices as a result of a low income, limited internet connective at home or lack of confidence using digital services can lead to missed/delayed appointments in relation to health, education & employment. The #CovConnects programme is Coventry’s local response to tackling action on digital exclusion. This programme is part funded by the ICB inequalities fund and aims to support residents on their digital journeys, working in partnership with organisations to improve access for all through access to devices, training sessions and many more.

The legacy of Coventry and Warwickshire Year of Wellbeing

2019 marked a pivotal opportunity to raise the profile of promoting positive action to improve wellbeing across Coventry & Warwickshire. The partnership across both Health & Wellbeing boards inspired the Health and Wellbeing Concordat to ensure organisations do all they can to address key challenges very much aligned to our priorities including: the rise in ill-health, physical inactivity, loneliness and social isolation. The commitment to prioritising population health & wellbeing has continued beyond the 2019 campaign through legacy initiatives such as Wellbeing For Life[2].

Coventry City of Culture

Since the publication of the 2019-2023 strategy, Coventry had a year in the spotlight as the UK City of Culture, which provided an opportunity to address the multiple and intersecting inequalities in the city through increasing cultural access for those communities and neighbourhoods that historically have benefitted the least from public investment in arts and culture. This iconic year boosted jobs and opportunities as a result and yielded more than a million people attending 700 events in person & online.[3]

Low-income family tracker project

Supporting families to give their children the best start in life is one of the commitments within the One Coventry plan and a key part of this is providing information about relevant tools and services to facilitate this. An example of this work is the Low-income family tracker project. This pilot initiative aims to identify and contact families with low-income to understand whether they could be supported to apply for additional benefits to which they are entitled to; and to prevent homelessness. This work will target support to people who need it most now and uncover hidden pockets of poverty; and identify families who are struggling and who may never have engaged with the Council and its partners before.

• Let’s Talk Coventry: Valuing communities and residents is one of the central themes within the One Coventry plan and one of the tools that has been used to engage and empower communities is the online engagement platform Let’s Talk Coventry. This platform has been successful in increasing residents’ understanding of issues and consultations taking place across the city. It continually gives residents the opportunity to feedback on proposed plans, find out about more about council services and surveys, share ideas and join in with discussions.
• The Community Resilience Team aim to empower, engage, and enable our communities to take action in their community by providing support and advice to individuals, voluntary organisations, and communities to identify and build on already existing strengths and skills within neighbourhoods.

The team strengthens communities through collaboration by establishing trusting relationships and creating strong partnerships from within the community. Several partnership networks have been established as a result; Community Centre Consortium, Community based stakeholder networks, Community Messengers, and Coventry Food Network Operations Group to name a few.

The Community Resilience Team champions community action through supporting a vibrant voluntary and community sector across the city, actively supporting, and writing funding bids, securing developer support, securing significant amounts of external funding for the city and providing guidance on how to ensure community groups are sustainable. This has become increasingly important with support surrounding the cost-of-living crisis and securing funding for warm spaces and restarting groups after the impact of COVID-19.

As a result of a collaborative approach the team has been able to work with communities around system change collaborating with health partners to increase voluntary sector support and gain an understanding of the barriers and needs of individual communities. The Community Messengers played a pivotal role in this.

There is a need to share resources and community intelligence therefore the team has explored ways in sharing community intelligence and building lasting relationships and ongoing conversations using digital tools such as the council’s online engagement platform Let’s Talk Coventry.

Community Messengers were a pivotal part of the community-led response to communications and messaging around COVID-19 during the pandemic. Over 200 community champions reflected the diversity across the city, consisting of faith, voluntary and community networks, sharing messages in a way that resonated with communities and neighbourhoods and provided feedback and intelligence regarding their lived experience during this critical period. During Coventry City of Culture 2021, the strength of the Community Messengers programme was extended to help to support with developing and collaborating on cultural projects which helped to create meaningful participation opportunities for community members. Following the current transition out of the emergency phase of the COVID pandemic, the Community Messengers group continues to meet. The agenda now focuses on issues and challenges raised by the active and diverse community sector working with the Coventry City Council Community Resilience Team.

Family Hubs bring together services for families with children aged 0 to 19 years or 25 years for those with special educational needs and disabilities. Following a competitive process, Coventry is amongst 14 local authority areas to receive additional funding to fast track the delivery of these services as trailblazer sites, with a particular emphasis on perinatal mental health, parent-infant relationships, and infant feeding services. There are a range of services and digital programmes across the life course which are already supporting families with parenting education to equipment them with skills and support to enable them to thrive.

Healthy Communities Together: Coventry was successfully awarded funding in 2021 to deliver the Healthy Communities Together (HCT) programme. This programme is funded by the National Lottery and aims to support local areas to develop effective and sustainable partnerships between the voluntary and community sector, the NHS and local authorities to improve health and wellbeing, reduce health inequalities and empower communities.

Community Prototypes: Community prototypes and place-based partnerships are enabling the city to draw upon lessons learnt from the collaborative response to the COVID pandemic and enabling a practical response to the cost-of-living crisis. The vision is to increase earlier identification of issues and opportunities for prevention or early help, and to enable the delivery of integrated support and services, through a locality approach which focuses on improving the quality of the lives of local residents, building community capacity and making the most effective use of city-wide resources. The first community prototype commenced in the Wood End and Henley Green locality, followed by a second in Canley and Tile Hill. In addition to the community prototypes, the council is also working in partnership with Citizen (social housing provider) and other partners to develop more place-based, collaborative approaches in the Spon End and St Michael’s localities.