Who are they?

Our Community Health and Wellbeing Workers are Asma, Maureen, Nahima and Comfort (from left to right in the picture on the leaflet attached below).

What do they do?

It’s a new initiative that provides proactive outreach to the community in Churchill Gardens – at the moment we only have 4 part time CHWWs who cover around 500 households in the area, visiting households regularly and building trust and relationships to increase health literacy, uptake of prevention and screening opportunities, light social prescribing and chronic disease support as well as helping with housing, employment and other wider determinants and bringing in services as needed. They are the perfect bridge between midwives and health visitors, social workers and other professionals and the residents. They visit people in their households and can support people proactively when needed. They are non-medical trained and paid people from the same community who are excellent listeners, non-judgemental, knowledgeable about local services, enthusiastic and supportive and passionate about their community. They know the services and professionals in the locality really well and are a fountain of knowledge about what’s available in the area.

How can you involve them?

Residents

You should have received a letter or text saying whether you are one of the households in Churchill gardens who have a CHWW. The houses they visit at present are: Chaucer house, add others. We are hoping to have more CHWWs for the area in the near future to cover more households.

There are building allocations for the CHWWs in every consultation room and at reception and admin rooms if you would like to connect up care for a resident. If you come across a patient from these buildings please involve the CHWWs as you see fit, for example if it’s a newly registered patient you can help by introducing the patient and their household to the CHWW covering their building so they can get to know them, tell them how to use our services, what prevention opportunities there are. If someone has been discharged from hospital it might be a good idea to let the CHWW to call on them to check that they are ok, if there is an MDT meeting you can invite them in as they’ll know the patient and the patients’ context well.

Is it working?

The CHWWs have been building relationships and trust with patients for a year now and residents are happy with them and grateful to have the extra help and connection. We have seen an increase in the uptake of prevention opportunities at household level of households who are regularly visited by a CHWW compared to those who are not yet visited.

don’t, we are also going to quantify uptake of Monthly visit are also appreciated by residents, as loneliness is a major problem in CG and loneliness is a bigger risk factor for heart health than smoking. They are also helping residents taking their medication correctly, are a first point of contact in crisis and with a query for many of their residents.

So please say hello when you see them and do use them for our patients in Churchill Gardens who are lucky enough to have a CHWWs while this initiative is being tested.