Insight to help address health inequalities
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Welcome to the BCUHB Inequalities Insight Dashboard
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Aims and Purpose
Why is it useful?
It supports the ability to interrogate pooled intelligence at an LSOA level (Lower Layer Super Output Area) ...
Who is this dashboard for?
The dashboard is designed to help anyone that is interested in tackling inequalities within their community.
Clusters
To enable a place-based, partnership approach to address health inequalities by building on shared capabilities, assets, insights and relationships across sectors to grow, share and implement local innovation.
Insight to help address health inequalities
What is a Primary Care Cluster?
“A cluster brings together all local services involved in health and care across a geographical area, typically....
What are health inequality and inverse care law?
Health inequalities are avoidable, unfair and systematic differences in health between different groups of people...
North Wales Innovator clusters
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Click on a cluster to explore data, stories of change, and partner insight
Clusters
To enable a place-based, partnership approach to address health inequalities by building on shared capabilities, assets, insights and relationships across sectors to grow, share and implement local innovation.
Insight to help address health inequalities
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Supporting communities differently...
STORY HUB
Anglesey GP cluster consists of 10 practices - 9 branch surgeries including 1 BCUHB managed practice, 7 dispensing practices and 3 training practices, serving a 66,120 registered patient population over a large geographical area. There are 16 full-time GP partners and 25 part-time GP partners.
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Anglesey Insight
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News
The cluster covers a largely rural Island population with several scattered small towns including Holyhead, Llangefni, Benllech, Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, Menai Bridge and Amlwch.
Employment on the island is mainly based on agriculture and tourism and in some cases a combination of both. Deprivation hotspots exist in mainly urban settlements...
Focused Deprivation
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Rural Communities
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Unpaid Care
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Nature
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Beaumaris
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Coastal Path
Menai Bridge
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I’ve come out of my shell...I feel like I’m on top of the world
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Central & South Denbighshire cluster comprises of 8 General Practices with a practice population of 41,894. Within the cluster, there are 3 training practices.
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Clusters
Central and South Denbighshire Insight
HEADLINES
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Housing
Rural Communities
Urban Deprivation
The Cluster is semi-rural covering a wide geographical area. Only 3% of the population is classified as living in an urban area (mainly in Denbigh). One area, Denbigh Upper/Henllan 1 falls in the top 10% areas of deprivation (WIMD, 2019), this represents...
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Mental Health
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Llangollen
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Denbigh Castle
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Taking my sober life one day at a time...
STORY HUB
North West Flintshire GP Cluster serves a GP-registered population of 62,362 patients and residents living within two main towns and surrounding villages of Flint and Holywell. Services are delivered through 7 surgeries, 2 of which are Health Board Managed Practices, there are 3 dispensing practices and 1 training practice in the Cluster. 9 Community Pharmacies provide generic services in addition to enhanced services.
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North West Flintshire Insight
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Housing
Rural Communities
Urban Deprivation
The cluster is made up of coastal settlements bordering The Dee estuary. It includes the towns and surrounding villages of Flint and Holywell. A significant number of local, regional and national Third Sector organisations deliver work
throughout the cluster...Flintshire’s Single Point...
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Unpaid Care
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This place means an awful lot to me...
S T O R Y
Hapiness...
S T O R Y
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Legacy...
S T O R Y
Anglesey Story Hub
Supporting communities differently...
S T O R Y
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My main goal in life
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James: Men’s Shed Friendship...
Aims and Purpose
I’m 71 years old and I'm a retired train driver and I’ve lived in Holyhead for 34 years.
I had to retire at 60. I’ve got an acute illness called Trigeminal neuralgia. I was driving along, about 2011, and I started getting these terrible pains in my face. Electric shock type pains. I thought, “This is weird.” They’d last maybe two or three seconds or they could last 10 seconds. Its other name is suicide disease because they reckon, as far as they can measure pain, that it’s the worst pain known to man. You’ve got two nerves that go down your skull and they call them trigeminal nerves and it’s like 10 times the worst toothache you’ve ever had in your life. They come out of nowhere. Sometimes they can last all day and I’m just left on the sofa screaming in agony. But I thought, “This is toothache. There’s something wrong here.” So I went to our local dentist, and I was lucky that he was a bloke that was clued up on it, because it’s extremely rare. One in 100,000 men get it on one nerve, and it turned out that I’d got both damaged, so that’s incredibly rare.
So I got in touch with my GP and they put me on these special painkillers. One of them, the main one, is one called carbamazepine, but it can have side effects. It did on me. It can make you extremely depressed and distressed. And we had people next door, where the children were using my van as a goal for kicking football – and when you get a nine year old kid making you cry… so I went to the GP and they put me on to the second choice of pain relief, and that’s worked ever since. But I’ve also had brain surgery since to patch one up. They put a bit of coated sponge between the nerve and the artery that was rubbing it raw. That was about seven or eight years ago. I’m lucky because it worked. I didn’t just have a good brain surgeon, I had the best. He was a bloke called Professor Eldridge...
Clusters
Anglesey Story Hub
The wife and I met and we were married at 19. I was a porter in the hospital and she was a nurse. Her pessimistic friends gave her six weeks, and we’ve had our 51st wedding anniversary this year.
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Lyndsey: supporting communities to look after themselves
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Medrwn Môn is the County Voluntary Council for Anglesey, located in Llangefni, providing support and advice to voluntary organisations and community groups enabling them to reach their potential. Within Medrwn Môn itself, Lyndsey leads on a number of preventative, low-level projects. This includes a social prescribing project, which is an asset-based approach to linking people back to communities, and also the ‘My Health Online’ project, which is around getting people more involved in ordering their own prescriptions etc online, but also offering a gateway into social navigation. Medrwn Môn provides the means for them to be able to access that. But prior to that, Lyndsey worked within Medrwn Môn, on a five-year project in 2013, called Community Voices. It was a strategic grants programme, looking at how to engage hard-to-reach communities in the design of public services. That included: deaf communities, homeless communities, people with protected characteristics, older people, and younger people. That helped to develop the asset-based approach – and Lyndsey is really interested in how we get people switched on to engagement. Lyndsey is interested in what she describes as ‘that switch’, where people are no longer a recipient of services, but are community activists, or take part in things that happen in their community and have an impact on them and their families. She says that all of this work focuses on the skills of getting people mobilised and moving and talking and living happier, and of having healthier communities.
Anglesey Story Hub
"And maybe they hadn’t seen anybody for days. It’s the same with a lot of the people who come through to us, I suppose. We offer a difference in approach. We don't come with any agenda, we take the view that either you want to or you don't - it's your choice entirely."
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Irene: my main goal in life is to wish that I have good health now and to be happy, and to do good work.
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I’m Irene. I’m 81. I live on my own now. I am one of six children. I have always lived in Holyhead. Bred and born here. My mam always had very ill health. She was bipolar. From a very early age, I had to look after two little sisters and two little brothers, because my elder sister had gone away to live. So I became a carer very, very young. I was about eight when my mam started getting unwell. It was something that my dad always put on my shoulders, because he was busy working on the railway, and I had to take a lot of responsibility. I cried for the child that I was then, but I don't any more because I think it's instilled a lot of strength in me and helped me, you know, and I'm still here for my sisters and my brothers. I lost one, one of them is in hospital now, but you’ve got to keep going, you’ve got to have faith, and I have my faith in the church. I have always been a church goer since I was a little girl.
I lost my husband two years ago with Covid, but I am fortunate, because I have my daughter living just around the corner from me, then, on the other side, I’ve got my son, and they are very, very good with me. I am an independent person, too independent, so I’m told, but I want them to have their lives. I want them to have a happy family life. I don’t want them to have the life that I had, to be honest with you, although they were brought up with it, when my mum was ill, because they’d never known their Nana well. They did when the good times of bipolar came, but it was always high or low, never a happy medium – but she was a wonderful woman, and she lived until she was 92....
Anglesey Story Hub
I nursed my husband with dementia. He used to come here (to Gwelfor) for lunch and I lost him then, but I had him. It was hard for me to see him, day after day, forgetting more than what he did yesterday. But I was lucky that he knew all his family.
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Pamela: Happiness...
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I’m Pamela and I’m 79.
In 1965, my husband was in the forces, and he came home for lunch, and he found me unconscious on the bed. I had had a brain haemorrhage. I woke up in Colchester military and I was 8 months pregnant at the time. The surgeon said to my husband, “Don’t think about the baby. Just think about your wife.” So my husband went to the pictures. He saw Norman Wisdom. Next minute on the screen: ‘Will Fusilier David Williams return to the foyer? Police will escort him back to the hospital. His wife has had a relapse.’ And I woke up in Cambridge. The baby survived. The surgeon said there was a million to one chance of it recurring again, but in 2011 I had another one – and this is the result of it (Pamela shows me a newspaper article).
In August 2011, my husband was a keen crown green bowling player. He came home early and he asked me if I wanted a paned. I said ‘Yes’ and then the next minute, he came through with a paned, and he said that my eyes looked like fish. He dialled 999. The next minute, the paramedics arrived – I had no pulse. The paramedics then spotted a slight pulse… and then the Air Ambulance took me to Bangor, and I woke up in Walton. I was in hospital for a month. And I don’t remember anything about that. And the surgeons said there was a million to one chance of it happening again.
And you survived it again? Yes. That’s my happy ending.
Anglesey Story Hub
I try to overcome it. I think about the good times. His photo is everywhere. I talk to him. I come to Gwelfor. I go to church. Plenty of activities. I have good friends and good family. My sons ring every night, nearly. Gwelfor is a community of its own.
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Veronica: Legacy...
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I’m Veronica aged 70yrs, married to Allan for 42 years but we’ve been together for over 50 years. We have two children, a son and daughter, we are grandparents to two boys and one girl with a new edition to the family expected mid September.
I work as a Local Asset Coordinator for Medrwn Môn, working on a social prescribing programme. My work place is the Gwelfor Community Centre in Holyhead. I’m also Chairperson of this community centre, and have been for many years.
As part of my social prescribing work, I receive referrals from GPs, family members, self-referrals, and social workers, Police… anyone really. To refer, they first have to go through Medrwn Môn’s Linc Officer. The referrer will fill in a referral form, and if it’s deemed that that referral needs social prescribing and that they live in Holyhead or surrounding area, then that referral comes through to me. It can be anything from supporting someone to build up his or her confidence, maybe feeling socially isolated, wanting to improve their physical health or needing to find practical support or information to improve their situation. It’s really what matters to them – what they want support with. It can also be finding out if they want help with shopping or taking them to the GP or hospital appointments, anything like that, very low level. Every now and then, when the referrals come through, you’re not getting the full picture. Sometimes the needs are much greater than what I can offer as the Local Asset Coordinator. I support individuals and families with low level needs.
Anglesey Story Hub
I just hope that the legacy – if it’s not with our family, it’s with somebody else, because we’re not going to be here for much longer. So it’s just trying to get the younger generation involved now.
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I’ve come out of my shell...I feel like I’m on top of the world
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Making a difference
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S&C Denbighshire Story Hub
You look in the mirror and there's no reflection
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Tea and Cake @ Hwb Dinbych
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Rickie: I’ve come out of my shell and I feel like I’m on top of the world
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I am 53. I live in private accommodation. Because I'm on my own it’s quite hard to get a place from the council, or from any housing association, so I have to rent privately, which is expensive. My rent used to be £425 now it’s gone to £575 a month – and that’s gone up during the cost of living crisis. That’s for a small, two-bedroom house, so it’s quite high and obviously, on top of that, I've got my gas and my electric bills to pay, things like that, so it’s quite expensive. I’m not working. I’ve got a few illnesses – problems – so the doctor struck me off work a while ago because of my illnesses. I’ve got rheumatoid arthritis in my knees. When I got diagnosed I discovered that I was actually born with rheumatoid arthritis, but I wasn’t aware of that. I also suffer from gout in my ankles. My ankles tend to flare up and get very hot. Also, I have thrombosis – clotting on my legs, and I have chronic kidney disease. Recently I've had to undergo a scan where they put a dye through my veins because apparently one of my kidneys is much larger than the other one. Once I have the results, they are going to see from there what treatment I need to have.
S&C Denbighshire Story Hub
"I just love coming here now. I've made friends here. I’ve been coming for three years, so I’ve gone from no confidence whatsoever, and it's gone really high now...coming here was giving me something to look forward to. "
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Tina: No reflection
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I am in independent living. It’s not a nursing home, it's not a care home, it’s a structure where they have flats for people to live independently. If you need anybody at any hour of the night, there’s somebody always there. You feel safe. You’re not on your own. There are activities there if you wish to tag along. When I first went there in the beginning, that was very valuable to me because I was still unwell but now I go as and when I feel like it, because I don't need it anymore. I am 100% well and I’ve got my own life to live, so it's about personal choice. I came to live there because my husband died in 2019. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on the 22nd of December, three days before Christmas, and we lost him nine weeks later, at the age of 63. My world as I knew it had gone. Just living in a bungalow – I couldn’t do it. I was broken. I was very ill. I had two nervous breakdowns, so I was in the hospital, and if I had stayed there in the bungalow, I wouldn’t be here now. I’d be where he is, because I was just dying. I couldn't do it. The turning point was accepting the fact that I couldn’t live there anymore, but not knowing what to do. And then the CPN (Community Psychiatric Nurse) said about this place. She said she’d do a formal letter and put me forward. My daughter also helped me with the application. And then, eventually, they offered me a place. I’ve now been there for 12 months.
S&C Denbighshire Story Hub
"I think more places are needed like this. Women are stronger than men, you can cope on your own but it's just having a community. I can walk out of there – it takes me five minutes to get to the doctor, 10 minutes to get into town. You don't always need your car and that's the difference."
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Sherry: What could work?
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It sounds conceited, but I’m quite altruistic. I love helping people. I enjoy going out of my way to make sure that other people’s lives are easier. I think possibly some of my magic moments work-wise have been while I was working with NEWCIS. That was carers in crisis. There was one incident, where a local undertaker wouldn't release the body. It was really messy but my understanding was that the undertaker was demanding more money from the family than they were able to meet, and as a result, the undertaker wasn’t willing to go through the funeral service. As an organisation, literally, within an hour, we had secured the funds to support the family through the burial. We'd rearranged for another undertaker to take over the work and two weeks later, they had the funeral service. To help a family in such despair – they’ve done all of that care work, which is a thankless task in itself, then they’ve been bereaved, so they are absolutely distraught within themselves, and then you've got someone making the next bit even more complicated and even more difficult than it needed to be. It was 4’o’clock on a Friday afternoon, just as the whole office was emptying, and a colleague came in and said, “Sherry, this is the situation. “ So I said, “OK, this isn’t right. Let's go and see the Chief Officer to see what we can do.” So we saw the Chief Officer, and between four of us, within the hour, it was resolved. It still makes me proud. That’s the heart of it. I'm privileged. I’ve been lucky to have been in those kind of roles. We always look on the negative side of health and social care. You’ve got people dying. You’ve got social care on its knees. You've got social workers leaving the profession in droves but you can’t top the wins. I don’t think you can get a job in life that tops the wins.
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S&C Denbighshire Story Hub
If I could change anything, if I could fix anything, I think it would be that staff were taught how to listen to patients. I think we're far too academically focused...
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Becky: Raising awareness and making a difference
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My role is to try and help people within Denbighshire, both communities as a whole and also as individuals, to become more aware of dementia in their communities. Then, hopefully for them to use that awareness to take action, to make things easier for people living with dementia in their communities. I do this by running regular dementia friends sessions. I do them fortnightly online, so that anybody from all over the UK can join in. Then I also do more bespoke ones for specific groups of people across Denbighshire. I've linked up with North Wales Police, so I do dementia friends sessions for all the new recruits. I work with a lot of schoolchildren as well and different community groups that want dementia friends sessions. I also put on lots of dementia training for people within the community, which is sourced from different expert training agencies and is aimed at family/friends of people living with dementia and community/third sector workers and volunteers. I also try and help communities set up Action Groups within their community, so like a steering group, a little committee, so that they can then help make their town more aware of dementia. That initially was formed as part of Alzheimer's Society's Dementia Friendly Communities work that they were doing, so I would almost get the group together, help them start raising awareness and then guide them down the official process, if they wanted to go down the Alzheimer’s Society route to get their official status as being dementia friendly. That's actually coming to an end shortly. Alzheimer’s Society are no longer going to have dementia friendly communities, but we're looking at doing a local Denbighshire recognition scheme, so that will help that part of the work to carry on.
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S&C Denbighshire Story Hub
My wellbeing is also dependent on other people's wellbeing, because if people around me aren't happy, then that impacts on your wellbeing as well.
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Elain: Tea and Cake @ Hwb Dinbych
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A sense of community is something I really wanted to achieve, coming into this role. I love the fact that people are walking in through the door, making themselves a cup of tea, and asking us for a cup of tea. This is working - I think the building’s really working at the moment. I've got really good relationships with the partners. If someone comes in, I can go and ask for advice, and our partners can help me with that individual as well. I think being here for a couple of years now, I've seen how the building can work for individuals. For example, when I was covering on Fridays, there were two individuals who were really quiet – low self esteem. We were having a lot of conversations about how things were negative. They were saying the only thing that they were doing was the art groups. And now - one of them is now volunteering in our repair café, which happens on Saturdays, and is now registering to be a volunteer here on a number of days. I think that's just amazing to see how he's able to put himself out there. Individuals who weren’t able to make anyone a cup of tea to begin with but now are offering us all a cup of tea and welcoming people through the doors. I don't see it, because I'm working here, and he explains the benefits and those little things that we do - just the chats everyday – and how they mean so much. It's kind of a magic that the building is being able to create. I just truly think how important it is to talk, I really do. If we’re able to create an environment here, where we are able to talk, I think it's vital to mental health. I think it is getting better. I think my generation is a lot better at having that kind of conversation and speaking with friends.
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S&C Denbighshire Story Hub
They’ll get a cup of tea to begin with, and then they’ll just do some art. No-one has to have any background at all, so that's amazing. I think that's one of the aspects I loved above the job to begin with, was just how people were focusing on art and were able to talk whilst doing that as well.
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What is life without dancing, and cake?!
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Taking my sober life one day at a time
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NW Flintshire Story Hub
Connecting communities
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Reaching Out
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Really listening, with no judgement
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John: Taking my sober life one day at a time
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He lives in temporary accommodation in Flintshire, in an open plan bedsit. In the tenancy agreement, it says that he can’t have anyone to stay. This has meant that he hasn’t been able to have his two young children over to stay, which he says has affected both his mental health and theirs. He was also not allowed his own furniture. He became part of Community Wellness in mid-April. John says that his drinking led him to being homeless and living in the Glanrafon Centre in Queensferry. Community Wellness came in and did well-being days on a Tuesday in Glanrafon and that’s how he met the team. John says: “It was a Godsend meeting them. I think the team pretty much saved me. I was in this very dark place – there was nothing left in me. I didn’t know who to turn to anymore. I didn’t know what the purpose of life was. It was a very horrible dark place. Community Wellness saved me and gave me hope again. They asked me to work alongside them, doing various projects in music and art. To be listened tp and to be heard was massive for me because I’d been living in this bubble by myself for such a long time. I haven’t looked back – the projects that I’m working with now are all really exciting. It’s a clean slate and a brand new chapter for me, which I’m really excited about.”
NW Flintshire Story Hub
"I’m nearly three months sober now and it feels good. I can think straight. I’m more active. I’ve never been more present with my children. There’s a sense of purpose now. I don’t live in fear so much any more."
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Chris: Reaching out
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A magic moment for myself was that ability to retire, because that made way for me to be who I really am, because when you are working, when you have got family, your focus is very clear, isn't it? It's very inward looking, because you have so many things to deal with, to support that family structure and that energy that you give to work. So it really was life changing, game changing, when I was able to retire, because it gave me that very positive outlook. It was quite magical because it changed so many things in my life. It changed my thinking, my direction, my energy – and where I focus my energy. My wife understood and supports me fully, and my trips abroad for the charity. All of that has been a blessing, which is another word for being magic.
I've had tragedy in my life and that’s mostly around the death of parts of my family. I lost my mum and dad, and we all lose our mums and dads. In my age group, most of my friends have suffered the same thing. But the tragedy I would share is the loss of my brother. He was 68. Not only was it tragic that he passed away but he had Motor Neurone Disease, which is extremely difficult to witness. To his credit, he was very positive to the end, which made it very easy, or easier, maybe that's a better way to put it. It made it easier for us to be with him and support him and just encourage him. They say you're dying in your own body and, having now experienced that, it’s true. You just see that slow decline and, whilst I wrestle with the idea of euthanasia, you do encounter these moments, where you think, is that the best thing? I wouldn’t like to give a view on yes or no, but you can certainly empathise with people. So that was tragic.
NW Flintshire Story Hub
There are huge building blocks that are missing for people. I would say that they are mostly around social inclusion. About what do you do for lonely people, but also the different strands of poverty: fuel poverty; food poverty; poverty of access - before you get to money.
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Community Wellness: Really listening, with no judgement
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Tragic moments include the sheer frustration of not always being able to support people to move up in life. The hoops can be astounding. Even providing advocacy support can sometimes not be enough to alleviate the situation. We see people working hard to improve their situation, but the odds seem stacked against them. Often there is no consistent answer on what your financial rights are – or how, for example, you access legal support to obtain a divorce. How someone in the early, vulnerable stages of recovery can be supported with their benefits, and how much they can earn before it affects their benefit. The lack of clarity when people leave a homeless shelter and move into less temporary accommodation. It is not made clear how much the bills will be: for housing, energy bills and council tax. One of our participants found himself with a large council tax bill because he received a one-off payment for a piece of work, and as soon as it hit his bank account, he was then charged with the full amount of council tax– a figure he wasn’t able to pay.
Another tragic moment was meeting one participant who had been suffering with addiction, then had been supported by the NHS to recover – in the early stages of his recovery, he had then been housed in accommodation with people suffering with their own addictions – and then found himself addicted again and back at the beginning of the cycle.
We support some of the most marginalised members of society, and it is often tragic to hear stories from those who are trying their best to rehabilitate themselves – but finding that society, and societal institutions, are not always ready to accept them.
NW Flintshire Story Hub
The sharing of stories has been a very powerful and humbling experience. It is magical to hear people read back their writing (or explain what they have drawn) in group.
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Roberta: Flourishing communities. That’s what we want.
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My name is Roberta Owen. I am normally called Rob, though. I’m a mother and a grandmother. I’ve been an environmental activist for so many years that I prefer to forget. I am very interested in building community locally. Everything is related. I’m from Holywell, which is a brilliant place.
I was a teacher of languages. I do love languages and I would learn more if I had time, but my time tends to be taken up with local activities, including a community garden, down in Greenfield, where we have various volunteers, including people with special needs, and we all have fun together. Organising big events for the town. I'm a member of the Church in Wales and we’ve got an orchard planted there, and we have work days. The Church in Wales is doing really well in Hollywell, actually. On Monday, we’ve got the Food Club. They’ve got one on the Wednesday, which is the official one, but on a Monday, people who are finding it hard going out – lots of local people come and they have a free lunch and they’re also entitled to have about 12 items from the mini supermarket upstairs. So the church is managing to get grants from the Town Council and money from church members to keep this going. It’s wonderful really. There are so many people now that are getting to know each other as well, and it’s really good. They bring their problems, and other church members are listening and trying to help, so I think that is excellent, what they are doing. I’m a member of Flintshire City of Sanctuary. I’ve befriended a couple of refugee families. One family are Syrians. The things they have been through. There’s also an Afghan family, who were forced to leave because he was being targeted. I have managed to keep in touch and they are supporting us with a big dancing event, which is partly to help refugees feel included, and to give them a chance to share their culture with us.
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NW Flintshire Story Hub
If you haven’t got your health, then you can’t play a part in society, or it’s much more difficult.
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Sandra: Connecting communities. It is all about connecting.
Aims and Purpose
Well, my background is about 35 years running a recruitment agency, so I've always worked with people. I’m passionate about people. I’m always trying to improve their career prospects and what's on offer to them. And then a friend of mine said that there was a job going at the local council which supported communities, particularly older people, and it was just bridging those gaps really. It was all about connecting the communities, which certainly ticked all the boxes for me, being passionate again. Also I’m getting to that time in my life where I’m looking to see how good or bad these communities are in supporting more mature, older people. Give me an example of the kind of thing that you do. How do you connect?
The big thing across Flintshire, and I get that it’s across the UK really – is transport. Community transport, in particular, or the lack of it. The amount of people that are just stuck at home because either they don't know or they've cut the local service and they think they can't get out and about. They haven’t got family or friends they can rely on for lifts. So recently I did a survey, then I got together with the council to find out what the transport provision was. I talked to a couple of organisations that provide community transport and gathered all this information, and we’ve got this hand-out leaflet now.
There are four community transport options where people can just call if they need to go to a hospital appointment, the doctors or go to town to do the shopping. They can just ring, book it and it will pick them up, door to door. It will even take them where they want to go, wait for two hours and then take them home. And the amount of people in the communities that weren't aware of such a service… so it’s trying to ease something like that.
Clusters
NW Flintshire Story Hub
The big thing across Flintshire, and I get that it’s across the UK really – is transport. Community transport, in particular, or the lack of it. The amount of people that are just stuck at home because either they don't know or they've cut the local service and they think they can't get out and about.
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Insight to help address health inequalities
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Welcome to the BCUHB Inequalities Insight Dashboard
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Aims and Purpose
Why is it useful?
It supports the ability to interrogate pooled intelligence at an LSOA level (Lower Layer Super Output Area) ...
Who is this dashboard for?
The dashboard is designed to help anyone that is interested in tackling inequalities within their community.
Clusters
To enable a place-based, partnership approach to address health inequalities by building on shared capabilities, assets, insights and relationships across sectors to grow, share and implement local innovation.
Insight to help address health inequalities
What is a Primary Care Cluster?
“A cluster brings together all local services involved in health and care across a geographical area, typically....
What are health inequality and inverse care law?
Health inequalities are avoidable, unfair and systematic differences in health between different groups of people...
North Wales Innovator clusters
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Aims and Purpose
Click on a cluster to explore data, stories of change, and partner insight
Clusters
To enable a place-based, partnership approach to address health inequalities by building on shared capabilities, assets, insights and relationships across sectors to grow, share and implement local innovation.
Insight to help address health inequalities
To include: Stories News articles Images Google Street view Partner viewpoints Data overview with links to further detail Intial analysis to support key actions to explore
Supporting communities differently...
STORY HUB
Anglesey GP cluster consists of 10 practices - 9 branch surgeries including 1 BCUHB managed practice, 7 dispensing practices and 3 training practices, serving a 66,120 registered patient population over a large geographical area. There are 16 full-time GP partners and 25 part-time GP partners.
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Anglesey Insight
HEADLINES
News
The cluster covers a largely rural Island population with several scattered small towns including Holyhead, Llangefni, Benllech, Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, Menai Bridge and Amlwch. Employment on the island is mainly based on agriculture and tourism and in some cases a combination of both. Deprivation hotspots exist in mainly urban settlements...
Focused Deprivation
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Rural Communities
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Unpaid Care
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Nature
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Beaumaris
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Menai Bridge
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I’ve come out of my shell...I feel like I’m on top of the world
STORY HUB
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Central & South Denbighshire cluster comprises of 8 General Practices with a practice population of 41,894. Within the cluster, there are 3 training practices.
Aims and Purpose
Clusters
Central and South Denbighshire Insight
HEADLINES
News
Housing
Rural Communities
Urban Deprivation
The Cluster is semi-rural covering a wide geographical area. Only 3% of the population is classified as living in an urban area (mainly in Denbigh). One area, Denbigh Upper/Henllan 1 falls in the top 10% areas of deprivation (WIMD, 2019), this represents...
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Health
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Llangollen
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Denbigh Castle
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Taking my sober life one day at a time...
STORY HUB
North West Flintshire GP Cluster serves a GP-registered population of 62,362 patients and residents living within two main towns and surrounding villages of Flint and Holywell. Services are delivered through 7 surgeries, 2 of which are Health Board Managed Practices, there are 3 dispensing practices and 1 training practice in the Cluster. 9 Community Pharmacies provide generic services in addition to enhanced services.
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Clusters
North West Flintshire Insight
HEADLINES
News
Housing
Rural Communities
Urban Deprivation
The cluster is made up of coastal settlements bordering The Dee estuary. It includes the towns and surrounding villages of Flint and Holywell. A significant number of local, regional and national Third Sector organisations deliver work throughout the cluster...Flintshire’s Single Point...
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Unpaid Care
Health
Overview
Nature
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History
Towns
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This place means an awful lot to me...
S T O R Y
Hapiness...
S T O R Y
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Aims and Purpose
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Legacy...
S T O R Y
Anglesey Story Hub
Supporting communities differently...
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My main goal in life
S T O R Y
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James: Men’s Shed Friendship...
Aims and Purpose
I’m 71 years old and I'm a retired train driver and I’ve lived in Holyhead for 34 years. I had to retire at 60. I’ve got an acute illness called Trigeminal neuralgia. I was driving along, about 2011, and I started getting these terrible pains in my face. Electric shock type pains. I thought, “This is weird.” They’d last maybe two or three seconds or they could last 10 seconds. Its other name is suicide disease because they reckon, as far as they can measure pain, that it’s the worst pain known to man. You’ve got two nerves that go down your skull and they call them trigeminal nerves and it’s like 10 times the worst toothache you’ve ever had in your life. They come out of nowhere. Sometimes they can last all day and I’m just left on the sofa screaming in agony. But I thought, “This is toothache. There’s something wrong here.” So I went to our local dentist, and I was lucky that he was a bloke that was clued up on it, because it’s extremely rare. One in 100,000 men get it on one nerve, and it turned out that I’d got both damaged, so that’s incredibly rare. So I got in touch with my GP and they put me on these special painkillers. One of them, the main one, is one called carbamazepine, but it can have side effects. It did on me. It can make you extremely depressed and distressed. And we had people next door, where the children were using my van as a goal for kicking football – and when you get a nine year old kid making you cry… so I went to the GP and they put me on to the second choice of pain relief, and that’s worked ever since. But I’ve also had brain surgery since to patch one up. They put a bit of coated sponge between the nerve and the artery that was rubbing it raw. That was about seven or eight years ago. I’m lucky because it worked. I didn’t just have a good brain surgeon, I had the best. He was a bloke called Professor Eldridge...
Clusters
Anglesey Story Hub
The wife and I met and we were married at 19. I was a porter in the hospital and she was a nurse. Her pessimistic friends gave her six weeks, and we’ve had our 51st wedding anniversary this year.
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Lyndsey: supporting communities to look after themselves
Aims and Purpose
Clusters
Medrwn Môn is the County Voluntary Council for Anglesey, located in Llangefni, providing support and advice to voluntary organisations and community groups enabling them to reach their potential. Within Medrwn Môn itself, Lyndsey leads on a number of preventative, low-level projects. This includes a social prescribing project, which is an asset-based approach to linking people back to communities, and also the ‘My Health Online’ project, which is around getting people more involved in ordering their own prescriptions etc online, but also offering a gateway into social navigation. Medrwn Môn provides the means for them to be able to access that. But prior to that, Lyndsey worked within Medrwn Môn, on a five-year project in 2013, called Community Voices. It was a strategic grants programme, looking at how to engage hard-to-reach communities in the design of public services. That included: deaf communities, homeless communities, people with protected characteristics, older people, and younger people. That helped to develop the asset-based approach – and Lyndsey is really interested in how we get people switched on to engagement. Lyndsey is interested in what she describes as ‘that switch’, where people are no longer a recipient of services, but are community activists, or take part in things that happen in their community and have an impact on them and their families. She says that all of this work focuses on the skills of getting people mobilised and moving and talking and living happier, and of having healthier communities.
Anglesey Story Hub
"And maybe they hadn’t seen anybody for days. It’s the same with a lot of the people who come through to us, I suppose. We offer a difference in approach. We don't come with any agenda, we take the view that either you want to or you don't - it's your choice entirely."
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Irene: my main goal in life is to wish that I have good health now and to be happy, and to do good work.
Aims and Purpose
Clusters
I’m Irene. I’m 81. I live on my own now. I am one of six children. I have always lived in Holyhead. Bred and born here. My mam always had very ill health. She was bipolar. From a very early age, I had to look after two little sisters and two little brothers, because my elder sister had gone away to live. So I became a carer very, very young. I was about eight when my mam started getting unwell. It was something that my dad always put on my shoulders, because he was busy working on the railway, and I had to take a lot of responsibility. I cried for the child that I was then, but I don't any more because I think it's instilled a lot of strength in me and helped me, you know, and I'm still here for my sisters and my brothers. I lost one, one of them is in hospital now, but you’ve got to keep going, you’ve got to have faith, and I have my faith in the church. I have always been a church goer since I was a little girl. I lost my husband two years ago with Covid, but I am fortunate, because I have my daughter living just around the corner from me, then, on the other side, I’ve got my son, and they are very, very good with me. I am an independent person, too independent, so I’m told, but I want them to have their lives. I want them to have a happy family life. I don’t want them to have the life that I had, to be honest with you, although they were brought up with it, when my mum was ill, because they’d never known their Nana well. They did when the good times of bipolar came, but it was always high or low, never a happy medium – but she was a wonderful woman, and she lived until she was 92....
Anglesey Story Hub
I nursed my husband with dementia. He used to come here (to Gwelfor) for lunch and I lost him then, but I had him. It was hard for me to see him, day after day, forgetting more than what he did yesterday. But I was lucky that he knew all his family.
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Pamela: Happiness...
Aims and Purpose
Clusters
I’m Pamela and I’m 79. In 1965, my husband was in the forces, and he came home for lunch, and he found me unconscious on the bed. I had had a brain haemorrhage. I woke up in Colchester military and I was 8 months pregnant at the time. The surgeon said to my husband, “Don’t think about the baby. Just think about your wife.” So my husband went to the pictures. He saw Norman Wisdom. Next minute on the screen: ‘Will Fusilier David Williams return to the foyer? Police will escort him back to the hospital. His wife has had a relapse.’ And I woke up in Cambridge. The baby survived. The surgeon said there was a million to one chance of it recurring again, but in 2011 I had another one – and this is the result of it (Pamela shows me a newspaper article). In August 2011, my husband was a keen crown green bowling player. He came home early and he asked me if I wanted a paned. I said ‘Yes’ and then the next minute, he came through with a paned, and he said that my eyes looked like fish. He dialled 999. The next minute, the paramedics arrived – I had no pulse. The paramedics then spotted a slight pulse… and then the Air Ambulance took me to Bangor, and I woke up in Walton. I was in hospital for a month. And I don’t remember anything about that. And the surgeons said there was a million to one chance of it happening again. And you survived it again? Yes. That’s my happy ending.
Anglesey Story Hub
I try to overcome it. I think about the good times. His photo is everywhere. I talk to him. I come to Gwelfor. I go to church. Plenty of activities. I have good friends and good family. My sons ring every night, nearly. Gwelfor is a community of its own.
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Veronica: Legacy...
Aims and Purpose
Clusters
I’m Veronica aged 70yrs, married to Allan for 42 years but we’ve been together for over 50 years. We have two children, a son and daughter, we are grandparents to two boys and one girl with a new edition to the family expected mid September. I work as a Local Asset Coordinator for Medrwn Môn, working on a social prescribing programme. My work place is the Gwelfor Community Centre in Holyhead. I’m also Chairperson of this community centre, and have been for many years. As part of my social prescribing work, I receive referrals from GPs, family members, self-referrals, and social workers, Police… anyone really. To refer, they first have to go through Medrwn Môn’s Linc Officer. The referrer will fill in a referral form, and if it’s deemed that that referral needs social prescribing and that they live in Holyhead or surrounding area, then that referral comes through to me. It can be anything from supporting someone to build up his or her confidence, maybe feeling socially isolated, wanting to improve their physical health or needing to find practical support or information to improve their situation. It’s really what matters to them – what they want support with. It can also be finding out if they want help with shopping or taking them to the GP or hospital appointments, anything like that, very low level. Every now and then, when the referrals come through, you’re not getting the full picture. Sometimes the needs are much greater than what I can offer as the Local Asset Coordinator. I support individuals and families with low level needs.
Anglesey Story Hub
I just hope that the legacy – if it’s not with our family, it’s with somebody else, because we’re not going to be here for much longer. So it’s just trying to get the younger generation involved now.
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I’ve come out of my shell...I feel like I’m on top of the world
S T O R Y
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Making a difference
S T O R Y
Aims and Purpose
Clusters
S&C Denbighshire Story Hub
You look in the mirror and there's no reflection
S T O R Y
Tea and Cake @ Hwb Dinbych
S T O R Y
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They are prominent. They are visible
S T O R Y
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Rickie: I’ve come out of my shell and I feel like I’m on top of the world
Aims and Purpose
Clusters
I am 53. I live in private accommodation. Because I'm on my own it’s quite hard to get a place from the council, or from any housing association, so I have to rent privately, which is expensive. My rent used to be £425 now it’s gone to £575 a month – and that’s gone up during the cost of living crisis. That’s for a small, two-bedroom house, so it’s quite high and obviously, on top of that, I've got my gas and my electric bills to pay, things like that, so it’s quite expensive. I’m not working. I’ve got a few illnesses – problems – so the doctor struck me off work a while ago because of my illnesses. I’ve got rheumatoid arthritis in my knees. When I got diagnosed I discovered that I was actually born with rheumatoid arthritis, but I wasn’t aware of that. I also suffer from gout in my ankles. My ankles tend to flare up and get very hot. Also, I have thrombosis – clotting on my legs, and I have chronic kidney disease. Recently I've had to undergo a scan where they put a dye through my veins because apparently one of my kidneys is much larger than the other one. Once I have the results, they are going to see from there what treatment I need to have.
S&C Denbighshire Story Hub
"I just love coming here now. I've made friends here. I’ve been coming for three years, so I’ve gone from no confidence whatsoever, and it's gone really high now...coming here was giving me something to look forward to. "
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Tina: No reflection
Aims and Purpose
Clusters
I am in independent living. It’s not a nursing home, it's not a care home, it’s a structure where they have flats for people to live independently. If you need anybody at any hour of the night, there’s somebody always there. You feel safe. You’re not on your own. There are activities there if you wish to tag along. When I first went there in the beginning, that was very valuable to me because I was still unwell but now I go as and when I feel like it, because I don't need it anymore. I am 100% well and I’ve got my own life to live, so it's about personal choice. I came to live there because my husband died in 2019. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on the 22nd of December, three days before Christmas, and we lost him nine weeks later, at the age of 63. My world as I knew it had gone. Just living in a bungalow – I couldn’t do it. I was broken. I was very ill. I had two nervous breakdowns, so I was in the hospital, and if I had stayed there in the bungalow, I wouldn’t be here now. I’d be where he is, because I was just dying. I couldn't do it. The turning point was accepting the fact that I couldn’t live there anymore, but not knowing what to do. And then the CPN (Community Psychiatric Nurse) said about this place. She said she’d do a formal letter and put me forward. My daughter also helped me with the application. And then, eventually, they offered me a place. I’ve now been there for 12 months.
S&C Denbighshire Story Hub
"I think more places are needed like this. Women are stronger than men, you can cope on your own but it's just having a community. I can walk out of there – it takes me five minutes to get to the doctor, 10 minutes to get into town. You don't always need your car and that's the difference."
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Sherry: What could work?
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Aims and Purpose
It sounds conceited, but I’m quite altruistic. I love helping people. I enjoy going out of my way to make sure that other people’s lives are easier. I think possibly some of my magic moments work-wise have been while I was working with NEWCIS. That was carers in crisis. There was one incident, where a local undertaker wouldn't release the body. It was really messy but my understanding was that the undertaker was demanding more money from the family than they were able to meet, and as a result, the undertaker wasn’t willing to go through the funeral service. As an organisation, literally, within an hour, we had secured the funds to support the family through the burial. We'd rearranged for another undertaker to take over the work and two weeks later, they had the funeral service. To help a family in such despair – they’ve done all of that care work, which is a thankless task in itself, then they’ve been bereaved, so they are absolutely distraught within themselves, and then you've got someone making the next bit even more complicated and even more difficult than it needed to be. It was 4’o’clock on a Friday afternoon, just as the whole office was emptying, and a colleague came in and said, “Sherry, this is the situation. “ So I said, “OK, this isn’t right. Let's go and see the Chief Officer to see what we can do.” So we saw the Chief Officer, and between four of us, within the hour, it was resolved. It still makes me proud. That’s the heart of it. I'm privileged. I’ve been lucky to have been in those kind of roles. We always look on the negative side of health and social care. You’ve got people dying. You’ve got social care on its knees. You've got social workers leaving the profession in droves but you can’t top the wins. I don’t think you can get a job in life that tops the wins.
Clusters
S&C Denbighshire Story Hub
If I could change anything, if I could fix anything, I think it would be that staff were taught how to listen to patients. I think we're far too academically focused...
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Becky: Raising awareness and making a difference
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Aims and Purpose
My role is to try and help people within Denbighshire, both communities as a whole and also as individuals, to become more aware of dementia in their communities. Then, hopefully for them to use that awareness to take action, to make things easier for people living with dementia in their communities. I do this by running regular dementia friends sessions. I do them fortnightly online, so that anybody from all over the UK can join in. Then I also do more bespoke ones for specific groups of people across Denbighshire. I've linked up with North Wales Police, so I do dementia friends sessions for all the new recruits. I work with a lot of schoolchildren as well and different community groups that want dementia friends sessions. I also put on lots of dementia training for people within the community, which is sourced from different expert training agencies and is aimed at family/friends of people living with dementia and community/third sector workers and volunteers. I also try and help communities set up Action Groups within their community, so like a steering group, a little committee, so that they can then help make their town more aware of dementia. That initially was formed as part of Alzheimer's Society's Dementia Friendly Communities work that they were doing, so I would almost get the group together, help them start raising awareness and then guide them down the official process, if they wanted to go down the Alzheimer’s Society route to get their official status as being dementia friendly. That's actually coming to an end shortly. Alzheimer’s Society are no longer going to have dementia friendly communities, but we're looking at doing a local Denbighshire recognition scheme, so that will help that part of the work to carry on.
Clusters
S&C Denbighshire Story Hub
My wellbeing is also dependent on other people's wellbeing, because if people around me aren't happy, then that impacts on your wellbeing as well.
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Elain: Tea and Cake @ Hwb Dinbych
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Aims and Purpose
A sense of community is something I really wanted to achieve, coming into this role. I love the fact that people are walking in through the door, making themselves a cup of tea, and asking us for a cup of tea. This is working - I think the building’s really working at the moment. I've got really good relationships with the partners. If someone comes in, I can go and ask for advice, and our partners can help me with that individual as well. I think being here for a couple of years now, I've seen how the building can work for individuals. For example, when I was covering on Fridays, there were two individuals who were really quiet – low self esteem. We were having a lot of conversations about how things were negative. They were saying the only thing that they were doing was the art groups. And now - one of them is now volunteering in our repair café, which happens on Saturdays, and is now registering to be a volunteer here on a number of days. I think that's just amazing to see how he's able to put himself out there. Individuals who weren’t able to make anyone a cup of tea to begin with but now are offering us all a cup of tea and welcoming people through the doors. I don't see it, because I'm working here, and he explains the benefits and those little things that we do - just the chats everyday – and how they mean so much. It's kind of a magic that the building is being able to create. I just truly think how important it is to talk, I really do. If we’re able to create an environment here, where we are able to talk, I think it's vital to mental health. I think it is getting better. I think my generation is a lot better at having that kind of conversation and speaking with friends.
Clusters
S&C Denbighshire Story Hub
They’ll get a cup of tea to begin with, and then they’ll just do some art. No-one has to have any background at all, so that's amazing. I think that's one of the aspects I loved above the job to begin with, was just how people were focusing on art and were able to talk whilst doing that as well.
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What is life without dancing, and cake?!
S T O R Y
Taking my sober life one day at a time
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Aims and Purpose
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NW Flintshire Story Hub
Connecting communities
S T O R Y
Reaching Out
S T O R Y
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Really listening, with no judgement
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John: Taking my sober life one day at a time
Aims and Purpose
Clusters
He lives in temporary accommodation in Flintshire, in an open plan bedsit. In the tenancy agreement, it says that he can’t have anyone to stay. This has meant that he hasn’t been able to have his two young children over to stay, which he says has affected both his mental health and theirs. He was also not allowed his own furniture. He became part of Community Wellness in mid-April. John says that his drinking led him to being homeless and living in the Glanrafon Centre in Queensferry. Community Wellness came in and did well-being days on a Tuesday in Glanrafon and that’s how he met the team. John says: “It was a Godsend meeting them. I think the team pretty much saved me. I was in this very dark place – there was nothing left in me. I didn’t know who to turn to anymore. I didn’t know what the purpose of life was. It was a very horrible dark place. Community Wellness saved me and gave me hope again. They asked me to work alongside them, doing various projects in music and art. To be listened tp and to be heard was massive for me because I’d been living in this bubble by myself for such a long time. I haven’t looked back – the projects that I’m working with now are all really exciting. It’s a clean slate and a brand new chapter for me, which I’m really excited about.”
NW Flintshire Story Hub
"I’m nearly three months sober now and it feels good. I can think straight. I’m more active. I’ve never been more present with my children. There’s a sense of purpose now. I don’t live in fear so much any more."
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Chris: Reaching out
Aims and Purpose
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A magic moment for myself was that ability to retire, because that made way for me to be who I really am, because when you are working, when you have got family, your focus is very clear, isn't it? It's very inward looking, because you have so many things to deal with, to support that family structure and that energy that you give to work. So it really was life changing, game changing, when I was able to retire, because it gave me that very positive outlook. It was quite magical because it changed so many things in my life. It changed my thinking, my direction, my energy – and where I focus my energy. My wife understood and supports me fully, and my trips abroad for the charity. All of that has been a blessing, which is another word for being magic. I've had tragedy in my life and that’s mostly around the death of parts of my family. I lost my mum and dad, and we all lose our mums and dads. In my age group, most of my friends have suffered the same thing. But the tragedy I would share is the loss of my brother. He was 68. Not only was it tragic that he passed away but he had Motor Neurone Disease, which is extremely difficult to witness. To his credit, he was very positive to the end, which made it very easy, or easier, maybe that's a better way to put it. It made it easier for us to be with him and support him and just encourage him. They say you're dying in your own body and, having now experienced that, it’s true. You just see that slow decline and, whilst I wrestle with the idea of euthanasia, you do encounter these moments, where you think, is that the best thing? I wouldn’t like to give a view on yes or no, but you can certainly empathise with people. So that was tragic.
NW Flintshire Story Hub
There are huge building blocks that are missing for people. I would say that they are mostly around social inclusion. About what do you do for lonely people, but also the different strands of poverty: fuel poverty; food poverty; poverty of access - before you get to money.
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Community Wellness: Really listening, with no judgement
Aims and Purpose
Clusters
Tragic moments include the sheer frustration of not always being able to support people to move up in life. The hoops can be astounding. Even providing advocacy support can sometimes not be enough to alleviate the situation. We see people working hard to improve their situation, but the odds seem stacked against them. Often there is no consistent answer on what your financial rights are – or how, for example, you access legal support to obtain a divorce. How someone in the early, vulnerable stages of recovery can be supported with their benefits, and how much they can earn before it affects their benefit. The lack of clarity when people leave a homeless shelter and move into less temporary accommodation. It is not made clear how much the bills will be: for housing, energy bills and council tax. One of our participants found himself with a large council tax bill because he received a one-off payment for a piece of work, and as soon as it hit his bank account, he was then charged with the full amount of council tax– a figure he wasn’t able to pay. Another tragic moment was meeting one participant who had been suffering with addiction, then had been supported by the NHS to recover – in the early stages of his recovery, he had then been housed in accommodation with people suffering with their own addictions – and then found himself addicted again and back at the beginning of the cycle. We support some of the most marginalised members of society, and it is often tragic to hear stories from those who are trying their best to rehabilitate themselves – but finding that society, and societal institutions, are not always ready to accept them.
NW Flintshire Story Hub
The sharing of stories has been a very powerful and humbling experience. It is magical to hear people read back their writing (or explain what they have drawn) in group.
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Roberta: Flourishing communities. That’s what we want.
Aims and Purpose
My name is Roberta Owen. I am normally called Rob, though. I’m a mother and a grandmother. I’ve been an environmental activist for so many years that I prefer to forget. I am very interested in building community locally. Everything is related. I’m from Holywell, which is a brilliant place. I was a teacher of languages. I do love languages and I would learn more if I had time, but my time tends to be taken up with local activities, including a community garden, down in Greenfield, where we have various volunteers, including people with special needs, and we all have fun together. Organising big events for the town. I'm a member of the Church in Wales and we’ve got an orchard planted there, and we have work days. The Church in Wales is doing really well in Hollywell, actually. On Monday, we’ve got the Food Club. They’ve got one on the Wednesday, which is the official one, but on a Monday, people who are finding it hard going out – lots of local people come and they have a free lunch and they’re also entitled to have about 12 items from the mini supermarket upstairs. So the church is managing to get grants from the Town Council and money from church members to keep this going. It’s wonderful really. There are so many people now that are getting to know each other as well, and it’s really good. They bring their problems, and other church members are listening and trying to help, so I think that is excellent, what they are doing. I’m a member of Flintshire City of Sanctuary. I’ve befriended a couple of refugee families. One family are Syrians. The things they have been through. There’s also an Afghan family, who were forced to leave because he was being targeted. I have managed to keep in touch and they are supporting us with a big dancing event, which is partly to help refugees feel included, and to give them a chance to share their culture with us.
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NW Flintshire Story Hub
If you haven’t got your health, then you can’t play a part in society, or it’s much more difficult.
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Sandra: Connecting communities. It is all about connecting.
Aims and Purpose
Well, my background is about 35 years running a recruitment agency, so I've always worked with people. I’m passionate about people. I’m always trying to improve their career prospects and what's on offer to them. And then a friend of mine said that there was a job going at the local council which supported communities, particularly older people, and it was just bridging those gaps really. It was all about connecting the communities, which certainly ticked all the boxes for me, being passionate again. Also I’m getting to that time in my life where I’m looking to see how good or bad these communities are in supporting more mature, older people. Give me an example of the kind of thing that you do. How do you connect? The big thing across Flintshire, and I get that it’s across the UK really – is transport. Community transport, in particular, or the lack of it. The amount of people that are just stuck at home because either they don't know or they've cut the local service and they think they can't get out and about. They haven’t got family or friends they can rely on for lifts. So recently I did a survey, then I got together with the council to find out what the transport provision was. I talked to a couple of organisations that provide community transport and gathered all this information, and we’ve got this hand-out leaflet now. There are four community transport options where people can just call if they need to go to a hospital appointment, the doctors or go to town to do the shopping. They can just ring, book it and it will pick them up, door to door. It will even take them where they want to go, wait for two hours and then take them home. And the amount of people in the communities that weren't aware of such a service… so it’s trying to ease something like that.
Clusters
NW Flintshire Story Hub
The big thing across Flintshire, and I get that it’s across the UK really – is transport. Community transport, in particular, or the lack of it. The amount of people that are just stuck at home because either they don't know or they've cut the local service and they think they can't get out and about.
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