B&NES Wellness Service

Description

B&NES Council Public Health and Specialist Commissioning teams have jointly commissioned an integrated Wellness Service for B&NES since 2017. Since March 2020 the Wellness Service has also delivered the single point of access triage function for the B&NES Community Wellbeing Hub. The Community Wellbeing Hub is a co-ordinated local response to wider preventative and social support services. The Wellness Service has benefited from significant learning since 2017, including the importance of taking services out to communities, and the need to adapt service delivery and design in response to a changing environment. It has benefited from co-location and joint working with health and social care services and the voluntary sector to reach out to vulnerable groups and ensure a joined-up pathway of support.  

Our vision now is to build on this experience and, strengthen key elements of the Wellness Service including its universal prevention and self-care offer, workforce skills and capacity building, and to enhance the community engagement and development function to increase co-design and co-production of health improvement services.  

The Wellness Service will have a particular focus on addressing health inequalities locally, through system workforce capacity building, targeted support to individuals and working directly with communities to design and deliver sustainable programmes and services with a focus on food, physical activity and emotional wellbeing.  

The Wellness Service will also deliver individual support to improve health through a health coach model, supporting people to focus on what matters to them, as well as delivering specific interventions including NHS/CVD Health Checks and support to increase physical activity, quit smoking, reduce alcohol consumption and improve emotional health and wellbeing.