Health interventions to improve life chances and health inequalities

Our research shows chances of poor health are high in some of the communities in which our customers live. We believe in helping our customers and communities build brighter futures and a large part of this is providing support and interventions when things become difficult. That is why through VIVID Plus we’re committed to helping address health inequalities in our neighbourhoods to improve life expectancy and overall health.

Our partnership with Park Community School

We're continuing our partnership with Park Community School in Havant, to tackle health and wellbeing inequalities tied to food poverty in the region. 

Our £20,000 donation is being utilised to further the work of the Park Community School’s pre-existing Munch Community Food Pantry, which offers affordable and nutritional food to the wider region. The funding will also be used to provide professionally led cooking classes for local families to help improve cooking skills and encourage healthy, low-cost eating. Find out more about our partnership with the School.

Gary's story

Lynn, one of our Older Persons Support Officers was walking past Gary's house and saw smoke coming out of a window. Lynn called the fire brigade and upon access to the property they found that Gary had fallen asleep whilst cooking - this had started the fire. It was evident to Lynn that Gary needed some extra support and she worked with teams around the business as well as external agencies to support him.

Find out more about Gary’s story

Georgia’s story

Our wellbeing service’s partnership with Solent NHS helps to bridge the gap between health and housing for our customers. We support our customers with poor mental health by helping them to access and engage with wellbeing services, so that they can continue living independently at home.

Our team has been working closely with our customer, Georgia*, who felt vulnerable after she was attacked over a year ago. The incident led to Georgia developing severe anxiety that made her feel very unsafe and fearful of leaving her home.

We helped arranged for the Blue Lamp Trust to visit Georgia’s home, change the locks, install window and door alarms and a key chain on the door to help Georgia feel safer. Our Money Advice and Benefit team also supported her with making a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) claim, for which she was awarded and backdated on her new claim.

A member of our Tenancy Support team arranged fortnightly phone calls to listen and help with Georgia’s mental health issues and we encouraged her to talk to her GP and community mental health team, who suggested that she was eligible to access TalkPlus, a talking therapy service run by the NHS.

Georgia started using TalkPlus but unfortunately, she could not go consistently due to her panic attacks making it too challenging for her to leave her home. After talking to a member of our Tenancy Support team and her local GP, Georgia decided that where she was living triggered too many flashbacks and difficult memories, so she decided to leave the area and move closer to her son and family.

Our team were able to help Georgia’s move by working with Victim Support, her GP and neurologist to ensure she was successfully placed onto the housing register and her vulnerabilities were taking into consideration.

Thanks to this, we were able to offer Georgia a property that was within walking distance of her son and she has had a fresh start. She has made amazing progress with her mental health journey, and can now go to the shops by herself, take the bus and walk to her son’s house.

*Name has been changed for privacy