We were really excited to see our friends at Wirral Council sharing some of our recent work on health-related worklessness at the 2017 Faculty of Public Health Conference last Tuesday.
The conference brings together innovative ideas, practice and learning from across the UK – spanning the full range of public health activities.
Our research for Wirral has been among some of the most rewarding we’ve carried out in the past couple of years. This particular project helped the council better understand the root causes and systemic challenges associated with long-term unemployment for local people afflicted by low-level mental health problems.
Together, we and the Council developed a powerful new way of thinking about the problem – plus a range of opportunities for improving service commissioning and design to better help socially isolated people back to work.
The work led directly to Wirral embarking on a major new service innovation process, which has resulted in the commissioning of two new services inspired by the research.
We're at the #FPHconf showcasing how we're tackling social isolation and creating stronger communities to improve health and wellbeing pic.twitter.com/9o76lrUMrA
— Wirral Council (@WirralCouncil) June 20, 2017
