We won! Team honoured at Greater Manchester Health and Care Champions Awards
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We’re really excited to have won a very special accolade at last night’s Greater Manchester Health and Care Champions Awards.
Our team that works on our Homeless Health Hub project was honoured in the ‘Innovation Champion’ category – a real testament to the way our teams at Caritas Salford look for new ways to continue to support and meet the needs of the people we work alongside.
The Greater Manchester Health and Care Champions awards are the only Greater Manchester-wide awards that recognises the outstanding contributions from our whole health and care workforce.
Organisers said that they received nearly 700 nominations this year, so we’re delighted to have been recognised in this way.
If you haven’t heard about our Homeless Health Hubs before, they were set up following an audit we ran in 2024 which looked at the health and wellbeing of people experiencing homelessness in four services in Greater Manchester. The findings showed that people who are homeless have significantly poorer health than the general population. This included:
- 78% of those surveyed identify as has having mental health problems compared to 12.7% of the general population
- 73% identified as having at least one physical health condition, compared to 50% of the general population
- 22% identify as drinking more than the recommended amount of alcohol compared to 21% of the general population
- 12% stated their drinking was a problem
- 38% identified as having used illicit drugs in the last 12 months compared to 9.5% of the general population
- 69% of people interviewed smoke, compared to 14.1% of the general population
- 31% have complex health problems with a tri-morbidity – physical, mental health and drug misuse problem, indicating prevalence of complex needs
- 88% of people said they wanted help with an aspect of their health/accessing services or improving their wellbeing
Barriers faced also included not having phones or internet access/IT skills to access online services, difficulty making and keeping appointments, and changing addresses/areas so waiting list communications become difficult.
In response to these findings, we set up our Homeless Health Hub project with funding from NHS Charities Together Trust.
We work with lots of partners to develop new pathways for people affected by homelessness including mental health teams (GMMH), primary care (Urban Village Medical Practice, Cornbrook Medical Centre, Moorgate Primary Care, Bury), Drug and Alcohol support through CGL and Achieve, optician services through Vision Care, Hep C testing through the Hep C trust, NHS Rapid Diagnostics Team, social prescribing services and many more – all ensuring a joined up, cohesive approach to health and wellbeing support provided.
Our link workers support people’s individual needs to help them address any health and wellbeing issues, and the team also runs a range of health and wellbeing activities, from gardening to wellbeing social walks which also help attendees to build confidence and learn new skills.
We’re thrilled to have been honoured with this award and really enjoyed attending the ceremony and meeting others working to support people’s health and wellbeing across Greater Manchester.