The project
Across the country, there are thousands of churches who are finding new ways to support their communities. From crisis cafes to community art projects, to chaplaincy, we know there are some highly impactful projects that involve close collaboration between the local church and the NHS. But little has been done to proactively support these projects and try to understand what makes them successful, but also what stops them from scaling their impact.
As part of ChurchWorks, the team at Good Faith developed Accelerate Wellbeing because we wanted to understand what makes these projects impactful and how we can support more churches to develop similar partnerships with their local health service.
Over a three-year period, we are working with a group of projects that are already demonstrating the impact of their work for the local community and are interested in exploring whether and how their initiative could be replicated in other communities or scaled across the health system. Over the three years we will provide research, workshops, and support to connect projects with partners.
As well as offering a wide range of capacity building events and resources to the cohort, the projects are all now in their piloting phase. As part of this we are:
- Helping a Swindon youth-led self-harm reduction programme replicate into Weston-Super-Mare and South Bristol
- Helping a Dudley-based Listening and Guidance programme replicate into Stoke
- Helping a Cardiff-based men’s self-help group replicate to Barry and Porthcawl and sustain these pilots
- Helping a Peterborough-based wellbeing and homelessness charity deepen their engagement with health through partnering with Go Health to equip local churches to become Healing Hubs
- Working with the Whole Person Health Trust in East London to develop a training package for PCN staff to help them understand the importance of spiritual health and how to work alongside primary care chaplains.
“I’ve really enjoyed being part of the Accelerate Wellbeing programme. It has been both insightful and practical in terms of the support offered. It also been energising to know that there is a faith-filled team at Churchworks backing us and encouraging us in our work.”