Highlighting the voluntary sector's impact on the health of underserved communities

We recently welcomed Dr Kathy McLean, Chair of the Derby and Derbyshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) on a visit to Normanton and Arboretum, to demonstrate the positive impact of the voluntary sector on the health of underserved communities.

Integrated Care Boards are NHS organisations responsible for planning health services for their local population. Dr McLean is attending a series of visits to ensure community work is understood by the ICB and factored into commissioning decision-making.

The visit focused on the transformative work of two of our programmes - DHIP (the Derby Health Inequalities Partnership) and DE23 Active.

DHIP, which is co-led by Community Action Derby and Derby City Council, works to improve health outcomes through engagement and consultation with our communities. A key part of this programme are the Community Connectors, people with lived experience, who are, or want to be, active in their community to improve health and wellbeing.

DE23 Active aims to help Derby's community of Normanton and Arboretum get active. The programme focuses on working with communities that face some of the greatest inequalities to being physically active by bringing key local stakeholders together to create and deliver a plan in partnership with the local community.

Amjad Ashraf, our Specialist Projects Manager - Tackling Inequalities and DHIP Co-Chair, said: “It was great to have a visit from Kathy and get the time to describe the work that we do, improving people’s health. You can’t deliver information from the outside and expect it to be understood. Community Action Derby has connections with more than 700 voluntary sector groups who know and understand their communities. We have a high success rate and know our impact is trusted and can be sustainable.”

Ejaz Sarwar, our Deputy CEO, said:
“When the ICB is commissioning services we want them to think carefully about the voluntary sector and the huge impact we can have. We often receive short term funding for projects which we can set up and start to make progress. However, this sometimes creates a demand which then needs to be met and if it’s removed and can’t be met, erodes trust. We aim to build capacity within the heart of our communities, and to do that, we need organisations like the NHS to truly work in partnership with us.”

Dr McLean said:
“It’s crucial that we have and can use this local information to influence our decision-making. What also emerged very strongly was the importance of trusted community voices to effect change rather than people remotely making decisions without true engagement."

For more details on Dr McLean’s visit you can read the ICB'S full article here: Community Connectors show ICB Chair Dr. Kathy McLean impact of voluntary sector on underserved communities.

To learn more about our programmes mentioned in the article, please visit our DHIP and DE23 Active websites.