 GM Live Well is Greater Manchester’s commitment to ensuring great everyday support is available in every neighbourhood. It will tackle health, social and economic inequalities by changing how public services work with people and communities to grow opportunities for everyone to Live Well. GM Live Well will ensure everyone has the support, control, connections and resources to lead a healthy and happy life.
#GMLiveWell
Welcome to our Fairer Health for All colleagues and partners who are now receiving this combined monthly newsletter.
Bringing the newsletters together recognises the work we are all doing to tackle health, social, and economic inequalities by changing how we work together across public services, voluntary organisations, and with residents and communities.
Please do share updates, stories and ideas for inclusion: GMLiveWell@greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk
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Our clinical lead for Live Well, Dr Jaweeda Idoo, was interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on 28 August. The programme discussed the challenge of tackling the welfare bill in the UK with Dr Idoo speaking alongside former chair of the John Lewis Partnership, Charlie Mayfield, who is leading the independent Keep Britain Working review. They talked through Greater Manchester's Live Well approach, with Dr Idoo explaining the benefits of moving to a prevention-based approach to take pressure of local NHS services and support people with everyday help to get back into work. You can listen again - at 2.10: BBC Radio 4 - Today, 28/08/2025
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Work is underway as a result of the £10m funding boost for Greater Manchester’s Live Well plan to tackle inequalities, improve health and help people back into work - Greater Manchester Combined Authority to shape employment support across the system.
Greater Manchester has been selected as one of eight Trailblazer areas in the UK Government’s 'Get Britain Working' White Paper, which sets out reforms to supporting people towards work.
Over the coming year, GM will be testing and embedding new ways of supporting people furthest from the labour market to move towards employment and training.
The £10million fund is being used for two tests, filling gaps in current delivery and starting to shape the system for the future. As a ‘trailblazer’ it is about testing, learning and then adopting what works. In GM, we are doing this through:
Test 1 - Embedding a Live Well journey to employment - This involves system shaping work across digital and data needs, growing Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise capacity and capability, amplifying residents' voice, and Job Centre Plus integration.
Test 2 - Directly supporting residents on their journey towards work - 40 different initiatives across all 10 localities, reaching a range of priority groups of people and learning ‘what works’ to engage and support 4,500 residents on their journey towards work.
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You can read more about the role of the Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise (VCFSE) sector, and VSNW and 10GM, who will be working with GMCA to understand implications of the programme for VCFSE organisations: Greater Manchester Placed Based Economic Inactivity Trailblazer and the VCFSE sector
A new ‘In Work Progression’ service has launched to support people in low-paid, insecure jobs take the next step.
The service offers free, tailored one-to-one support such as advice around opportunities in their current job or a new job, coaching to help overcome barriers to progressing in their careers, and practical support such as applying for new roles and accessing skills or training courses.
New support service for Greater Manchester workers aims to improve job security and career progression - Greater Manchester Combined Authority
To support those at the forefront of Live Well implementation, a practical toolkit is being created for developing a locally-led Live Well approach.
The document captures the emerging Live Well hallmarks - a shared vision for what great everyday support looks like in every neighbourhood across Greater Manchester.
In the spirit of Live Well, these hallmarks are the result of hundreds
of conversations, co-production activities and co-design sessions.
They build on what’s already in place and bring together insights from cross-sector events, workshops, and learning conversations with communities, VCFSE organisations, public services and partners across the system. They are a working framework — one that will continue to evolve through shared learning and action across neighbourhoods, localities and sectors. We'll share this live document in the next newsletter for your input and feedback.
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Following the engagement with Primary Care about Live Well that took place during April-June this year, a report is now available here.
This was co-led by the GM Primary Care Board and NHS GM, with the support of GMCA, and involved in-depth consultation with hundreds of Primary Care professionals across General Practice, Dentistry, Community Pharmacy and Optometry.
We thank everyone who took the time to challenge, debate, engage and feedback. It has been really helpful, and continues to inform the thinking of Live Well as it progresses.
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This Live Well VCSE Briefing August 2025 highlights how local infrastructure organisations are driving and supporting the Live Well movement across Greater Manchester. Over the past year, localities have tested participatory grant making, begun developing flagship Live Well Centres, Spaces and Offers, learned from Accelerator Sites, and explored the Neighbourhood Model to join up services around communities. Alongside this, GM has been selected as an Economic Inactivity Trailblazer Site. Together, this work shows how local infrastructure and the wider VCFSE sector are central to shaping the next phase of Live Well.
Speaking at the King's Fund event, '10 Year Health Plan – what bold choices and actions are needed to deliver transformational change?' on Tuesday 9 September, Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester focused on Live Well. He spoke about the challenges and opportunities within the approach and the potential impact of the 10-year health plan on our Greater Manchester ambitions.
Focusing on one of the three big shifts - from treatment to prevention - he said:
"We would say, to achieve that, if you really want to achieve that, you have to have a fourth big shift from national to local. You won't achieve it if you don't take a place-based approach if you want to move from treatment to prevention. I remember very vividly as Secretary of State for Health in 2010 when Professor Michael Marmot gave me his landmark report ‘fair society, healthy lives’ saying, “The good news, Andy, is we can do something to improve people's health. The bad news is you don't control any of the levers that will make that possible....
"In Greater Manchester, you just see so many more possibilities in a bottom-up place-based system, a place that works as one system. Increasingly, that's how we see it in Greater Manchester: public, private, voluntary, community, faith, all sectors, famously, we say, facing the same direction and then pulling in the same direction. That is it, ladies and gentlemen, that is what moves the dial. That is what makes real change happen."
The Live Well Leadership Collaborative is a new programme offering leadership coaching and other support to leaders and teams implementing Live Well.
A series of webinars over the summer focused on how localities are starting with the assets of a neighbourhood and how truly integrated partnership teams can build support offers around what is already there.
The 'Growing a culture of prevention' webinar is available at the bottom of this page: System Leadership Development
It discusses what we mean by a culture of prevention, and what it will take to grow it. As well as hope and inspiration for the future of GM’s places and public services, the insights and ideas leaders are sharing provide practical and relevant clues we can all learn from as we refresh our focus on neighbourhood working and prevention in Live Well.
You can find out more about the Leadership Collaborative and where it has come from here.
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Locality teams are coming together to explore how we can grow and embed community voice, leadership and decision making in local Live Well implementation across the city-region, a key principle of the GM Live Well approach.
We'll share an update in the next newsletter.
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10.30am-midday
Too often, decisions about public money - whose priorities it serves, what gets funded, and how it is delivered – are made far away from the very communities that money is intended to benefit.
This webinar explores a different approach: One where communities have a real, democratic voice in shaping priorities and directing resources where they will have the greatest impact.
Participatory Budgeting empowers residents to propose ideas, deliberate, and vote on which projects should receive funding. These community-led decisions then guide resource allocation, ensuring that funding supports what matters most to communities.
Find out more by joining: Live Well Live: Shifting Power to Communities using Participatory Budgeting Tickets, Tue, Sep 30, 2025 at 10:30 AM | Eventbrite
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Save the date: 11 November, 10am-1pm, Manchester
What if everyone had the tools and permission to shape decisions, so together we could grow a Greater Manchester where everyone can live well?
We're pressing PLAY on participation.
Join us to celebrate the launch of the GM Live Well Participation Playbook, hear inspiring stories from across Greater Manchester and experience participatory methods first-hand. Together, we can grow a Greater Manchester where communities don't just have a voice - they have the power to decide.
We'll share more details very soon.
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The Live Well movement is reshaping how Greater Manchester supports health and wellbeing. Its ambition is to focus more on prevention, by creating centres and spaces where people can find support, connection, and opportunity. Groundwork Greater Manchester believes natural spaces are essential to this vision, and that Green Community Hubs show how they can transform lives.
BLOG – Natural spaces as Live Well spaces: The role of Green Community Hubs - Groundwork
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Social Adventures, a not-for-profit organisation that is committed to improving health and wellbeing within Salford and the surrounding area, wanted to find out what is and isn’t working for the people who use their support and wider services across Salford. They asked people for fresh ideas around what they need to Live Well and how VCFSE organisations can support.
You can read the report 'What I need to Live Well in Salford: A Community discovery report' here.
In recent weeks, further support for some of the organisations offering vital services for residents and their ability to live well has been confirmed.
This includes Foundation Economy Innovation grants of up to £11,000 for twenty-five businesses, social enterprises and voluntary organisations for their activities focused on health and social care, early education and childcare and local high streets.
The funding, which totals £275,000, has been awarded to projects that drive innovation and improve productivity and working conditions in the foundational economy, including adult social care, early education and childcare, retail, and leisure and hospitality sectors.
In addition to this, a total of £300,000 has been awarded to eight ambitious cultural and community projects through a new ‘Collaborate’ fund. This helps organisations and individuals work together in new and innovative ways to strengthen Greater Manchester’s cultural sector, providing opportunities for residents, visitors and businesses.
Greater Manchester invests £300k in culture and community partnerships - Greater Manchester Combined Authority
Salford and Manchester will benefit from a £1 million funding boost (from the National Lottery heritage Fund) to help ensure a greener future and improve the area for its residents.
From the £1 million funding, Salford and Manchester are planning to work together to create an interconnected network of green and blue spaces—linking parks, urban waterways, and industrial heritage sites.
Telling the Greater Manchester Story. The new ‘Together we are Greater Manchester’ website sets out our collective vision of ‘creating a thriving city region where everyone can live a good life’ and the steps we need to take to get there.
A number of downloadable resources tell the story of our hyper-collaborative approach, which has put the city region at the forefront of progress. Please do use these resources to engage stakeholders, in presentations, on social media, or browse at your own convenience to understand how, by pulling together in the same direction, we’re creating better outcomes for local people and places.
New digital support portal for victims of crime in Greater Manchester launched by Greater Manchester Victims' Services (GMVS) is a free signposting and referral service run by national charity Catch22, working to ensure that every victim of crime gets the support they need, whenever and
however they need it: Home
GM REFLECT eLearning aims to strengthen confidence in early years work. The modules are open access and free to use, covering a range of early years topics including, Firm Foundations, Pre-Birth and the Early Days, Social Emotional Development and Wellbeing, Physical Development and Engaging with families.
The Tackling Poverty Toolkit is now live. It has been developed by NHS Greater Manchester, with support from Resolve Poverty, as a practical and empowering resource for the Greater Manchester Integrated Care Partnership to address poverty as a determinant of poor health and inequalities. Additions to this live resource are welcome by contacting nhsgm.fhfa@nhs.net
NHS GM green spaces and biodiversity toolkit provides a ‘how to’ guide for individuals who are involved in starting or developing natural environment projects within healthcare settings. It will also be valuable for organisations that provide grounds maintenance or landscaping services across these spaces, and for those whose role it is to promote access to green spaces or nature-based activities to healthcare service users.
‘Supporting you to access healthcare in Manchester’ booklet has been designed to support organisations in Manchester who have conversations with inclusion health groups - people seeking sanctuary, migrants, people who are homeless, sex workers and Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. The leaflet has been co-designed with over 20 VCFSE organisations at a Local Authority of Sanctuary Health and Well-being event and with the Inclusion Health Sounding Board and primary care commissioners. Inclusion health plan – Access to primary care - Manchester Local Care Organisation
Social Value Playbook builds on the commitment to include a minimum 10% weighting for social value in all NHS procurements. The Playbook sets out practical steps at each stage of the procurement or commissioning lifecycle. It emphasises the positive impact social value can have on health inequalities and outcomes, providing examples for common areas of spend.
ECO 4 Flex scheme Do you know anyone who could benefit from the ECO4 Flex scheme which offers free heating solutions, insulation, solar panels and more for owner-occupiers and private tenants living with certain long-term health conditions? Please visit Energy Company Obligation Scheme for more information or email eco@greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk.
Greater Manchester Primary Care Portal - Coming soon – designed to make the working day easier for colleagues working in frontline primary care. It will be a secure, personalised hub – built by GPs, pharmacists, dentists, and optometrists – to deliver service updates, guidance, templates, contacts, and more, straight to each user’s dashboard and regular email summary. NHS Greater Manchester is bringing together stakeholders from across the city region to help ensure the portal contains the most relevant, up-to-date, and useful content for our primary care colleagues. The launch date will be shared soon.
Developing community power standards with Manchester City Council. Read how Manchester City Council helped create standards to embed meaningful resident participation across the borough: Developing community power standards with Manchester City Council - TPXimpact
A discussion paper on the fight for local investment and why government must create, facilitate and maintain spaces where solidarity might thrive. Places to come together: Rebuilding local solidarities against the far right | IPPR
Covid changed many childhoods and the cost of living crisis has only deepened the crisis facing some families. The Centre for Young Lives’ recent annual State of the Nation report offers a stark snapshot into the scale of vulnerabilities millions of children in England are facing.
The story of change about The Real Picture was launched in response to the continuing rise in childhood obesity rates across Greater Manchester. This was a bold and wide reaching public engagement consultation with a clear goal — to build public support, explore the real drivers behind childhood obesity, and work with communities to develop actionable, people-powered solutions. Find out about what they did, how they did it, the findings as well as the key challenges and lessons learned.
Big Life Group and Natural England's report on young people's access to green spaces in Hulme, Moss Side, and Longsight highlights the need for safer, more inviting green spaces and the power of community-led activities to improve young people's wellbeing: Young-People-and-Green-Spaces-Report-for-Natural-England.pdf
The NHS GM Green Plan 2025-28 sets out a vision of a healthcare system that is environmentally, socially and financially sustainable, resilient to climate change, and deeply rooted in the principles of climate justice.
GM VCFSE Accord Impact Report 2024/25 shares the wide impact of the GM VCFSE Accord between April 2024 and March 2025 in developing effective and meaningful partnership working in and between the VCFSE and public sectors in Greater Manchester: GM VCFSE Accord Impact Report 2024-25 now available
These delivery updates for April 2025 – June 2025 cover delivery across the work streams of the Accord, including population health, commissioning and investment, communication, VCFSE ecosystem and localities, data and intelligence, equalities, inclusive economy and influencing and involvement: GM VCFSE Accord Q1 delivery highlights now available
“It’s helped me understand myself more” Ondrej started out attending Lancashire Wildlife Trust’s Nature and Wellbeing sessions in Philip’s Park, Bury two years ago, as suggested by his support worker through the Early Intervention Team. Watch more about Ondrej’s experience here.
Do you believe that creativity can play a role in supporting people’s health and well-being? Can you see a role for culture and creativity to increase access, choice and equity in enabling people to live well?
Join the GM Creative Health Champions programme, a professional development and leadership strand of the GM Creative Health Place Partnership.
The programme will help you feel confident and inspired to implement creative health approaches in your own work and you'll be part of a network of peers for mutual support, collaboration and learning.
To complete the training you will take three modules. Each module consists of 2 x 1.5 hour online sessions. You can book onto training dates in October and November here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PDD78C5
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Free Training – Poverty and Health Poverty is the biggest driver of ill health and early death in Greater Manchester. NHS Greater Manchester have been working in partnership with Resolve Poverty (formerly Greater Manchester Poverty Action) offering free training to colleagues employed within health and care providers in Greater Manchester as well as those working in local authorities and including the voluntary community faith social enterprise workforce. The training explores the relationship between poverty and health and the steps we can all take to make a difference. Click here to register today.
Help shape an agreement to enable effective working between the public and VCFSE sectors in Greater Manchester You can respond now to a consultation to shape how the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector and the public sector in Greater Manchester work together to improve outcomes for communities and citizens. There are multiple ways to share your thoughts and ideas, including an online survey, an online ‘mural’, or online and in-person workshops. Find out more and respond to the consultation: https://www.vcfseleadershipgm.org.uk/news-and-events/accord-refresh The deadline to respond is Friday 31 October.
Go green in Mode Shift Month is a September-long celebration of greener travel including walking, cycling, wheeling, and shared travel. Choosing greener ways to travel cuts emissions while boosting physical and mental health. Find out more:
Transport for Greater Manchester has courses, support and resources to help you Bee Active
Find out what transport support is available to help you get to your health appointments
Find out more about opportunities to improve physical activity through GM Moving
Use the Healthier Greener Travel Toolkit
Join the Manchester Faith and Belief Forum, a national interfaith charity, are currently recruiting 25 individuals from a wide range of faith and belief backgrounds based in Manchester to join the LGBTQ+ FaithFULL Collective, dedicated to improving the wellbeing of LGBTQ+ people of faith. Running from Autumn 2025 to Autumn 2026, Collective members will receive expert training, mentoring and skills building, then will work together to design and run social action projects in their local communities. All the information is here: https://faithbeliefforum.org/programme/lgbtqfaith/lgbtq-faithfull-collective/
Celebrate International Day of Older People – 1 October 2025 Greater Manchester is joining people across the globe in celebrating the United Nations International Day of Older People. This year’s UK theme is ‘Building Belonging: Celebrating the power of our social connections’. Tell us your plans so we can promote them. Please email details to jo.garsden@greatermanchster-ca.gov.uk by Monday 15 September so your activities can be shared in this digest and partners can promote.
Apply for a GM Walking and Wheeling Fund Grant. The Programme is offering grants of up to £7,000 to VCFSE organisations to deliver projects to get more people walking and wheeling this autumn and winter. The fund aims to improve the health and wellbeing of communities in Greater Manchester by encouraging people who are less active or inactive to walk or wheel regularly. GM Walking and Wheeling Grants are live
Join us for a Bolton locality learning event – part of Fairer Health for All - at 11-12:30. Colleagues and partners from Bolton will host an online session highlighting local approaches to tackling health inequalities and provide an opportunity to learn, reflect, and connect. This session will cover the Bolton Prevention and Inequalities Framework and the Bolton Principles for Community Engagement Register Here
Greater Manchester's VCSE Leadership Group invites you to a workshop to hear more about including the voice of lived experience in your work,designed around the Greater Manchester Equality Alliance (GM=EqAl) resource on hearing the voice of lived experience in policy making.
Workshop: Including the Voice of Lived Experience in Policy Making
Hear more about Rambert and GMCA’s Early Moves project, supporting school readiness through movement and dance, at 6:15pm at the Mezzanine, Hot House, Media City, Salford.
If you'd also like to enjoy a performance of Rambert’s Bring Your Own at The Lowry directly after the event (7.30pm), please RSVP to Rambert at rsvp@rambert.org.uk
Our Manchester Food Partnership team have arranged free training sessions across the city to enhance understanding of the impact of trauma and the need for a trauma-informed approach within community food support organisations. Please use the links below to book onto one of the sessions:
16 September, 12:30 - 5pm at The Grange Community Resource Centre, Beswick: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-introduction-to-trauma-and-links-to-food-insecurity-training-tickets-1512567543239?aff=oddtdtcreator
25 September, 12:30 - 5pm at Pioneer House High School, Wythenshawe: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-introduction-to-trauma-and-links-to-food-insecurity-training-tickets-1512879556479?aff=oddtdtcreator
Leeds. The Conference will bring together communities and professionals to explore a range of topics; the conference will include workshops, expert presentations and opportunities for actual site visits to local community housing schemes. The Northen Way: Community-led Housing Summit
Free Professionals Training opportunity for those working in the Greater Manchester area with people who may be at risk of gambling related harms. This two hour, online session will teach professionals cause and effect of gambling harms, how to have the conversation, and referring for more support. Sign up for the September session here
Primary care in partnership: Celebrating 10 years, setting the vision for the future event has been organised by Greater Manchester Primary Care Provider Board, the partnership of primary care providers. Greater Manchester Primary Care Summit 2025
9.30-10.30am. The session will introduce the support the charity offers and share details about its mission to create safe spaces for men to talk openly about the challenges they are facing. The webinar is open to all, whether you are looking to find out more for yourself, for someone around you, or if you know anyone who may benefit from the support.
Register here: Select tickets – Andy's Man Club: It's Okay to Talk – Microsoft Teams
The award-winning Unseen Voices panel have co-produced a film in collaboration with Changing Future and Bad Kamra. This has been created to champion the voice of lived experience within Greater Manchester. It's a celebration of how the challenges experienced by people facing multiple disadvantage can be navigated and overcome, in an approach that uses resilience, humour, and creativity. This work will form a part of how we develop an enhanced Live Well offer for those who need it.
Sign up on Eventbrite here to secure your place.
12-1.30pm. Hear from leaders about building belonging into leadership practice. The workshop will focus on practical ways and actions you can take to strengthen connection, trust, and inclusion.
To register your place, and for further information please click on the link.
Over the past year, we’ve expanded the Greater Manchester frontline peer support network beyond the personalised care workforce to those in social care working with people facing multiple disadvantage. This is an opportunity to sense-check what we have found over the past year, influence final recommendations, and continue shaping the future of the network. We're asking the frontline workforce to sign up to either the 20 Oct 4-5pm or 22 Oct 9:30-10:30 am hour long session.
The Alternative Provider Collaborative (APC) Convention will be an event to celebrate the work of APC providers and an opportunity for NHS, GMCA, and voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise (VCFSE) colleagues to learn about the work of the APC past, present and future. The Alternative Provider Collaborative Convention
This year’s VSNW Conference and AGM focuses on one key question: how do we move from uncertainty to strength? The event will explore how the sector can build its internal capacity, strengthen collaborative partnerships, and continue to play a leading role in shaping the future of public service delivery across the North West. VSNW Conference and AGM 2025: 'From Uncertainty to Strength – Building Capacity & Resilience in Our Sector'
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