Written by Hollie Louise Walsh, Deputy CEO at Healthy Me Healthy Communities CiC and Marcia Fernandes, Managing Director at the Association for Accredited Learning (June 2024)

Our vision

At Healthy Me Healthy Communities we believe in the power of people and place, working together to tackle today’s societal challenges alleviating the everyday struggle faced by many people and meeting the ambitions of residents and communities.

Often when organisations look to improve the lives of those affected by poverty, discrimination, and exclusion, they overlook local knowledge, skills and expertise.

For over 10 years, HMHC has been developing neighbourhood approaches and developing multi-sector partnerships, empowering people and communities. Our approach creates quality services that make a big difference to people’s lives, create lasting positive change for communities, practice and policy, contributing to regional priorities for health, economic and social outcomes.

We recognise that poverty, inequalities and discrimination affects people’s life-chances and outcomes. Everyday life is getting tougher for more people. This includes the relationship between work and health with poor health impacting on getting into and staying in work. 

Our journey  

We're proud to be part of the GM Trauma-Informed Community of Practice; our staff and volunteers have completed training to understand adverse childhood experiences and the ongoing effect on Manchester residents. We continue to reflect and learn as a team, mapping our approach against the pillars of the Making Manchester Fairer strategy.  

We continue to embed the approach into our activities and services, from our person-centred signposting and referral offer through to the thoughtful refurbishments we are completing at Gorton Central including accessible welfare facilities and a bright and airy reception space. 

We've taken time and effort to translate our community development expertise into creating a welcoming, inclusive and supporting environment for staff. Our journey has been guided and supported by colleagues at the Association for Accredited Learning. We first linked up during COVID-19, with the world at a standstill, we were seeking opportunities to enhance and develop our adult learning offer. We worked collaboratively with experts at the AAL to accredit our bespoke qualification the Level 2 Community Food Worker Award. The course uses food as the tool for engagement, developing resident's confidence, communication and employability skills.  

The successful accreditation of our programme led to us piloting the People, Culture and Wellbeing Quality Mark, also awarded by the Association for Accredited Learning. The process marked a rare opportunity to reflect and take stock on our approach, and how we could develop further. The Quality Mark provides a framework to support organisations to implement person-centred initiatives using an assessment methodology founded on core principles. It’s designed to increase productivity by developing skillsets and supporting mental health and wellbeing in the workplace.  

Commitment to Values

We were delighted to receive the 'seal of approval' from trusted colleagues who share our passion for widening participation and promoting quality in community education. 

Since embarking upon the Quality Mark journey, we have embedded our community development knowledge, recognising the link between good work and good health and wellbeing. We know that everyday life is getting tougher for more people. We use our trauma-informed community expertise to create pathways for good quality, meaningful work in a supportive environment. To support employee wellbeing, we reduced our full-time working week from 37.5 to 35 hours with no reduction in pay. We have worked with partners to offer supported engagement opportunities for those facing multiple barriers to work and are proud to offer opportunities for progression including training, promotions and support for staff completing higher level qualifications. 

The benefits can be seen, heard and felt. We've grown a dedicated and hardworking team of experts by experience, we try new ways of working, we work together in partnership for everything that we do, we foster open and inclusive decision making and everyone can come to work being their true selves, challenging the imposter syndrome. 

This process provided a grounding for the journey to become Good Employment Charter members and we were thrilled to have our approach for contributing to a fairer city-region recognised. As a small organisation, we're proud to be part of making a big difference.  We were especially pleased to be nominated for the Good Employment Charter Awards Best SME for Health & Wellbeing and look forward to an evening of celebrating with fellow nominees in July. 

We are delighted to be Members of the Good Employment Charter and holders of the Association for Accredited Learning's People, Culture and Wellbeing Quality Mark. It's a testament to our values, our team and the communities we work with. We will continue to grow and lead with compassion, creativity and commitment to inclusive opportunities and employment.