Meeting the needs of our communities by bringing the right services to them

The Living Well Bus service

The Living Well Service launched across Cheshire and Merseyside in June 2022 following a successful pilot as a roving COVID-19 vaccination service.

The service, commissioned by NHS Cheshire and Merseyside’s Covid Vaccination Response Team and delivered by Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (CWP), is aligned with the priorities outlined by Core20Plus5, building on the principles of listening to seldom-heard communities and meeting their needs by bringing the right services to them.

Operating as a drop-in service, Living Well provides access to COVID-19 vaccinations, a broad range of physical health checks, focused mental wellbeing support as well as supportive discussions around any health or wellbeing challenges.

The service works in partnership with Place and Public Health to identify and engage with communities where tailored outreach would be most beneficial. All clinics are justified by our understanding of health inequalities.

Living Well now provides 15 hyper-local health and wellbeing clinics each week in targeted communities across the nine places in Cheshire and Merseyside, using three clinic buses.

The service is fully clinically led by registered healthcare professionals. Each outreach bus is accessible (including ramps and ambient lighting), climate conscious (with heating and lighting solar powered), and contains a sink, bed, and storage to support a range of clinical activities.

How does this improve services for patients?

Since June 2022, the Living Well Service has delivered over 650 targeted outreach clinics within targeted areas of need across Cheshire and Merseyside. Within these communities the service has provided:

Over 17,000 COVID-19 vaccinations – including over 1,000 primary doses.

Over 18,000 Health screening tests (Cholesterol, Blood Pressure, BMI, Glucose, Pulse check) – 19% of which returned results outside expected healthy range. All results were shared directly with GPs to enable appropriate follow up action.

All clinics have been delivered within areas of identified need, including areas of recognised high deprivation, ethnically and socially diverse communities, refugee and asylum seeker communities, homeless shelters, pregnancy-specific settings, mental health crisis cafes / support networks, autism and learning disability support hubs, food banks, male-dominated workforces, faith settings, Gypsy Roma and Traveller communities and Boating communities.

What's next?

Throughout summer 2023 Living Well will be leading a pilot programme aiming to increase uptake of routine vaccination among migrant communities in Liverpool and St Helens.

This is an example of how the service’s diverse workforce and operational flexibility can be deployed creatively and innovatively to respond directly to identified population need.

The pilot programme will run alongside the service’s wider outreach programme which will continue to provide its broad range of health and wellbeing interventions within each of the 9 Places in Cheshire and Merseyside.

Find out more

For more information about the Living Well Service visit www.cwp.nhs.uk/livingwellservice.