Funded by Lambeth Council through the Neighbourhood and Wellbeing Delivery Alliance Health Inequalities Community Fund, High Trees has been delivering a range of wellbeing and health ESOL sessions – focused on ensuring our Learners have the information about health services and understand how to access them. Sessions have focused on screening services – what they are and who may need to access them, how to register with a GP, how to access dental care, how to make informed choices about vaccinations and access these and what services are available to support wellbeing and good mental health.
The programme ended with a Health for All event at High Trees where 25 Learners came together to participate in a range of interactive activities, before ending the event with a food and music celebration! Learners also worked in groups to discuss which health services they are currently accessing, how easy/difficult is for them to do so, which barriers they have encountered and finally what they would like to change in order to be able to access and use these services more effectively.
Learners who were present on the day told us “I learned about the difference between services such as 999 and 111, thank you!”, “I learned about new services – social prescriber, NHS app, very useful” and “‘It’s very important information, of course I enjoyed it”.
High Trees are now focused on collating the information shared with us about the barriers those who speak English as a second language told us they face when accessing health services, what can be done to mitigate these and what we have been told has worked well. We are also exploring being able to offer a programme like this to Learners in the future!
