During Mental Health Awareness Week (15 to 21 May), we partnered with Art4Space to run an event on Wednesday 17 May called “Coping with Anxiety through Art”, which aims to help people alleviate the often debilitating effects of anxiety through art and creativity. 

Promoting Healthwatch Lambeth and our services, we engaged in creative and craft activities including colouring and mosaics, which encouraged visitors to adopt mindfulness techniques that may reduce anxiety and stress, and it was a successful event enjoyed by all who attended. 

We're hoping to do more events like this in the future, so keep an eye on our events page and social media accounts for details! 

We partnered with Indoamerican Migrant Refugee Association (IRMO) to deliver our first in-person “NHS Workshop” on Friday 2 June. 12 service users attended and were really positive about the event, saying they now understood more about accessing health services.

The workshop was a huge success, with excellent feedback from participants, with one telling us they 'thoroughly enjoyed being a part of it, and the interaction with the participants was both enlightening and rewarding.'

If you are a local VCS or community group and would like us to attend your meeting or event to deliver this workshop, please call or email us and we will see if we can bring this workshop to you.  

On Saturday 27 May, we partnered with LGBTIQ+ organisations Lambeth Links and the Brixton Umbrella Circle to deliver an in-person “Social Care Workshop” at the Vida Walsh Centre in Brixton. This workshop raised awareness of social care (what it is, how it works), provided information and advice on how to access and navigate the social care system and directed participants to where they can seek further help and support.

Eight participantsattended, and all said they found the workshop helpful and useful, giving them information they did not know and signposting to support services they were previously unaware of. 

We ran pop-up stalls at: St Thomas’s Hospital (Bird Corridor) on Thursday 8 June and at Kings College Hospital (Golden Jubilee Wing, near the helpdesk) on Wednesday 14 June.
At St Thomas’s Hospital, as well as meeting Lambeth residents, we were pleased to connect with various staff members at the hospitals to discuss healthcare in Lambeth.

These stalls help us raise awareness of our services, provide advice and support to Lambeth residents and the chance to gather their feedback. We run them quarterly, so keep an eye out for forthcoming dates, which are likely to be later in 2023, most probably in September. 

Recently, we have been busy progressing our Maternity Services project to better understand the maternity experiences of those in Lambeth who have not traditionally been represented in discussions on this important topic.

Partnering with local voluntary and community groups and organisations who work with these communities, we are delighted to announce we have secured four local community groups to partner with us on this project – The Motherhood Group, Indoamerican Migrant Refugee Association (IRMO), Mummy's Day Out, and Disability Advice Service Lambeth (DASL). Fieldwork will start in June and run throughout the Summer and early Autumn and we will provide regular updates on the project in future newsletters.

We have also been working hard on our Primary Care Networks (PCN) Engagement Project, which is all about working alongside PCNs to support them in developing better ways of engaging with their patients.

At the Practice Engagement Session to GPs and practice managers on Thursday 25 May, we outlined our proposed approach and asked for PCNs to volunteer to work with us. We also held an Advisory Group meeting on Wednesday 7 June, where the group agreed its purpose, role and membership.

Now, we will be working closely with two PCNs on a targeted piece of patient engagement to start with, before broadening out delivery of one community engagement workshop to each PCN in Lambeth.

Social prescribing, a service increasingly prescribed in Lambeth at GP surgeries, sees social prescribers link members of the public up with services in the community that may promote better health and improved overall wellbeing.

Check out our guide on how social prescribers can support you to live a fuller and healthier life.

Along with our new guide about social prescribing, we spoke to a GP and social prescriber at Lambeth Walk Group Practice to learn more about what they're doing for people in the community and the vital role social prescribers play in alleviating workloads of community GPs, as well as connecting people with services that may benefit them a great deal and lead to better health outcomes.