Delivering housing services on a national scale comes with many of its own challenges – tailoring provision to suit a population with varying cultural, personal and care needs is among the top of them. However, one national housing association has been working in conjunction with the NHS to ensure its vulnerable residents have access to preventative health services.

Home Group has been delivering a range of services across the UK for its residents, supporting their positive health and wellbeing. These include a health coaching service for residents with a variety of physical and mental health challenges, or for those with learning difficulties or other cognitive conditions.

Health coaches can help residents by offering physical interventions such as helping a someone to consume less alcohol, reduce the amount they smoke, or by helping them to increase the amount of exercise they get. Other services on offer include attending hospital, doctor or dentist appointments with residents, making sure they well informed about any health conditions they may have.

Sessions with health coaches are held both virtually and face-to-face, ensuring the service is accessible to all who need it. Each health coach can have between 50-70 different customers with wide-ranging support needs.

In County Durham, Home Group’s health coaches have been working with local commissioners and NHS providers to support new families. A postnatal befriending service helps new parents who have been identified as requiring extra support. The service is operated through the Durham Mental Wellbeing Alliance and aims to promote confidence building in new parents, as well as helping with anxiety and depression.

Postnatal befrienders and ‘community connectors’ work with new parents in a bid to boost their self esteem while also acting as signposts for any additional support they may need.

Anxiety and social isolation are common among new parents, so the support being offered can be important in not just personal outcomes, but also in preventing residents from being referred into an under-pressure health service.

Mandy and Jo are health coaches based in Cornwall, they said: “The customers we support are often very complex and need that extra bit of support.

“This support can be quite intensive, but we are putting into place the preventative steps to enable customers to both improve their health outcomes and reduce use of NHS services”.

While the NHS’ own estimates state it can take between five to 10 years to realise the cost benefits of preventative healthcare, they say that it is important in tackling mental and physical health early in the process.

In 2015 the London School of Economics estimated that only 4% of NHS spend was on preventative healthcare, compared to around 70% which was spent on the treatment of long-term conditions. The NHS has since committed to a long-term plan and put in place a number of funding initiatives towards preventative healthcare, of which Home Group has benefited.