We’re thrilled to share our new Impact Report for 2023-24! See what we’ve been up to.

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Impact Report: System Leadership

Active Norfolk/Our Impact/Impact Report: System Leadership

Our Health Team’s Work

The global pandemic has highlighted the importance of a preventative approach to healthcare that creates resilience in communities. Physical activity should be a key part of efforts to shift our focus away from the treatment of ill health to the creation of good health.

Over the past year, the organisation has forged robust partnerships, resulting in notable achievements like Active NoW. Additionally, we have secured successful funding bids, enabling enhanced support for individuals with disabilities and addressing health inequalities.

Lady with heart condition

We have also been able to support with building physical activity into policy and strategy across the Norfolk & Waveney Integrated Care System. This is alongside establishing a robust governance structure for physical activity and health improvement as part of Active NoW.

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There is a significant evidence base for the positive impact of physical activity upon physical health, as well as mental health and wellbeing. As the strategic lead for physical activity in Norfolk, we advocate for its inclusion in local strategies, policies and services.

We are encouraged and proud of our growing partnerships. The work over the last 12 months have seen significant developments across the Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care System, in particular with the Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board and progression with Norfolk County Council Adult Social Care. We also continue to work collaboratively with the VCSE and physical activity provider sectors to support with the development of physical activity based infrastructure. This has led to increased investment and strategic collaboration on programmes of work.

 

There is a significant evidence base for the positive impact of physical activity upon physical health, as well as mental health and wellbeing. As the strategic lead for physical activity in Norfolk, we advocate for it’s inclusion in local strategies, policies and services.

The Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care System (ICS) Health improvement Transformation Group has made physical activity a priority alongside smoking. The ICS has also published its forward plan, a significant milestone for healthcare in the region. The 5-year plan outlines key priorities, including how physical activity can improve population health, mental health, and enhance care for older adults. To read more on The Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care System (ICS)’S forward plan, click here.

We continue to collaborate with several national initiatives such as Live Longer Better Programme, Active Partnership Network, and Aging Well.

By leveraging national insights and evaluations, we incorporate this knowledge at the local level, ensuring well-informed decision-making. This approach enables us to effectively position ourselves to make impactful contributions to Norfolk.

In the last 12 months we have been successful with our partners in generating additional investment into physical activity and health improvement. This has included funding from:

  • Norfolk and Waveney ICB investment into Active NoW
  • West Norfolk Place Board
  • National Lottery
  • Better Care Fund
  • Mental Health Transformation
  • Health and Wellbeing Partnerships
  • Norfolk County Council Adult Social Care
  • Norfolk County Council Public Health
Find out more about our Health work

Our Children & Young People Team’s work

Impact Report - Children and Young People - Our Work

All children and young people have the right to be active, to benefit from being active in a safe and positive environment, and to have an equal chance to achieve their potential.

We work with groups and organisations who influence, support and guide young people’s lives. We want to provide our support and resources in order to improve the offer, remove the barriers, and promote opportunities. This will be to help children and young people lead active, happy and healthy lives.

As a result of our strategic work, we hope to see a coordinated system response that uses physical activity as part of the approach to supporting social issues. Whether through reducing physical inactivity, tackling health inequalities, or working with education, early years settings, or voluntary organisations to use physical activity to improve outcomes for the young people they engage..

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This year saw a big stride forward in our work in this space. We signed our ‘FLOURISH’ pledge, our commitment to Norfolk County Council’s strategy for improving outcomes for young people. We have also been working in partnership with Family Hubs, contributing to a physical activity training offer for peer support volunteers, and supporting the development of a digital offer for families to help support them to lead healthy lifestyles. We’ve also delivered, in partnership with NCC’s Children’s Services, a refreshed training package to our first early years practitioners to support their practice around physical activity and movement.

We’ve been working alongside our partners in the health system to drive forward a strategic agenda that focuses on using physical activity to tackle health inequalities, with opportunities identified around healthy lifestyle pathways, needs associated with neurodiversity, and supporting CYP on mental health service waitlists. We have taken a place based approach, and have been mapping youth services and support countywide, to integrate and design a holistic, preventative approach to supporting young people.

We passionately believe that young people should have the agency to determine support and provision that they want. We have started to embed youth voice within our internal processes, ensuring that any Active Norfolk project that engages young people consults them and offers the opportunity for feedback to ensure it meets their needs. We also advocate for youth voice in our systems work, ensuring coproduction is at the heart of any CYP initiative. We are also working to support the Breckland and West Norfolk Youth Advisory Boards on their ‘Right to Play’ campaign, which seeks to ensure accessible and inclusive play spaces for all.

We are continuing our commissioned work to coordinate the Active Lives Survey within Norfolk – a Sport England survey that measures sport and physical activity behaviours of 5-16 year olds. This data provides a bespoke report for the schools who take part, and we have used this report to support schools to interpret the data and implement change. 

In the year ahead, we aim to:

  • Engage more fully with the voluntary sector, using our existing networks across the youth sector in Norfolk.
  • Codevelop an Active Travel offer for schools in Norfolk.
  • Launch ‘Creating Active Schools’ – a whole school approach to physical activity that aligns and enshrines this with school improvement planning. We will be piloting this work with 10 of our ‘Opening School Facilities’ schools.
  • Highlight the impact of potential further loss of youth provision in the county, with funding for the Holiday Activity and Food programme coming to an end this year.
  • Contribute to the CYP governance of the county’s health inequalities work, working with the system and ICB place leads to do so.
Find out more about our CYP work

Our Environment Team’s work

Where we live has a massive impact on how we live. This, in turn, has a huge effect on our health and wellbeing.

The design of our streets, our neighbourhoods, and the opportunity to access good quality play areas, parks and open spaces all contribute to how active we are in our daily lives.

We work with partners across Norfolk to ensure that investments and infrastructure decisions are focused on the people they aim to help. We will promote growth and development which is accessible and enables people to have a greater choice in how they are active. This connects communities to purpose-built and natural environments in which they can be active.

There are 3 priorities we have been focusing in on over the past 12 months:

Work with planners and communities to enable health and wellbeing to be prioritised in the plans and policy

We have worked closely with Public Health Team to support the creation of Technical Research Papers for Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) by providing physical activity data. We also met regularly to review planning applications together and align our responses for greater impact.

We have identified Neighbourhood Plans as an area of potential to influence both new and existing local environments. We supported Public Health with the content of their Neighbourhood Planning Guidance, and we Parish and Town Councils will be a key stakeholder for us in 24/5.

All LPAs were surveyed to gather views and feedback on how they could apply Active Design within Plans, Guides and Codes. This will inform our support for LPAs in 24/5, potential areas of work include learning sessions and design charrettes.

Improve insight on access and quality of green infrastructure to enhance physical activity opportunities

Supported the development of the Greater Norwich Green Infrastructure Strategy by providing physical activity data and workshops on Active Spaces and Accessibility. This work has taken longer than initially expected, and it is hoped that projects or pilots will be identified in 2025 for activating and learning within priority places.

Schools as a focal point for creating places where communities walk, wheel and cycle more 

Worked closely with County Council teams connected with Active Travel, creating a working group, and organising workshops to develop commitment and define collective outcomes. This has taken longer than initially expected, and we hope to identify an action plan for the Active Travel Strategic Working Group based on 3 themes – Influencing stakeholders, Ensuring and facilitating system collaboration, Maximising impact and resources.

Find out more about our Environments work

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