Health and wellbeing in Newham

Newham Social Welfare Alliance

BSL Support

The pandemic has taught us that if we work together on key issues in Newham then we can make a real difference to people's lives.

The Social Welfare Alliance is supporting all frontline workers with information and referral pathways to support residents around income maximisation, immigration support and advice, early years, housing issues and much more.

The purpose of this is to enhance the skills you already have! And facilitate you getting in touch with others having similar conversations across the borough. 

The training sessions are for anyone in the borough who is regularly having conversations with residents who are presenting with a range of social welfare issues. It applies to any of the borough wide workforce who intercept residents via support services, and in a community, food, or clinical setting where there are underlying issues that are affecting their health and where speedy and efficient support and/or signposting will make an immediate difference.

All sessions are free to attend and being delivered online. You will need to sign up via the Eventbrite links. Once registered, you will receive the link to join nearer to the time of the planned training. You will also receive a certificate of attendance after the session.

The full training timetable can be accessed via the link below and you can click in the Eventbrite links to register for the sessions. We will keep this programme updated regularly so please check for new sessions.

Training Programme and booking details 

To register for any sessions available, please visit the training calendar

The Social Welfare Alliance report for November 2020 (PDF)

Bromley by Bow Centre have written up a case study on the Social Welfare Alliance

For more information, please contact helena.taylor@newham.gov.uk

Newham Migrant Community Action Plan

The Newham Migrant Community Action plan has been written by a cross sector project team with colleagues from Praxis and Ramfel taking the lead. It is now in implementation stage with significant work being undertaken to boost immigration support capacity in the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS).    

The 11 point action plan is designed address shortfalls in high quality advice and understanding the rights of those with NRPF or asylum seekers – access to health care, school admissions for example

The plan covers:

  • The cost benefit of working up stream
  • No recourse to public funds
  • Undocumented Children including securing school admissions  
  • Asylum seekers and refugees
  • Access to healthcare
  • Homelessness and rough sleeping
  • Domestic abuse
  • Build capacity of VCFS front line workers
  • International students
  • EU Settled Status
  • Cross-cutting measures

50 Steps Migrant Community Action Plan (PDF)

If you have any questions please contact Elizabeth.owen@newham.gov.uk

Preventing Residents from Reaching Crisis

London Office of Technology & Innovation (LOTI) awarded funding to Newham and Hackney Councils to work in partnership on a project to design and put in place more preventative measures to help ensure residents whose vulnerabilities have been exacerbated by the pandemic avoid reaching crisis point.

During the Covid pandemic, many residents’ needs were exacerbated and boroughs experimented with a range of new ways of working within their organisations and with local and voluntary organisations to address those needs before escalating. The ‘Preventing Residents from Reaching Crisis’ project sought to explore the role and effectiveness of a range of solutions in preventing vulnerable residents from reaching crisis and build on the range of new and improved relationships with internal services and community partners to identify needs and intervene early.

Newham and Hackney teams developed a toolkit which aims to share the methods, approaches and outputs delivered as part of the ‘Preventing Residents from Reaching Crisis’ project, to make it easier for other boroughs wishing to emulate this approach.

If you have any questions please contact Helena.taylor@newham.gov.uk