Registered charity 1145054 · Bilston, Wolverhampton
We help older and disabled people in Wolverhampton stay steady after they come home from hospital: the confidence to use the technology, the movement that keeps them safe, and the company that makes both worth doing. This is what social prescribing means in practice.
The gap we work in
Someone comes out of hospital and there is nobody there.
They cannot book the follow-up appointment, because it has to be done on an app.
They stop moving, because moving hurts and nobody is watching.
Then they fall, and it starts again.
Our approach
Getting onto the NHS app, booking a GP appointment, keeping in touch with family, without shame and at their own pace.
Walking, cycling, paddling, chair-based sessions. Peer-led, so people keep coming back.
Someone to do it alongside. The company is what turns a one-off session into a habit that holds.
This is what social prescribing means in practice. We came to it through a pilot with Wolverhampton Voluntary and Community Action.
What we do
We sit with people one to one and show them how to use a phone or tablet, get onto the NHS app, book a GP appointment, and keep in touch with family. We have run this work for several years.
One person at a time, at their own pace
A Bilston Community Association project, delivered by Your Helping Hands. We go out to people who have just come home from hospital and have no internet at home. That is the point where people fall through the gap, so that is where we go.
Peer-led walking, cycling, canoeing and kayaking, outdoor clay pigeon shooting, and chair-based exercise sessions. Led by people from the community, so they keep going after we step back.
We refurbished the garden at Bilston Community Centre for the Queen's Jubilee, and again for the King Charles project, so people have somewhere safe and pleasant to sit in the summer.
Working with smaller groups
Some groups know exactly what their community needs, but have no website and no experience of writing a funding bid, so the money never reaches them.
We hold the funding and the governance so they can get on with the work. The Asian ladies' group runs its own chair-based exercise sessions this way.
Where we are, and why people come
We are based at Bilston Community Centre, a volunteer-led hub. People come because there is someone here they trust who speaks their language. That matters more than anything else we could offer.
Many would not walk into a mainstream leisure centre or health service. The language is a barrier, and so is the sense that the place was not built with them in mind. Here, it was.
Who we are
They came to us as people who needed help, or as volunteers. We trained them, they became team leaders, then ambassadors in their own communities, and now they sit on our board. One of them first came for one-to-one help booking GP appointments and using the NHS app, and was too embarrassed to ask anyone else.
“The real barrier is shame, not technology.”
Track record