COMMUNITY HEALTH & WELLBEING WORKERS

About the Roles

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Community Health and Wellbeing Workers (CHWWs) are an exciting, new part of the health system landscape in Cornwall. It is inspired by, and based on, the Brazilian Family Health Strategy, which has had an army of CHWWs in place since 1994! In Brazil, there are 275,000 CHWWs all across the country, working closely with about 40,000 primary care teams. It has led to extraordinary outcomes across all age groups and conditions.

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As in Brazil, the Cornwall CHWWs are recruited from local areas, and they are paid full- or part-time, to provide regular and ongoing health and social care support to all households, and for all residents, in small neighbourhoods of around 120 households each. CHWWs are part of the primary care team, but also integrated into the wider health and social care system, so any problems that arise, or any support that residents might be needing, from one month to the next, can be identified and referred on in a timely manner. Currently, Cornwall counts on around 34 CHWWs, and it has been so well received that it might grow even bigger!

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This work is part of a wider effort to scale the CHWW role across the whole of England and Wales. Since 2019, the National Association of Primary Care and Imperial College London have been working together to implement this in many areas in the country. There are many localities already piloting and scaling this role, such as in Westminster, Bridgewater, Calderdale, Wandsworth, Oxford and many more. The initiative has been cited in major national policy reports and is looking to expand even further. Over time, we expect the CHWW initiative to lead to big improvements in patient care outcomes, uptake of preventative services, access to care, and care coordination.

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At Growing Links we have 3 CHWWs, Sean who is full time and Caroline & Lauren who work part time.