Ensuring great everyday support across Greater Manchester

Live Well is a partnership across Greater Manchester’s statutory and voluntary sector. In 2023, with generous support from The National Lottery Community Fund, the Live Well programme was launched, enabling five accelerator sites to lead work to tackle persistent barriers to Live Well.

After co-designing the programme with VCFSE, statutory partners and communities in 2021, we have been supporting Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Greater Manchester Integrated Care and the five cross-sector accelerator sites, to surface and connect insights from the work to support the strategic expansion of Live Well. 

Over the past year, Live Well’s strategic remit has expanded, becoming Greater Manchester’s catalyst for delivering long held prevention and reform ambitions. 

Achieving Greater Manchester’s Live Well ambition will focus on four key components:

1. Live Well Centres, Spaces and Offers, connecting brilliant everyday support
    
2. Vibrant and resilient VCFSE organisations and communities, resourced to respond at scale
    
3. An optimum neighbourhood model working alongside people and communities
    
4. A culture of prevention

Our approach

Our work in this programme is underpinned and guided by the Live Well learning framework, which has built the foundation for GM’s Live Well ambition and strategy. The framework points towards the type of enabling system environments needed to grow community action, power and wealth to tackle health, social and economic inequalities.

Our impact

Over the past three years, the GM Live Well movement has become a driving force for community-led change, gaining recognition across the UK. We have seen significant cultural shifts across Greater Manchester, with Live Well values becoming deeply embedded within local areas, between public services and the VCFSE sector, and alongside communities themselves.

As the Accelerator Programme draws to a close, our latest report focuses on the real-world impact of this work. By centring the voices and experiences of those on the frontline, it explores what happens when systems create the space to collaborate differently with communities.

What next?

Building on the initial investment and the rich learning from our accelerator programme, the strategic partnership between GM Live Well and The National Lottery Community Fund has expanded. In March, a new £16.5 million partnership was announced to continue developing community-led prevention across Greater Manchester.    

Flowing through 10GM and Local Infrastructure Organisations, this new investment will focus on: 

More information

As part of the growing Live Well movement, we also work closely with system and sector leaders to steer the strategic direction of GM Live Well and define a Live Well approach in specific policy areas:

Live Well Dementia

Greater Manchester Housing Providers’ Contribution to Live Well