By Teniola Yusuf, Business Development Officer at Resolve Poverty
In 2023, Resolve Poverty began delivering Poverty Awareness Training to professionals working in health across Greater Manchester.
This is part of our wider strategic partnership with NHS GM. The purpose of this partnership is to enable health professionals to understand the direct role they can play in addressing poverty, and to prevent the cycle of deepening poverty and health inequalities. Since developing this course for NHS GM we have also delivered bespoke versions to local councils and not-for-profit organisations.
“Now I can more easily identify patients who have money issues and get them started on finding help” – Poverty Awareness Training attendee
Course attendees
To date, 1,262 health professionals and NHS GM staff have attended our Poverty Awareness Training.
Attendees job roles included:
- People in policy, strategic and managerial roles
- Social workers
- Public health officers
- General practitioners
- Midwives
- Healthcare support workers
- VCFSE sector organisations.
Poverty Awareness Training: course content
Our Poverty Awareness Training is all about supporting professionals to better understand how poverty affects individuals and households, and equipping professionals with knowledge and skills to improve how they respond to poverty and support people struggling with their finances.
Course content is updated and adapted to ensure it remains current and meets the needs of attendees. Colleagues within the Population Health team at NHS GM have supported us with this and in advertising the training so it reaches as varied an audience as possible.
Part 1 of the course was focused on the practical steps individuals in frontline roles can take to support people struggling with their finances. It included:
- Building attendees’ confidence in identifying and supporting individuals and families who are struggling financially
- Practical guidance on how to hold effective conversations about money and finances
- Sharing practical tools and guidance on how to use them to support individuals and families struggling financially – these include benefit checkers, guides to NHS wide support, and Resolve Poverty’s Money Advice Referral Tool (MART).
Part 2 of the course was for attendees in strategic and policy roles, and it focused on how poverty can be tackled through strategic and policy interventions in the health system. It included:
- Sharing key findings from our October 2023 report, titled “The Role of the NHS in Greater Manchester in Tackling Poverty”
- Implementation of the socio-economic duty
- Maximising the impact the health service can have through procurement, commissioning and recruitment.
Impact of our training
- 95% of attendees said they felt more confident in supporting people experiencing poverty following the training.
- 89.5% let us know that the training exceeded their expectations.
The quotes below are from attendees. They demonstrate how our Poverty Awareness Training has helped them to better understand how poverty affects individuals and households, and what attendees can do in their job roles to tackle poverty:
- “Understanding how poverty can impact on people and how it can influence their engagement is really helpful. Better awareness leads to less judgement from professionals, which is what people living in poverty need”
- “I have come away with some reflection points about how we can improve the support services in tobacco dependency and ensuring a holistic approach to their assessment and complex needs”
- “The course provided me with more information about poverty and what to do if a client needs support”
- “[The training] provided me with a better insight into how poverty affects people in general and the impact on NHS services”
- “[This training] started making me think about what we could be doing differently as a system.”
If you’d like to find out more about how Poverty Awareness Training could benefit your organisation, please contact Tom Waring on thomas@resolvepoverty.org.
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This article is featured in our 7 May newsletter.
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