The Wellbeing Bus is an NHS pilot scheme that travels across North Central London to support the health and wellbeing of care home staff. To find out more about this project, we sat down with Muyi Adekoya, NCL ICB’s Head of Market Development, and Louise Keane, NCL Training Hub Nurse Educator Lead.
Why and when did this scheme start?
During training sessions on how to take residents’ vital signs such as blood pressure, staff were often found to have high blood pressure which they were unaware of. Staff also frequently reported challenges in seeking healthcare due to work schedules and other commitments and responsibilities.
That’s why the health and wellbeing bus began in April 2023, with an aim to pick up cardiovascular disease, assess diabetes risk, provide health coaching, and to give staff the opportunity for a holistic consultation with a clinician. To make access easy, the bus sets up at different care homes on relevant days so that staff from other services like homecare can access the service as well.
Who has been involved in this scheme?
It is run as a joint venture involving North Central London Integrated Care Board, North Central London Councils, and North Central London Training Hub.
What have the results been so far?
As of April 2024, the team have hosted 19 sessions and have supported 436 staff. The scheme has also won or been nominated for a number of awards, including:
- Bronze winner in the Innovation category at the IESE Public Sector Transformation Awards
- Shortlisted for the HSJ Patient Safety Awards for Staff Wellbeing Initiative of the Year
- Shortlisted twice for the Nursing Times Awards in the Nursing in Social Care and Public Health Nursing categories
Why is it so important that we protect the health and wellbeing of care home staff in particular?
The health and wellbeing bus identified significant unmet health needs among staff and highlighted health inequalities impacting many of those working to support some of our most vulnerable adults. While we are currently reviewing the data from the latest sessions which ran from January to March this year, our data from 2023 highlighted the following:
- 74% of care workers were found to be overweight or obese (notably higher compared to the national average of 64%)
- 45% were at moderate or high risk of developing diabetes and required further blood tests
- 82% of staff seen were female
- 62% were from a black, Asian or an ethnic minority background
- 51% had high blood pressure
- 81% of those with high blood pressure were new cases with previously undiagnosed hypertension
Key themes also emerged from the health and wellbeing bus days including:
- long shifts – exhaustion leading to inactivity, poor diet, and lack of social life
- low pay and cost of living impacting food/exercise
- no lunch breaks and commonly skipping breakfast
- unhealthy food provided by organisations
- thinking that moving in the workplace is sufficient exercise
- for many, English is their second language or they have recently moved to the UK and aren’t aware of their healthcare entitlement
- feeling that healthcare is inaccessible post-Covid
What are the next steps for the bus?
The current wave of site visits finished at the end of March and the team are currently seeking additional funding to support the delivery of checks to wider settings in 2024.
This work has also been shared with the Department of Health and Social Care with a view to seeing how this innovative approach to supporting social care staff could be adopted elsewhere in the country.
Work has been done cross-organisationally to look at how individuals and organisations can be supported with the range of health issues and life challenges identified through the health and wellbeing bus.
For more information, please contact Muyi.Adekoya@nhs.net or Louise.Keane1@nhs.net