It is with great pleasure that we can announce that we are now able to re-start our Torbay on the Move Appreciative Inquiry. With 11 months passed since we were able to undertake the Discovery Phase we feel that it would be beneficial to bring people back together, re-visit what we discovered in early 2020, re-evaluate whether these discoveries are still relevant now we are living through a global pandemic and plan for Torbay on the Move to move forward.
Things have changed considerably since we last met but we have all continued to work hard to try and shift inactivity levels across Torbay but there is still a lot that can be done in order to be successful in making the changes that we all want to see.
Caroline Dimond, Torbay Director of Public Health says; ‘The Covid pandemic has highlighted the importance of physical activity – not only as a way of reducing some of the risk factors associated with the poorer outcomes of some who become ill, but also for maintaining people’s health and wellbeing during lockdowns. Greater appreciation of things that we previously took for granted such as a walk in the park; run along the beach or playing team sports suddenly became precious activities that we valued or longed for.
The Pandemic shone a brighter light on the inequalities in our society where we found that the most affluent where better able to keep fit and active during lockdown than the least affluent. As the path out of Covid starts to become clearer, Torbay on the Move gives us the perfect vehicle to build on our strengths and use our collective learning from the pandemic to promote the benefits and opportunities for physical activity for everyone in Torbay.’
Now more than ever our Health and Wellbeing Board want to make a difference for the people that live and work in Torbay and Torbay Council as a whole is supporting a drive to better work with our communities to take joint ownership to achieve this. Alongside this we want to support efficiencies, reduce duplication and maximise the limited funding that is available.
Sport England has been developing and exploring different approaches to their strategy, focussing on a systems leadership approach which is highly collaborative. This workshop will re-introduce this. It will help us to look at how we want to work together across Torbay and develop clarity over what it is we want to achieve (for the population).
We know a fair bit about our physical activity levels and we know something about barriers and behaviours; but we know you, our partners, have a wealth of KNOWLEDGE and INSIGHT about what it is like for people to live in Torbay and we want to learn from you. We know that wellbeing is key in supporting people to make healthier choices and this is why we want to continue the focus on wellbeing across the Torbay system.
One of the standout qualities of physical activity is that by increasing wellbeing we will make the people of Torbay more resilient to the challenges they face. Therefore we want to drive a focus on physical activity as a catalyst to improved wellbeing, making people better able to tackle those issues they see as key to improving their lives.
Can we pull our knowledge together to help US (you and us) to create a more coherent picture overall and find the best way to get more people, more active, more often, to better support health inequalities.
