Liverpool Researchers Receive Funding to Assess and Improve Support for Local Households

Researchers at the University of Liverpool have received a share of £9.7M new UKRI funding announced this week, for projects aimed at ensuring everyone in the UK has a path to economic success and personal wellbeing, regardless of where they live.

The CHESS: Civic Health Equity: from Silos to Systems project will evaluate the health impact of multiple programmes of social and economic support for households across Liverpool City Region (LCR) – including 6 local authority districts with a 1.6 million population.

These services help struggling households with income, employment and training addressing UKRI’s themes of place-based health inequalities and sustainable economic growth.  They include:

• The Ways to Work programme which provides services to enhance employability including information, advice and guidance, transitional employment opportunities and skills development.
• Households into Work which supports people at risk of eviction, homelessness, domestic abuse, social isolation and chronic health issues.
• Liverpool Citizens Support Scheme (LCSS) which provides direct cash and in-kind transfers to households in crisis
• Citizens Advice on Prescription (CAP) which aims to improve mental health and wellbeing by supporting patients with non-medical issues that may impact their health.
• The Life Rooms which provides a wide range of support to improve your physical and mental wellbeing and is delivered by Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust.

This research will investigate what is working well and what isn’t. It will examine their costs and health benefits, and how to adapt and combine them to maximise impact; redesigning services to benefit disadvantaged communities, in LCR and beyond.

Findings will also contribute to the ongoing work by the Mental Health Research for Innovation Centre on improving population mental health in Liverpool City Region and the work by the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place on public service reform.

Ben Barr, Professor of Applied Public Health Research at the University of Liverpool said: “The UK has larger economic differences between regions than other countries in Europe leading to large differences in health, with poorer areas like Liverpool City Region having poorer health.  CHESS will work with organizations across the region that provide services aiming to reduce poverty and increase employment investigating their costs and health benefits, learning how to adapt and combine them to maximise impact; redesigning services to benefit disadvantaged communities, in the region and beyond.”

Funding for these projects comes from the UKRI Creating Opportunities and Improving Outcomes Strategic Theme.

Professor Alison Park, head of UKRI’s Creating Opportunities and Improving Outcomes Strategic Theme, said: “Across the political spectrum, there is agreement that the regional disparities that exist in the UK do real social and economic damage. Policymakers and researchers have tried various ways of addressing those disparities, but we often don’t truly know how effective they are – or if there at better ways of achieving our goals.

“The projects announced today will help to fill this knowledge gap by evaluating the effectiveness of these interventions. That way, we can ensure policymakers focus their efforts on the best ways to improve lives and opportunities across every part of the UK.”