Health & Wellbeing Strategy
November 2024 - October 2027
Using Stockport County Football Club as a catalyst for change
Foreword - Mark Stott
Having been at the helm of Stockport County FC for nearly five years, I’ve seen for myself how the power of football can have a positive influence upon communities, families and individuals. Sport has the unique ability to break down barriers and bring people together, often leading the way in addressing wider health and societal challenges; indeed, this was one of the driving forces behind the acquisition of my hometown club in 2020.
Over the past few years it’s been heartening to see the Trust connecting with local people through numerous community programmes, all designed to improve their lives and help them reach their full potential. However, there’s still more work to be done. While Stockport is a vibrant town with plenty to offer to those who live, learn and work here, unacceptable health inequalities remain. For instance, the life expectancy of a man
living in the deprived area of Brinnington is ten years lower than a man in the wealthier suburb of Bramhall, and – as we know from our own Kits By County campaign –pressures on the family purse often prevent school children from accessing PE lessons. The more we can do to tackle these issues, the better.
I firmly believe that football clubs have a responsibility to take care of the communities they represent, and that’s why I’m so pleased to see the launch of this ambitious three-year Health and Wellbeing Strategy. Not only does it aim to establish innovative projects to improve the mental, physical and social wellbeing of local people, it also plans to develop Edgeley Park as a community health asset by utilising our stadium and its facilities.
And, by encouraging collaboration across the sectors – whether that’s consulting with statutory organisations or engaging with specialist charities – this proactive and preventative three-year strategy will underline the value of successful partnership working.
I’ve always maintained that football can be a force for good, and I’m delighted that the Community Trust is taking full advantage of our club’s unique platform. Reducing health inequalities means giving everyone the opportunity to lead a happy and fulfilling life, no matter where they live or who they are.
Mark Stott Owner Stockport County Football Club
Using Stockport County to create a catalyst for change
By capitalising upon the locally trusted brand, facilities and reach of Stockport County Football Club, the Community Trust plays a significant role in improving and promoting positive mental and physical health across the borough of Stockport.
This strategy sets out our approach to health and wellbeing programmes over the next three years and outlines our evidence-based approach to tackling health inequalities, raising aspirations and creating strong, cohesive and sustainable communities. Our approach includes developing new pioneering and targeted projects across the life course specifically designed to support those who need it most.
The growth of Stockport County both on and off the pitch has created a unique opportunity to develop a pioneering threeyear Health and Wellbeing Strategy.
This will enable us to work with strategic partners and providers to develop new and innovative ways of working, with the Edgeley Park stadium becoming a sustainable, community-focused, health asset within Stockport.
Our long-term vision is to develop multiuse spaces within Edgeley Park to create a Community Wellbeing Hub. This would host a range of on-site provision, providing much-needed free-to-access projects that promote positive mental and physical health.
Adopting a place-based approach to health and wellbeing in the local area will enable us to promote and support a range of impactful programmes. We will respond flexibly and agilely as the system changes, and will evolve according to need.
Since the launch of the Trust, we have established highly successful and wellregarded health and wellbeing projects. These provide the basis for our future strategic approach which will involve engaging residents in co-produced, locally relevant and robustly-evaluated programmes which aim to improve life chances across Stockport.
Meeting the need in Stockport
We will harness the success and ambition of Stockport County to support health and wellbeing across the life course. We believe that residents of Stockport deserve the opportunity to realise their potential and enjoy happy, healthy and active lives.
For many residents, however, this is not always the case. Where you live within Stockport has a direct impact on your health and life expectancy. Stark health inequalities exist throughout the borough:
Physical Activity
80,000 adults in Stockport are not meeting the Chief Medical Officer’s minimum physical activity recommendations.
26,000 5-16-year-olds in Stockport are not currently meeting the Chief Medical Officer’s minimum physical activity recommendations.
Only 38% of Stockport residents under the age 16 are considered sufficiently physically active for health.
Over 200 premature deaths would be prevented each year if minimum recommended levels of physical activity were achieved by those aged between 40 and 79.
Mental Health
1 in 5 of our young people have low life satisfaction.
The number of people with diagnosed depression has increased by 63% between 2016 and 2022, to 39,780.
Between 2005 and 2022, the number of people diagnosed with serious mental illness increased by 41% to 3,040.
The under-75 mortality rate for all causes is 4.3 times higher for people with a serious mental illness than the general population, and this gap is widening.
Why is Stockport County Community Trust well-placed to deliver this work?
Our expanding range of nonstigmatising, non-clinical, facilities at Edgeley Park can be used effectively to engage local residents in sustainable and impactful programmes.
We will create a Wellbeing Hub for the benefit of our local communities and, where possible, will make the stadium accessible for participants and practitioners to access health and wellbeing support.
Over time, we will become a valued ‘anchor organisation’ which supports Stockport-wide health priorities and helps create the optimum conditions for delivering cost-effective early intervention. It is hoped that targeted prevention work will lead to sustainable improvements in health and wellbeing.
We are closely linked to other organisations, and are committed to meaningful and trusting collaboration.
We will identify key strategic partnerships and will work with health and wellbeing experts to share resources and insight. All projects will be co-delivered with specialist community organisations, providing programmes that are person-centred in order to encourage local people to access the support they need and want. We will also ensure we support the ONE Stockport Family Hub model, which showcases local services and supports the town’s residents and their families.
We have a significant matchday and social media reach
Having this unique ‘captive audience’ will allow us to pinpoint different and diverse sections of the community who might not usually access health care through traditional means. By developing Edgeley Park into a community asset, we can target and identify these at-risk groups and individuals, providing the ideal place to engage them in effective health and wellbeing programmes.
Focus areas for our Strategy
Three Pillars for Health & Wellbeing
1 3 2
Helping to create a more active Stockport
• Maximising resources to develop a range of bespoke physical activity projects focused on reducing health inequalities within the borough.
• Supporting those living with long-term health conditions.
• Using exercise as a preventative measure for chronic illness.
• Encouraging children and young people to be physically active.
• Lower the future risk of residents developing type 2 diabetes.
• Provide more proactive healthcare for older residents, closer to home.
• Inactivity not only places excess strain on the health and social care system,
but evidence illustrates the detrimental impact it has on individual achievement, social and economic development, and community cohesion (One Stockport Active Communities Strategy 20222030, Stockport Primary Care Networks, 2024).
Project examples include Kits by County (Start Well), Healthy Hatters, Parkinsons UK (Live Well), Social Wellbeing Group (Age Well).
Promoting mental health and wellbeing
• Using the trusted brand and significant reach to provide mental health support, underpinned by practitioners and specialist agencies.
• Become a key signposting hub for participants who access our services, working with the wider health network to support participants to access specialist
care, where appropriate.
• Develop a sustainable timetable of targeted mental health and wellbeing projects.
• Improve our community offer: prevent boredom, tackle isolation, improve mental health, support and help manage past trauma.
• Deliver mental wellbeing projects in education settings
• Reduce alcohol-related and other substance use harm.
• Unblock barriers to mental health support by helping residents to navigate the system with confidence.
Project examples include: Together Schools Project (Start Well), Wellbeing Football (Live Well), 90 Minute Club (Age Well).
Creating impactful social provision
• Developing projects that encourage participation, support those in need to access relevant groups and meet likeminded people.
• Focusing on enhancing the quality of life and reducing social isolation and loneliness.
• Improve dementia care and support.
• Develop peer-led, lived experience groups.
• Improve knowledge/skills of community staff and volunteers.
We will continuously aim to develop an infrastructure that focuses on reducing health inequalities and tackling the determinants of health. This will help alleviate the increasing demand on costly statutory services, and help reduce waiting times by providing accessible health services in local communities.
Project examples include: Premier League Kicks (Start Well), Healthy Hatters (Live Well), Social Wellbeing Group (Age Well)
Project Design & Evaluation
Guiding principles
• Co-designed, free-to-access provision across the life course.
• Agile and flexible programming, reacting to local need.
• Participant-centred project design with lived experience at the heart of everything we do.
Programme Mechanisms: What makes our projects work
• Caring, proactive and experienced staff team.
• Structured, professional programming, ensuring important key factors are met to promote positive health outcomes.
• Content designed around education, delivered with care.
• Mental and physical health impacts are considered in everything we do.
• Evidence-based learning and development through robust evaluation, including with partners.
• Helping people stay well and detecting illness earlier.
• Muli-generational-centred approach to project design and delivery.
• Reducing barriers to access and enhancing referral pathways.
• Collaboration with local communities and experts.
• Safe, accessible and aspirational environments.
• Detailed and robust monitoring and evaluation.
Programme Title
Context Inputs Activities Outputs
What problem does the programme address?
What is the overall purpose of your programme?
The resources you have available to work with:
Funding input
Worker input
What does the funder get out of choosing us to deliver?
What activities does the programme entail?
What data will you collect?
What are the tangible things you want to deliver and to who?
What outputs are you interested in?
Short-term Outcomes
Long-term Impact
What are the expected short-term outcomes?
Think immediate post-porgamme changes
What are the expected long-term impacts?
Think 3, 6 or 9 moths + down the line of programme completion
Timeline & Development
The implementation of this strategy will be an agile, phased approach, according to changing timelines and funding.
Year 2 Year 1
• Launch County’s Healthier Communities initiative, creating a timetable of targeted health and wellbeing interventions across start well, live well and age well.
• Further establish match-day health messaging initiatives.
• Develop further provision on site at Edgeley Park, marking the first phase of health asset development.
• Health and Wellbeing staff team development.
• Build key strategic partnerships across Stockport.
• Focus on supporting priority wards: Victoria (Edgeley, Davenport, Shaw Heath, Cale Green, Cheadle Heath, Heaviley and Offerton) and Tame Valley (Brinnington, Reddish, Lancashire Hill and parts of Heaton Norris). Residents in these areas of Stockport have higher rates for many long-term conditions and particularly high rates of COPD, PAD, dementia, self-harm, heart failure, diabetes and serious mental illness.
By focusing on tackling inactivity and challenges around poor mental health, and by reacting to local need, we can start to build provision and continue to grow into further areas of the borough.
• Further establish a growing timetable and growing workforce and provide foundations for wider project funding and commissioning.
• Developing planning into new stands and shaping spaces for community health assets.
• Develop workforce to recruit specialist practitioners and delivery staff.
• Establish further projects into the wider borough.
• Identify further priority wards across Stockport, providing provision into the wider area, creating remote programming supporting a wider demographic.
Year 3
• Opening access to new facilities and promoting new bespoke Community Health Hub model.
• Working to develop new opportunities, establish growth and sustain progress.
• Continuing to be agile, working with Public Health, Primary Care Networks, NHS Trusts and specialist organisations to build programmes that support local residents and reduce health inequalities within Stockport.
• Establishing a presence across each ward within every borough, developed according to need.
How will we know its working?
We have teamed up with academic and evaluation expert partners to help monitor and evaluate our health provision across the next three years.
Our programmes will use the reach of the football club and the EFL to produce case studies, impact reports and data that will best showcase our project outputs, outcomes and impacts.
We will also understand areas that require work or development to inform future project design. This will help us to map our progress and monitor positive health outcomes across the next three years. We will periodically update on the impact of our work, including a three-year impact report in 2027.
Stockport County Community Trust would like to thank the following partners for their input and support in the development of our Health and Wellbeing Strategy:
Pennine Care
Stockport
References
1. Primary Care Network, 2024. ALT Population Health Care Plan.
2. Stockport Council, 2024. One Stockport Family Hubs Seven-Minute Briefing
3. ONE Stockport, 2024. All Together As One, Our Vision for 2030
4. ONE Stockport, 2023. ONE Stockport Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2023 – 2030
5. ONE Stockport, 2024; THE ONE STOCKPORT HEALTH AND CARE PLAN 2024-2029
6. ONE Stockport Active Communities Strategy 2022 – 2030
7. ONE Stockport, One Stockport One Future: Delivering 5 Things Together
8. Sport England, 2021; Uniting the Movement
9. EFL in the Community, 2024; EFL in the Community Strategy 2024-2029
