Ways to Wellness UK

11/11/2025

🏆 We were honoured to be part of the team that received the ‘Partnership Working’ award at The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Celebrating Excellence Awards, recognising our work on the TAPER2 programme.

TAPER2 brought together healthcare professionals, social prescribers, including the Ways to Wellness PROSPeR (Perioperative Social Prescribing) team, and the Deep End Network of GP practices to support people to ‘wait well’ for surgery through opioid deprescribing and social prescribing.

TAPER2 saw:

64% overall reduction in analgesic prescriptions
74% of patients supported by Ways to Wellness reduced opioids by more than half

Read more in our blog to see how collaboration across Primary and Secondary care, community organisations, and VCSE partners can deliver real improvements for patients and the wider health system.

https://www.waystowellness.org.uk/newsblogs/ways-to-wellness-rewarded-for-its-partnership-working-at-the-newcastle-hospitals-celebrating-excellence-awardsnbsp

The TAPER2 team were honoured to receive the Partnership Working award at the recent Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust ’s annual Celebrating Excellence Awards, in recognition of their collaborative approach to helping people ‘wait well’ for surgery through opioid deprescribing...

10/11/2025

🎬 Join us this Thursday at Tullie, Carlisle, Cumbria, for a special screening of ‘See the Whole of Me’ - a short animation inspired by the experiences of a diverse group of Cumbrian mums.

This powerful 3-and-a-half-minute film shares the voices of women from seldom-heard communities, who too often feel unseen or excluded within the healthcare system.

Come along to hear from all the partners who contributed to this project, and join the conversation on the transformational power of listening for new and mums-to-be.

The event will include a drinks reception, an animation screening, and talks, with an exclusive first look at the exhibition to follow throughout the next week at Tullie.

📅 Date: 5pm, Thursday 13 November 2025
📍 Location: Tullie, Carlisle, Cumbria
🔗 Sign up: https://tullie.org.uk/events/happy-mums-foundation-see-the-whole-of-me-film-screening/

The Happy Mums Foundation Newcastle University Cumbria CVS Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Roots and Wings

06/11/2025

Celebrating !

As we nearly come to the end of , we’re highlighting the depth of experience our trustees bring to the table.

At Ways to Wellness, we know how vital the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector is in keeping people well and reducing .

Having trustees who understand both the VCSE sector and how it works alongside the NHS and wider healthcare system helps us strengthen partnerships and work across sectors to improve people’s wellbeing.

Our trustees have:

➡️ Founded and grown voluntary and community organisations from the ground up
➡️ Led a mental health charity as CEO for more than a decade
➡️ Advised VCSE organisations on finance, governance and effective frameworks
➡️ Served on boards across everything from therapeutic horticulture to healthcare innovation

This collective expertise informs the way we work at Ways to Wellness, helping us tackle health inequalities through collaboration.

We want to say a huge thank you to our Trustees!

Professor Chris Drinkwater, Dr Guy Pilkington, Brendan Hill, Professor David Hunter, Mary Jordan, John Spurr, Dr Ruth Briel, Dr Robert Westgate, Dr Leahan Garratt.

👉 Meet our Board: https://www.waystowellness.org.uk/meet-our-board

05/11/2025

Great to be at today's The King's Fund annual conference looking at courage, honesty and the future of healthcare.

The first panel, featuring King's Fund CEO Sarah Woolnough, Medical Director of NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria Andy Knox MBE, Derbyshire-based mental health nurse CJ Nwasike, Kent care home manager Judy Heathfield-Eliott, and Dr Jess Steele OBE, of Jericho Road Solutions, looked at how we create a system that is responsive to need, given the gigantic impact of poverty on services.

But the 10-year plan is full of possibility, and we know that well thought out policies can change outcomes for good. Getting the admin right as part of this is crucial, and we must take into account people's experience of receiving post-appointment letters, the timing of appointments for those who may have to travel a long way to attend for example.

Patients can have very good clinical care, but often feel let down when negotiating the system.

04/11/2025

Read our latest blog post by Head of Implementation Ang Broadbridge to understand the factors beyond technology that are central to innovation at Ways to Wellness -

The term innovation is used a lot when talking about health these days. Frequently coupled with digital and the evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is often viewed only through a technical lens, and technological advancements are undoubtedly part of the picture. But valuable aspects that c

03/11/2025

It’s Trustees’ Week, and at Ways to Wellness, we are fortunate to have a board with a breadth of healthcare expertise.

Many of our Trustees are clinicians, including GPs, a psychiatrist, a mental health nurse, and a psychologist, who have spent decades working in the communities most affected by health inequalities.

They bring a lifelong commitment to supporting communities and developing innovative approaches to address health inequalities, both at an individual and systemic level.

Their valuable and extensive knowledge of healthcare and the NHS strengthens all our pilots and prototypes, ensuring they can make a real difference for the people and systems we serve.

We want to say a huge thank you to our Trustees!

Professor Chris Drinkwater, Dr Guy Pilkington, Brendan Hill, Professor David Hunter, Mary Jordan, John Spurr, Dr Ruth Briel, Dr Robert Westgate, Dr Leahan Garratt.

👉 Meet our Board: https://www.waystowellness.org.uk/meet-our-board

[Photo of founder and former chair Professor Chris Drinkwater and current chair Dr Guy Pilkington at the Ways to Wellness and Blue Stone Collaborative merger event in 2022]

22/10/2025

We’re at Connecting Communities – the North East Social Capital Summit today at The Glasshouse International Centre for Music!

It's been a brilliant event so far exploring the power of neighbourhoods and how we can work together to build social capital across our region.

At Ways to Wellness, we see every day how connection changes lives, whether it’s helping people get more active, linking new parents to local groups, or simply reducing isolation.

If you’re here today, come and say hello 👋

21/10/2025

Internet access is vital in our lives, whether for work or staying in touch with friends and family. Yet, two million households lack home internet, and 2.4 million can’t afford a mobile phone.

This year we became a National Databank Hub by joining the National Digital Inclusion Network – a community hosted by the Good Things Foundation with the aim of fixing this digital divide!

Ways to Wellness’ link workers can now issue SIM cards to the most vulnerable individuals they are working with, helping improve that community access that is so vital to our quality of life. Through this we are encouraging people to take a small step toward improving their digital skills.

Read our blog 🔗 https://www.waystowellness.org.uk/newsblogs/ways-to-wellness-becomes-national-databank-hub

Internet access is vital in our lives, whether for work or staying in touch with friends and family. Yet, two million households lack home internet, and 2.4 million can’t afford a mobile phone.  North East England has one of the highest rates of digital exclusion, with 8% of people offli

20/10/2025

🏆 We won! We’re so proud to be part of TAPER2 - opioid deprescribing in socially deprived patients waiting elective surgery.

TAPER2 won the Partnership Working category in The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Celebrating Excellence Awards 2025!

The project is a wonderful example of collaboration across healthcare, bringing together social prescribers, GP and nurses to support vulnerable patients to “Wait Well” as they prepare for surgery.

Well done to everyone who worked on TAPER2 including:
Thomas Lovedawn, Ang Broadbridge, Kiran Singh (pictured) - Social prescribers, Ways to Wellness, James Prentis – Waiting Well Lead / Consultant Anaesthetist, Freeman Hospital, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Sameena Hassan - GP / Co-Clinical Lead, Deep End GP NENC, Charlotte Parbery-Clark - Honorary Consultant in Public Health and NIHR (National Institute for Health and Care Research) Doctoral Fellow, Angela Telford - Nurse Specialist (Inpatient Pain) / Waiting Well NICP Operational Lead, and Rachel Vincent - Senior Clinical Pharmacist, Integrated Care Senior for Inner West PCN at The Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

17/10/2025

🏆 We want to wish everyone good luck at The Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Celebrating Excellence Awards 2025 tonight.

We’re so proud that 'TAPER2 - opioid deprescribing in socially deprived patients waiting elective surgery' has been nominated in the 'Partnership working' category.

Well done to everyone who was nominated!

Ways to Wellness supports the NHS Waiting Well project, helping people on surgical waiting lists to prepare so they recover better post-operatively, with less likelihood of hospital re-admission.

Our specialist link workers provide non-medical support, helping people feel more confident to manage all aspects affecting their health and wellbeing, with support offered both before and after surgery.

It has been brilliant working with the entire TAPER2 team.

Read more 🔗 https://www.waystowellness.org.uk/prosper

10/10/2025

In our latest blog post, we review a recent bootcamp we supported at the National Innovation Centre for Data (NICD), giving Newcastle University graduate trainees a real-world data challenge to tackle

https://www.waystowellness.org.uk/newsblogs/ways-to-wellness-data-bootcamp