The Healthy Communities Together programme

The HCT programme is being delivered in five local areas across England. The five successful partnerships received up to £450,000 of grant funding, as well as ongoing learning and development support from The King’s Fund, over a further three years.

Each partnership is aiming to transform the way communities, voluntary and community sector organisations, NHS organisations and local authorities work together in their area.

The five partnerships are:

Coventry

At the community level, Coventry aims to build capacity for community led initiatives and engaging individual community members at a hyperlocal level.

At the system level, Coventry then aims to feed back the learning from these conversations and reflections on collaboration back to the wider system.

Coventry have focussed on building capacity for localised community-led initiatives, such as a community-run men’s mental health group.

Providing dedicated community forums (“Big Conversations”) for system stakeholders to discuss topics collaboratively.

Croydon

Building on the One Croydon Alliance, Croydon aims to move resource, power and money to the voluntary sector, by creating a voice for VCSE sector within statutory governance.

They have implemented three workstreams

• Empowerment and engagement aims to shift power to local communities by embedding a locality model for service delivery
• The VCSE leadership board aims to create a stronger voice for the voluntary sector within statutory governance
• Funding and commissioning is trialling a local commissioning model which moves towards outcomes-based commissioning to shift resources to the voluntary sector.

Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire are testing the hypothesis that relationships are key to effective system wide collaboration which better addresses local community needs.

They are taking a relational approach, with an explicit focus on reflection rather than on delivery. This involves questioning the current system-wide processes, approaches and norms.

They have begun a ‘Collaboratory’ which aims to provide space for external stakeholders to engage with and reflect on questions of collaboration, partnership and system change.

Leeds

Leeds aims to achieve improved outcomes for marginalised communities, with a particular focus on trans people; asylum seekers and refugees; gypsy and traveller communities; and sex workers. They are testing whether relational approaches mitigate power imbalances, and if commissioning from the margins will ultimately improve health outcomes for the wider population.

Leeds have conducted a series of deep dive adaptive action workshops with stakeholders from wider system and experts by experience into topics such as primary care, urgent care and mental health. From this they have implemented five experiments which aim to improve access to and experience of primary care.

Plymouth

Plymouth aims to provide alternative ways of bringing community voices and insight into services and commissioning services. They are specifically focussing on tackling social isolation and loneliness.

Partners have implemented a ‘community research’ programme. They train members of the community to carry out ‘conversations’, and plan to use their findings as a new type of evidence to impact system-wide decision making.

Find out more about the HCT partnerships in their own words

National Evaluation of the Healthy Communities Together programme

The National Lottery Community Fund has commissioned Cordis Bright, an independent evaluator, to undertake a national evaluation of the HCT programme to understand the difference partnership working makes and in what context.

The evaluation is taking place between January 2023 and June 2025 and being designed and delivered in collaboration with The National Lottery Community Fund, The King’s Fund and local HCT partnerships.

For further information about the HCT evaluation and access the latest publications, visit Cordis Bright’s HCT Evaluation webpage.

Learning from The King’s Fund

Throughout the Healthy Communities Together programme The King’s Fund is capturing and sharing learning about what supports partnership working. Explore the latest outputs from the project.

Health Equalities Grantees

The Health Equalities programme is made up of twelve partnerships across England. All twelve are in receipt of up to £450,000 in grant funding, as well as learning and support from our Learning Partner, Innovation Unit over a further two years.

The partnerships are working in different localities with a range of models focusing on a variety of health inequalities. The overall aims are the same:

• Integration of VCSE into health and care system including the new Integrated Care Systems (ICS)
• Development of cross-sector partnerships (health, local government and VCSE)
• Support for marginalised communities or specific health conditions
• Civil society capacity building in order to achieve the above.

The twelve Health Equalities partnerships are:-

• Accrington
• Bolton
• Black Country
• Greenwich
• Halton & St Helens
• Kent
• Northamptonshire
• Scarborough
• Sheffield
• Staffordshire
• Stockton
• Tower Hamlets

Meet the 12 Health Equalities partnerships

Learning from the Health Equality Partnerships

By sharing learning and insights relating to tackling health inequalities, we aim to support partnerships to build a legacy beyond their National Lottery funding and point towards longer-term system change. Find out more about the learning from the 12 partnerships.

This includes:

• A storybook, covering insights of place-based partnerships tackling health inequalities
• Blogs
• Resources including top tips on working with the NHS, theory of change tool, communications toolkit
• Slide decks and videos of learning events.