Whole systems approach to obesity workshops

Funding is available to run a series of workshops with Croydon community organisations and groups to increase our understanding of the issues which prevent residents from maintaining a healthy weight.

The deadline for expressions of interest is 5 March 2023.

The workshops are grant-funded by the GLA and are intended to help us to use a systems wide approach to recognise the environmental, economic, and social causes of overweight and obesity.

To help inform our local understanding and action plans we are looking for expressions of interest from groups operating in the following neighbourhood areas:

Broad Green
Fairfield
New Addington
Selhurst
Shirley
South Norwood
Thornton Health

Grant conditions

Each workshop will receive grant funding of £1,800. Under the grant conditions the workshops are expected to:

involve the most disadvantaged or underrepresented groups and diverse ethnic groups
include South West London Integrated Care System representatives
use asset-based approaches such as appreciative enquiry to facilitate to ensure priorities and strategies are co-designed with communities
develop local systems-wide maps
develop a plan for action
agree up to 3 indicators that could be used to monitor the whole systems approach in Croydon which can inform the wider London approach

The systems wide approach materials will be developed with Croydon’s Public Health Team, who will also attend the workshops.

What you will be responsible for

Providers will need to:

invite residents and publicise the event
select and pay for a venue
provide refreshments, which need to be healthy and could be part of a workshop activity
provide incentives for attending where required
run and facilitate the workshops
provide experienced facilitators who have used approaches such as appreciative enquiry and will work with the Public Health team to prepare the event
provide trusted community facilitators to help run the event
collect feedback about the event from attendees
collect anonymous participant demographic data
write up the event
present the findings to Croydon wide forums such as the Food and Healthy Weight Partnership
contribute to a group report on the collected findings from the 5 events

Use of the grant budget

The budget is expected to be used for the following:

venues
facilitator who is experienced with appreciative inquiry techniques or similar and is familiar with systems wide approaches
incentives to attend
running the workshop
writing up the workshop and contributing to the overall project report

It is recommended that the 5 successful groups pool their facilitator resources to employ one expert facilitator who will work on all the workshops.

The 5 successful bidders could also pool their resources to employ one person to undertake the writing up and producing the final report.

Running the workshops

Workshops need to have taken place by the end of April 2023.

Each workshop should last a minimum of 2.5 hours; this could be run over 2 sessions. There should be at least 20 people in each workshop who are representative of the community.

The written report of outcomes should be ready by the end of May 2023.

Expressions of interest

If you are interested in running a workshop you can submit your expression of interest in no more than 500 words, demonstrating:

how you would encourage community members to attend the sessions
what experience you have of running these types of workshops
what experience your experienced facilitator has
if you plan to work with other providers to share the expert facilitator
what experience your community facilitator has
what workshop tools would you use to gather useful feedback from attendees
a table of the project costs (will not form part of the word count)
where do you plan to hold your workshop
venue facilities (for example accessibility and amenities)

Expressions of interest should be submitted by 5 March 2023 to rachel.tilford@croydon.gov.uk.

Question and answer session

There will be an opportunity to ask questions about the specification at a session on Microsoft Teams on Wednesday 1 March at 11am. Use the link below to join the meeting on the day.

Join the meeting

If you have any questions, please contact Rachel Tilford on 07720 322 858 or email: rachel.tilford@croydon.gov.uk