Following the successful pilot of Creative English: Caring for my Family last year, Birmingham City Council have given FaithAction a further opportunity to run Creative English for Health with places of worship, faith-based and community organisations within Birmingham, this time with a focus on cardiovascular health.
Public Health Birmingham have identified cardiovascular health as a major area of health inequality, and commissioned FaithAction to respond. With a series of eleven brand-new sessions, Creative English for Cardiovascular Health is designed to help learners take care of their own health and the health of their families.
These Creative English sessions empower learners to better navigate the NHS and to make better-informed choices that support their own wellbeing. Topics include:
- talking to doctors;
- going for blood tests;
- understanding, managing and preventing long-term conditions including heart disease, high blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes;
- exercising for good physical and mental health;
- using NHS 111;
- contacting the emergency services;
- mental health;
- and more!
Our learners need to hear it from a trusted source, face-to-face. They tell us the information they see on Facebook or other social media and its misinformation. They pick up the wrong idea about vaccines or medical treatment or the NHS and that stops them from getting what they need. This course offers clear advice and tells them how to get help.
—Creative English for Health delivery partner
The project aims to help address the health inequalities that people experience as a result of having English as an additional language needs, as well achieving the typical outcomes that Creative English is renowned for: helping learners build confidence in spoken English whilst making friends, improving their wellbeing, and reducing social isolation amongst these typically hard-to-reach communities.
Creative English: Caring for my Family 2022/23
Delivery has already begun in partnership with five organisations across Birmingham, and FaithAction are currently in the process of recruiting a further five delivery partners to run further sessions from September 2023.
If you’d like to learn more about the full Creative English programme, be sure to visit their website.
