Self-care

NHS Dudley Clinical Commissioning Group and Dudley Council Public Health asked Healthwatch Dudley if it could help with public engagement work to get people's views on self-care and what it means to them.

Healthwatch Dudley undertook engagement activities with community groups and representatives to co-produce ideas around five self-care themes (minor ailments, long-term conditions, caring, mental wellbeing and the role of professionals) and design a self-care pack. The self-care pack was developed with the aim for it to be shared with organisations and groups so they could run sessions and gather people's views on self-care. 26 organisations or groups had copies of the self-care pack and 14 of these organisations held self-care discussion sessions using the pack. The information obtained from these groups were analysed and sorted into categories to help to reveal connections or patterns that improve understanding of self-care: 'we need professionals', 'finding time for mental health', 'caring can be isolating', 'living with a long-term condition', 'understanding minor ailments'.

The recommendations from this report are: to develop ongoing conversations with people from all types of background to get a diversity of views on self-care and wellbeing, to get the messages on self-care, where to get help with it, and how to be involved in thinking about what it is out to more people, to ensure sufficient resources are provided to support an integrated approach where self-care, health, and wellbeing are seen as being bound together with early intervention to prevent problems, to ensure there is personal and collective responsibility taken for promoting self-care and supporting people to do it.