Building neighbourhood health around communities: why VCSE partnership is essential

Across the UK, health and care systems are under pressure. Increasing numbers of people are living in ill health, and healthy-life expectancy has fallen. In some areas, people can now expect to live only 55 years in good health. The impact of this is felt by individuals, across communities, the NHS, social care, other public services, and the wider economy. In response, policymakers have turned to the idea of neighbourhood health.

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Neighbourhood health can mean different things to different people. For some, it is about integrating services locally. This is important, and central to the government’s Neighbourhood Health Framework, but solely focusing on this overlooks a crucial part of the picture. Health is not created by services alone. It is created when people’s circumstances mean they can look after themselves and their loved ones. And it is created in communities, when people come together to share activities, learn new things, care for others or simply spend time together.

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The relationships formed through this strengthen our bonds as a community, and this community power helps people connect, find or create the things they want or need, increasing a sense of belonging, reducing loneliness and isolation, and strengthening civic resilience. Sometimes this happens informally – between neighbours, friends or around schools, faith groups, sports clubs, cafés, pubs or other community spaces. Sometimes it grows into something more formal, such as community groups, charities or social enterprises.

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Together, alongside personal relationships and informal networks, these organisations - often called the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector - form essential community infrastructure that underpins neighbourhood health. This plays a vital role in supporting people, creating the conditions for healthy communities and changing how systems understand and share power and invest in communities.

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National policy sets out a clear ambition to shift care closer to home, strengthen prevention, and bring services together around people and communities through neighbourhood health. This reflects a growing understanding that health is shaped by the conditions of people’s daily lives, and not by services alone. What is often less clear is how to put this ambition into practice through partnership with communities and the VCSE sector.

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That’s why our new handbook, prepared by The Partner Ship with Alliance42 and NAVCA, sets out why VCSE partnership in neighbourhood health is essential, and how we can make it happen in practice. It focuses specifically on how the NHS and other public sector partners can work effectively with communities and the local VCSE organisations that support them.

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This handbook is for local leaders in regional NHS England teams, integrated care boards (ICBs), local authorities, primary care, NHS providers, Health and Wellbeing Boards and voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations who are responsible for planning and delivering neighbourhood health.

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The handbook accompanies a briefing note about why partnership with the VCSE sector is essential for effective neighbourhood health and answers four frequently asked implementation questions:

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• How do we understand what communities experience, have, want and need?

• How do we build relationships, shared leadership and a collaborative culture around a community?

• How do we ensure communities and their VCSE organisations shape decisions that affect them?

• How do we align and shift funding from different sources around and into a community?

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Rather than proposing new models or presenting a collection of case studies, this handbook brings together practical VCSE learning about cross-sector collaboration, across different areas of practice, and at neighbourhood, place, system, regional and national levels.

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This experience tells us that effective delivery of neighbourhood health requires:

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• Communities to be in the driving seat

• Sustainable VCSE infrastructure and VCSE alliances enabling cross-sector collaboration

• Services that integrate across sectors at a local level

• Place-based funding from multiple sources that aligns around what communities have, want and need

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Each section suggests practical steps and helpful resources, alongside examples, top tips, and ‘So what?’ evidence of what can change when organisations work in this way:

• People get support earlier and in ways that work for them

• Services better reflect real lives and are more accessible to those that need them most

• Communities are stronger, population health outcomes improve, and avoidable demand on public services falls

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The intention is for this handbook to evolve into an ongoing process of sharing VCSE learning about what helps neighbourhood health work in practice. We welcome feedback, as well as further examples, tools and resources that could be useful to share in future editions.

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Download the handbook and briefing note here.

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