Healthy Living For Deafblind People Project

Health Promotion

About the Project

The Healthy Living for Deafblind People project is a joint national project between Sense Scotland and Deafblind Scotland. It is part of a wider healthy living centre network addressing health promotion and the healthy living issues of disadvantaged groups throughout the country. The project will run for three years and is funded primarily by the New Opportunities fund.

What we are going to do

Both Sense Scotland and Deafblind Scotland will employ different approaches to identify and address health need amongst the two very different deafblind service user groups. The two groups should also work in partnership through planning and sharing issues and we are already learning from each other.

Our overall aims are:

• to improve the physical and mental health and well-being of deafblind people in Scotland
• to increase physical activity and healthy lifestyle choices
• to work with existing staff teams who support people with complex needs on a 24-hour basis
• to support any health promotion information or training needs of Sense Scotland direct service staff
• to provide training to essential practitioners in the wider community such as leisure centre staff, primary healthcare teams (eg: GP practices) and also hospital based staff

The Healthy Living Project staff team

The Sense Scotland project is supported by the Health Development Officer for the organisation, who will link closely with the team around health development issues. The team is made up of the Senior Healthy Living Advisor, three part time healthy living support workers and an administration worker. They bring with them extensive experience in supporting people who use Sense Scotland's services as well as an understanding of sport, health and nutrition promotion.

What we are doing and how you can help

Links have been made with some priority services and many of these are likely to be residential and housing support services, where individuals are not supported on a 1:1 basis. As a result there may be less opportunity for accessing healthy living activities and health promotion opportunities. Each service will be linked to a member of the healthy living for deafblind people team with visits planned.

We will meet with service users and staff to identify the priority healthy living needs and will be building up a clearer picture of the overall issues. Already themes are occurring and we know that many people would like to be more active and enjoying their own local community facilities. We are now looking to develop a resource database to let people know about further opportunities available.

In essence we wish to work alongside individuals and support workers to identify the good practice that is already happening and identify where improvements are needed.

You can download the Healthy Living for Deafblind People leaflet in PDF. You will need Adobe's PDF Reader installed on your computer system to open the leaflet, or contact us at the address below for more information.

The Sense Scotland Healthy Living contact details are: