Healthier & Wealthier

January 3, 2023

Healthier & Wealthier is a free service for people registered as patients with GP practices anywhere in County Durham.

 

We give in-depth advice by telephone for problems with benefits, work, debt, caring, family problems, disability, staying warm and healthy, housing, rights and responsibilities, legal matters and more… and once we’ve solved your problem we can also find other help for you, and perhaps put you in touch with other helpful organisations.

 

Why use Healthier & Wealthier?

• Getting advice by telephone can be essential if you find it hard to travel
• You might not have realised you needed advice until you’ve discussed things that are affecting your health or mental health with your doctor
• Doctors aren’t experts on subjects like work, benefits and debts… but they want to help you, so they’re usually happy to ask Healthier & Wealthier to call you

 

How does Healthier & Wealthier help?

• Our team has worked alongside health services before, so they know how everyday problems can affect your health.  We know what questions to ask, to make sure we cover all of your needs… even things you might not have thought about yourself
• Your doctors are probably under huge pressure; you might even have noticed waiting times are getting longer, or appointments are getting shorter.  By helping the doctors sort out your non-medical problems, we are leaving them with more time to care for your medical needs

 

What can be done by telephone?

• You’d be surprised how often we are able to completely solve your problems by telephone!  Until you talk to us, you might not realise how simply some problems can be solved
• Sometimes what you need is help speaking to the right people and organisations.  If needs be, we can often go away and look things up or speak to people on your behalf, then come back to you with answers
• If paperwork needs to be done, we can support you in other ways too.  We can send things in the post, we can talk to a friend or family member who’s helping you to fill forms in and in some cases, we can even arrange to call you when a health or social care professional is there to help you

 

What have we achieved so far?

• Almost every GP practice and branch in County Durham has referred patient to us for advice
• When people gain extra income as a result of getting our advice, the average amount is around £4500 per year – often because they had not been fully claiming the benefits they are entitled to
• Most people are referred to Healthier & Wealthier for 1-2 advice needs, but end up getting our help with 3-4 different things
• According to a set of questions used by mental health experts to check people’s wellbeing, people usually felt around 33% better after we’d helped them with their problems

 

How do you get in touch with Healthier & Wealthier?

Healthier & Wealthier is mainly used by GPs in County Durham. If your doctor or someone else working at the practice realises that you need advice, or that your health is affected by the kinds of problems we can help with, they can quickly and easily ask us to call you.

 

Categories: Advice, Funding & Projects