Health trainers making a difference to mental health and wellbeing

Abstract

This short report explores the key findings from a review¹ of information on health trainers in 2013/2014 which had a particular focus on mental health and wellbeing. After summarising the key findings of the review, it focuses on mental health, briefly exploring the links between mental and physical health before discussing what differences engagement with a health trainer made to people’s sense of self-efficacy and wellbeing.

Health trainers are a non-clinical workforce introduced in 2004,² who receive training in competencies to enable them to support people in disadvantaged communities to improve their health.³ The population groups or settings that health trainers focus on varies from service to service, but all work one-to-one, most spending at least an hour with a client at their first appointment, supporting and enabling them to decide what they want to do. The emphasis is on the client determining their own priorities and how to achieve them. Generally, health trainers see clients for a total of six sessions, where how to achieve goals and progress towards them is discussed.

The Data Collection and Reporting System (DCRS) is used by approximately 60% of Health Trainer Services to record monitoring data. Around 90% of Health Trainer Services using DCRS record ethnographic data on health trainers and clients, plus the issues clients worked on and the progress they made. There is also a wide range of other data which can be recorded, including before and after mental health and wellbeing scores. We were given access to aggregate data in order to conduct an analysis. Descriptive statistics were generated to calculate percentage change pre- to post-intervention.

A total of 1,377 (= 919 full time equivalents) health trainers were recorded in the DCRS system as working with 97,248 clients in England during 2013/2014. The health trainer model embodies the principle of lay support,⁴ and services aim to recruit a high proportion of their staff from similar backgrounds to their clients. They have been reasonably successful with 32% of health trainers coming from the most deprived areas (Quintile 1),ⁱ with a further 20% from Quintile 2. In all, 40% percent of health trainers lived in the same areas as their clients.