FAQs

Organisations that work with the public have significant potential to encourage, inform and enable people to make decisions that can enhance their health and wellbeing.

There are thousands of public and third sector staff across Camden & Islington. Making Every Contact Count is a programme that mobilises all of these workers to simply ask ‘how are you’ to the people they meet and, where there is an opportunity, respond with helpful information. If we can get everyone doing this consistently we can make a huge difference to how people think about their health and wellbeing, and support them to make healthier choices.

Every day staff and volunteers in Camden and Islington talk to hundreds of people who live in these boroughs. Making Every Contact Count (MECC) is about making the most of appropriate opportunities to help local people improve their health and wellbeing.

This new approach is about using the conversations you are already having with residents to signpost them to further support on one of the following issues:

• Health (stop smoking, physical activity, sensible drinking, mental health, healthy eating and sexual health)
• Money worries, debt and fuel poverty
• Getting the right job
• Housing

MECC is not about adding to your already busy workloads. It is not about staff becoming experts in services such as smoking cessation; staff becoming counsellors or staff telling anyone how to live their life. It is about taking an opportunity to help someone.

Individual lifestyle factors - i.e. everyday choices we make – have a significant impact on a person’s health and wellbeing. Supporting residents to make positive lifestyle choices therefore represents a huge opportunity to improve the health and wellbeing of the Camden and Islington population.

Addressing lifestyle risk factors e.g. smoking, alcohol, sexual health, physical inactivity and unhealthy diets will have an overall impact on quality of life and life expectancy. Health problems like chronic illness and unhealthy lifestyles (e.g. obesity, smoking) are linked to the other issues MECC is tackling.

MECC can help to address health inequalities, which are present in both Camden and Islington. About half of Camden and Islington residents experience poorer health than the national average.

Many people will already be doing elements of MECC as it is necessary to their jobs.  However, most people find there are some parts of MECC that they aren’t that familiar with.

The session will equip participants with a range of specific MECC skills that will enable them to deliver MECC confidently and consistently well. It covers:

• Opportunities we have to have helpful conversations
• Communication skills to raise an issue, open up a conversation and assess a person’s readiness to change
• Behaviour change techniques (including basic motivational interviewing techniques);
• Delivering brief advice and brief interventions
• Signposting and helpful online resources

MECC is for anyone in the public or voluntary sectors who come into contact/meet the public through their work. This might include:

• Local Authority teams such as Customer Contact Centres, Housing Services, Libraries and Sport & Leisure etc.
• NHS organisations including GP practices and pharmacies
• Voluntary Sector organisations such as Age UK and local Community Centres
• Social Enterprises
• Colleges

To book onto a course go to the Courses page and select the course that best suits you. At this point you will need to login or register if you haven't done so previously.

The training is free.

The Public Health Team have commissioned training and support for MECC for 4 years. However, we want MECC to become a way of working, so it won’t be going away.

MECC is more than a training programme - it is about an approach that needs to be embedded in your role. Overall, the approach starts with you!

To engage with MECC, we need your organisation to:

• Commit to work towards a group of your frontline workers making every contact count
• Have senior leaders announce the organisations commitment to your staff and volunteers
• Organise middle management support for your staff and volunteers to engage with MECC and use it in their day to day work
• Release staff for a half-day training session
• Identify a MECC Champion who can be internal contact and source of support after the training

Although this programme is about working in new ways, it is designed to fit into current roles: it is about using existing opportunities. MECC is not about adding to already busy workloads. It is not about staff becoming experts in services such as smoking cessation; staff becoming counsellors or staff telling anyone how to live their life. It is about taking an opportunity to help someone.

A MECC conversation shouldn’t take lots of time – usually five minutes, a maximum of 15 minutes for those that have a little more time to talk in their roles. The idea is that these are short conversations that fit in with existing commitments.

The Social Marketing Gateway http://www.socialmarketinggateway.co.uk is delivering the training. They are a specialist behaviour change consultancy and training company. SMG has developed and delivered behaviour change and MECC training programmes for over 6 years to thousands of frontline staff in organisations across the UK.

Yes. The face-to-face training delivered by SMG is accredited by the RSPH.