Community Power Podcast Series 1 Episode 7: Tackling health inequality in Solihull

Episode 7: Tackling health inequality in Solihull

Chris Allen

Hello and welcome to another Community Power Podcast, a weekly series brought to you by the Community Wealth Fund campaign in partnership with Local Trust. My name’s Chris Allen, and in this series, we’re showcasing some incredible projects, focusing in particular on what happens when you give local people the power, the money and the assets to make a difference to their neighbourhoods. With me is series producer Beth Lazenby. Beth, where are we this week? 

Beth Lazenby

This week, Chris, we’ve got Luke Freer from the Cars Area Big Local, and he’s going to be chatting to us about all the work that they do to keep their community active. 

Chris Allen

Thanks. Beth. Indeed, Luke Freer is the partnership manager at Think Active, which has been working in the Cars Area in the borough of Solihull in the West Midlands for some time. First of all, I asked Luke, why the Cars area is so named? 

Luke Freer

All the streets are named after cars – Vauxhall Crescent, Rover Drive, Sunbeam. And when it was built, I think in the 70s, it was an overfill from Birmingham, and a number of people moved out of Birmingham to come and live in the Cars area. Um, on our logo, if you see, we have a 13 in the middle, because the people that moved over around that time referred to it more as Area 13. But it’s actually now well known as the Cars area, like the Cars estate, the Cars area. 

Chris Allen

Sounds a bit better than Area 13, doesn’t it? That sounds like it’s come out of some mystery film somewhere, you know. 

Luke Freer

X‑Files or something like that. Yeah, exactly. I think the brand of the Cars we wear. I mean, I haven’t got my yellow hoodie on now, but we have a, we all wear bright yellow, which is great in the summer when the flies are around. But it’s, it’s got a brand to it. And I think people try and be proud of where you’re from and the association. I think that people are quite proud to be associated with the Cars. And I think when we talk about the Cars, we like saying we’re part of the Cars area, or if we’re doing our work, the Cars Big Local because it makes people feel like it’s their area. You’re not specifically saying, ​“Oh, it’s all about the Big Local”. But then equally, we’re recognising that the Big Local is is doing a number of good things in the area. 

Chris Allen

So how did you get involved in the first place? 

Luke Freer

Well, I started in my role at Think Active – it was called CSW sport, the active partnership for Coventry, Solihull, and Warwickshire. We’re funded via Sport England. And I always say to people like ​“If you look at Sport England as the government, we’re the County Council for the whole of our area”. There’s over 40 of us across the country, and our role is to try and get people more physically active. My background is community, and I’m very passionate about that. And our previous director, Tony Costello, who used to work in in the Black Country, with all the regeneration that happened in the late 90s, early 2000s, he was very passionate about working in areas that needed support. So we managed to secure £80,000 of investment from Sport England through the Sport Innovation Fund. We put a number of activities on over the summer. We had Aston Villa in, we had an inclusive sports academy, a couple of football clubs, we had skateboarding events, loads of things going on over the space of about six months. And we piloted loads of things, and it was clear that there was a real big appetite and need for sport and physical activity. I think because I was making the effort to be around and be there, they got me involved, and I’ve been there ever since. 

Chris Allen

And you’ve probably been trusted, because you’re on the ground there before the money came along. A lot of people turned up when the money arrived, but you were there in advance, obviously bringing some investment in already so. And that being trusted in an area does form an important basis, isn’t it? 

Luke Freer

Well, if you want to achieve anything in life, you have to trust someone. It doesn’t matter if it’s a job, it’s a relationship, coaching, you know, teaching you have to have trust. And trust is earned in communities. If you’re an outsider, it is earned. And obviously people could tell from the way that I spoke. I wasn’t from North Solihull, and one or two residents used to let me know about that. 

Chris Allen

You ought to explain that for those people who don’t know about the north-south divide in Solihull, it’s quite pronounced, isn’t it? 

Luke Freer

You’ve got the A 45 that separates the south and the north of Solihull and there are a number of issues. I think the last time I looked at the statistics, I think the South have a 13 years more on their life expectancy than the North. Historically, a lot of people of North Solihull consider themselves as being from Birmingham. But the people of the north, I can’t speak highly enough of just how friendly they are. 

And you often find that a lot in communities, there’s a lot of stigma around certain areas, and people use this term ​“hard to reach”. And, you know, listen, people aren’t hard to reach. They’re there, go and speak to them. People can see you’re genuine. And I think you’re only genuine by doing what you say you’re going to do and sticking around. And people start to trust you and work with you. And trust me, there’s been hard times and there’s been difficult things that happen. But I think when people know that you’re part of the furniture and you really care about the area, they believe in you and they work with you. 

Chris Allen

Now you mentioned the health inequalities there is between the South and the North. Obviously, sport is aiming to really impact strongly on that aspect, in terms of people’s physical well-being, but also their mental well-being as well. And that’s how you’ve that’s your passion. That’s why you’re involved there. What are the differences you see in people’s lives as a result of what’s going on? 

Luke Freer

The chief medical officer said it – ​“if you could make physical activity a drug, it would be the number one prescribed drug”. And we’ve got two street connectors in Ricky and Sue who are residents, amazing people. They are the eyes, ears, the heartbeat on the ground. And we have Charlene, who’s just come on board, who’s a local resident as well. All these people that are part of the Big Local, they might not all be going out and playing sport at the weekend, but they all understand how important is to be physically active. 

We’ve got an approach to how we do things, which is asset-based community development, which some people might be familiar of, some people might not. If you’re not, asset-based community development is focusing on what you have got, not you haven’t got. And there’s three key principles, it’s people, places and systems. The people we’ve got, in terms of, you know, all the staff and volunteers. The places, what have we got in terms of assets? Well we’ve got Lanchester Park, which is a multi-use games area outside. We’ve got Auckland Hall, and we’ve got a massive field, Boswell field. So we try and use those organisations I’ve talked about, with some money, which is the system to work with the people in the areas to help people’s wellbeing. 

We want people to move a little bit more, and it doesn’t matter how small. We want people to try and be active, whether that’s just walking up to the local shops Green Lanes, whether that’s walking around the Cars area, whether that’s taking part in some of the activities that are on at Auckland Hall, which we’re based out of, or even volunteering. It’s just making people be aware of how physical activity can change people’s lives. And there’s lots of local people, the street connectors, that they can look at and be like, ​“Oh, if they’re doing it, we can do it”. And it’s just been, it’s just been amazing. And one of the projects that, you know, I’m proud of, very proud of, that we’ve all been involved in, is the BBC – the Bowls, Biscuits and Coffee group. It’s people with long-term health conditions, people that have had strokes, people that have had cancer, and they play indoor bowls together. They have a coffee or a tea and a biscuit and have a chat. That is a project that’s been going for maybe four or five years, but that’s a project I’ve been really proud of. 

Chris Allen

And what about young people? Because obviously, you know, the younger are more active. But in some areas, health issues impact on there, obesity can hit the young population as well. Lack of aspiration as well, sometimes. I think North Solihull has suffered from that with young people as well. So how is sport helping young people? You mentioned earlier, you know, again, some high profile people and clubs in there as well. So I suppose that helps with the engagement? 

Luke Freer

We work with Birmingham City, both Birmingham clubs in football and basketball. So we’ve got Birmingham City Community Trust that we’re just in the process, they’ve been working there for a number of years, which brings people out, inspires. And we’ve got female coaches as well, which is really important to make people be inspired to go along. We’ve got Dele Adebola who used to play for Birmingham City, who’s, you know, been involved in opening our fun days, and been around the Big Local try and inspire that way. And obviously basketball, which, again, is a sport that I’m very passionate about. It’s the second biggest team sport in the country. It’s the most diverse sport by a country mile. 

Chris Allen

You’re selling it well, you’re selling it well. I’m just saying. 

Luke Freer

We used to put a lot of pressure on ourselves at the start, thinking we need 30–40, people at every session. But actually, for the size of the Cars and the amount of people that we get, when we get anything above 15 at a session, that’s really good. Now, with our holiday activity stuff that we’ve got going on for young people that we’re doing, I mean, we’re getting big numbers now between 20 and 40. But what’s more important is, is that they’re there over time, not just there for six months and pulled away. And that’s really important in community development. And that’s, again, the bigger picture. Going back to the Big Locals, having a 10-year plan to be there is huge, because you’re going to be there consistently, and it’s made a real difference to a lot of the young people in the area. 

Chris Allen

What happens next then? Because obviously the 10 years comes to an end. The final part of Big Local will be in March 2026, that’s when it all cuts off. Are there plans to keep this going and moving forward, or is that all in the pending tray at the moment? 

Luke Freer

No, no, no, we’ve got a very good plan. What we need to do is we’re trying to make sure that we fit. Now we’ve got a very good reputation. And I hear the way people talk glowingly about the Cars, and I think it’s because how honest and genuine we are. We really do care. The Bosworth Field, which is in our patch, is a huge field. It’s massive. It means so much to the community – dog walkers, people playing sport, football teams have used it. We do a lot of our community projects there. That is a big, long-term plan to save Bosworth Field. And when I say, save it, it’s on the school site. There’s a school there that’s being built, an autistic school. We’ve had reassurances that we’re going to be able to maybe take on what’s left of the field. 

And I think the big key thing that we’re going to do is we’re going to set up a charitable incorporated organisation – Friends of Bosworth Field – and that will be the legacy. We’ve got different levels. We could just stay as a group of people that meet up. We just look after the field. No money really needs to be involved. But we want to do more than that. We want to develop that field. We want to make sure that we’ve got people on the ground, working in the community to support them, and we want to carry on. You know, if we can generate another 1 million pounds over the next 10 years after that, that’d be amazing. But the reason that we’re going to be setting up as a CIO is so that we can have trustees of experience on the board, local residents still involved, and then we can actually attract further funding to carry on doing the projects that are needed, because it’s definitely needed in our area. 

Chris Allen

And that’ll be an ongoing need, because you don’t turn around those kind of health numbers, as you mentioned earlier, in 10 years, maybe 20 years, maybe a generation, you begin to narrow those health inequalities. 

Luke Freer

If you’ve got a certain BMI level, then you can’t have operations. And people from communities don’t feel trusted enough to go on certain schemes or go and do things to help with that. And what needs to happen is, is people from the communities that they’re from, need to be trained in physiotherapy. They need to be trained in in counselling. You know, that’s where people have the trust. It goes back to what you said, Chris around trust, and I feel that we’re really trying to build that in our community. Because there’s so many amazing people in communities, but sometimes their voices don’t get heard, and sometimes in the more affluent areas, people have the resource, they have, the time, they have the know-how and they are heard. And that’s something that we’re really passionate about, is making sure the people of that community are heard, because there’s some absolutely wonderful people there that have got absolutely amazing morals and their integrity is so, it’s just… you can’t buy it. And actually, if there were more of those people making decisions or involved in decisions, then maybe some of these health inequalities wouldn’t exist. 

Chris Allen

That was Luke Freer, a partnership manager at Think Active supporting the community in the Cars Area of the borough of Solihull. Where can we find out more, Beth? 

Beth Lazenby

As usual, you can find everything in the show notes, including the bowls and biscuits video that Luke was chatting to us about earlier. 

Chris Allen

Thanks, Beth. Indeed, don’t forget to check out those show notes and the link to the Cars Area YouTube channel. And Beth and I look forward to you joining us next time on the Community Power Podcast, brought to you by the Community Wealth Fund campaign and Local Trust discovering what happens when you give local people the money power and assets to make a real difference in their neighbourhoods.