About the Partnership

Defining the relational foundations of community-led health creation

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The Trust and Health Creation Partnership was established in May 2025 through a significant investment from the South East London Integrated Care Board (SEL ICB) to explore how trust strengthens prevention, improve wellbeing and reduce health inequalities across south east London.

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The partnership brings together five By and For and grassroots VCSE organisations:

• Bexley Mencap
• Milk Honey Bees
• Mama2Mama
• QUEERCIRCLE
• Southwark Unified Black Network (SUBNET) - a consortium of five organisations
  
  • African and Caribbean Heritage Food Network
  • Excel Beyond Barriers
  • Golden Oldies
  • London Senior Social
  • Parent Skills2Go

Alongside:

• South East London Integrated Care Board (SEL ICB)
• NHS Prevention Leads
• King's Health Partners
• South East London VCSE Strategic Alliance

Together, we are exploring a fundamental question:

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What are the relational foundations of building trust with communities, that underpin effective community-led health creation?

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Across south east London, communities consistently demonstrate that health is shaped through trusted relationships, belonging, cultural connection, community knowledge and leadership, and mutual support. These factors are often particularly important for communities experiencing the greatest health inequalities, yet it is difficult for healthcare systems to embed them within their frameworks.

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By bringing together community organisations and healthcare system partners as on a shared learning journey, the partnership is developing new ways to understand, evidence and value trust-building and holding with communities, helping to strengthen neighbourhood and preventative health and support better, more collaborative decision-making across south east London.

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Why This Work Matters

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Much of the work undertaken by grassroots and By and For VCSE organisations centres on a consistent relationship of mutual trust with the local communities they are embedded within.

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Yet the impact of this work can be difficult to demonstrate through traditional monitoring, evaluation and commissioning frameworks.

The partnership aims to address this challenge by developing shared ways to understand and evidence how trust contributes to community-led health creation. By making relational work more visible, the programme will help support more impactful ways of funding prevention and health creation and equitable partnership working, while strengthening recognition of the vital role that communities play in creating health.

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Our Three-Year Journey

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Year One (May 2025 – May 2026): Defining Trust

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What We Learned

• Trust grows through consistent relationships and continual learning together, this is only possible when power is shared, dignity is respected and people feel safe in in the places and situations they are being asked to navigate
• Community-led health creation is rooted in the strengths, knowledge and leadership of local communities
• By and For organisations hold unique knowledge, experience and insight into how communities experience and build trust

What We Created Together

• A strategic partnership between By and For and grassroots organisations across south east London
• A shared understanding of trust and community-led health creation
• A co-created set of Trust ‘magic ingredients’

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Year Two (May 2026 – May 2027): Testing and building our shared evidence base

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‍What We're Exploring

• How our Trust ‘magic ingredients’ show up in real-world community settings and relationships
• How communities experiences organisations who embed these ingredients in the the heart of their work
• How is this different to the way communities experience healthcare services

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What We're Creating Together

• Community-led testing of the Trust ‘magic ingredients’
• Stories, case studies and evidence of trust in action
• Creating the shared knowledge base that will be the foundation for future cross-sector resources, tools and partnerships

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Year Three (May 2027 – May 2028)

Creating trust-building resources and tools

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What We're Bringing Together

• Learning from two years of partnership working
• Lived evidence of how trust supports community-led health creation
• Insights for neighbourhood health, prevention and reducing inequalities

What We'll Create Together

• An evidence base for trust and community-led health creation
• Practical resources and tools for building and embedding trust for VCSE and healthcare partners
• A south east London approach to building and embedding trust into future policy, commissioning and partnership working

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A Connected Data and Impact Innovation Programme

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Alongside the partnership, our Trust Indicators are alsoinforming the London-wide neighbourhood health delivery programme. A key aspectof this work if a data and impact innovation work, focused on improving how VCSEled impact, and in particular that of grassroots and By and For VCSEs, isbetter captured and understood within the healthcare system.

The ambition is to build a more complete understanding and better evidence the impact of VCSE and other provision within neighbourhood health, to  shape future investment decision-making and partnership working. We are also working to better integrated health, careand VCSE data to provide more complete understanding of local communities across London.

This work will enable us to systematically and equitably capturethe true impact of VCSE-led holistic provision and will enable VCSEs andcommissionaire to jointly demonstrate social and monetary impact of VCSE work-helping to leverage increased and sustainable funding for our sector.

Over time, this will  bring together

• Neighbourhood-level intelligence
• Community insight and knowledge
• Evidence of the impact of trust-building and relationship-based approaches
• Impact of VCSE contribution to prevention and wellbeing

Which will help create a richer picture of VCSE-led work in neighbourhoodsand the mechanism for consistent investment in it.

The Trust and Health Creation Partnership is helping toinform this work by developing and testing its Trust ‘magic ingredients’,generating community-led evidence about the impact of trust building withinVCSE-led prevention and health creation  inneighbourhoods. . This learning will help shape future approaches tounderstanding and evidencing impact, ensuring that trust, relationships and community knowledge can sit alongside more traditional forms of neighbourhood provisionand health intelligence.

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