Health and Homeless Programme

Health and Homeless Programme

Northern Ireland Chest Heart & Stroke provides expert care and support to anyone at risk of or currently living with chest, heart and stroke conditions. We also fund local ground-breaking research into better treatments, care and prevention.

Working with people of all ages across the province, we’ve been delivering our services since 1946, carrying out extensive research into how to prevent these conditions, alongside ‘on the ground’ support.

Working to prevent chest, heart and stroke illnesses, our Health Promotion Team aims to inspire and inform people across Northern Ireland about how to maintain a healthy lifestyle and prevent avoidable chest, heart and stroke conditions.

At NICHS, we:

Inform, educate, and inspire local people to choose a healthier lifestyle via health promotion information, health checks and wellbeing talks.
Support local businesses to invest in workplace health and wellbeing to keep employees and staff well, through our Work Well, Live Well and Well NI programmes.
Identify often undiagnosed high blood pressure, cholesterol, Atrial Fibrillation (AF) and other personal risk factors

We’re all at risk of chest, heart and stroke illnesses but for those who are homeless, the risk is even greater and often, they don’t have access to a GP or the living conditions that support healthy lifestyle choices.

Funded by the Health and Social Care Board, Northern Ireland Chest Heart and Stroke offer health promotion services to support the health and wellbeing of staff and residents. This service is currently available to homeless hostels and drop-in centres within the Belfast and South Eastern Trust. Below outlines our range of programmes which are provided both face-to-face and online and programmes can be adapted to suit the needs of the hostel.

Health and Homeless Programme (collaborating with Platinum Training Institute)

Within our Health and Homeless programme we offer a range of short-term health promotion services. These include:

Well Checks
Well Talks
Well Mind
Well You
Cook It!
Physical Activity Programmes

For more information on each of these services, you can read our leaflet (below).

Well Space

Well Space is a long-term programme within which, over a period of 1-year NICHS supports the hostel using an holistic approach to create a healthy hostel. Both staff and residents complete a health survey which provides data highlighting what the hostels health and wellbeing priorities are. A team of Health Champions are trained to create, develop and implement health initiatives based on these priorities, motivating individuals to achieve health goals. NICHS provide training, resources and health promotion services to support the initiatives outlined in the action plans.

For more information on Well Space, you can read our leaflet (below).