What is Making Every Contact Count (MECC)?

MECC is a national programme, about capitalising on the opportunities to make a difference to people’s health and wellbeing. By helping people to make changes to their lives, it is possible to prevent ill-health, improve overall health and reduce health inequalities.

Telling people what to do is not the most effective way to help them realise the changes they want to make. MECC provides social worker training and supports front line staff to develop a different way of working with people to address health and wellbeing through:

• Learning how to spot opportunities to talk to people about their health and wellbeing
• Having healthy conversations
• Signposting to services that support people who want to make changes to improve their health

Frontline staff who have been trained in MECC also tell us how they’ve made changes to their own lives, and the lives of their friends and family, thanks to the quality of training they received.

MECC in Tower Hamlets

More than 1,000 professionals from over 100 local organisations in Tower Hamlets have been MECC-trained. An evaluation of the programme showed that 95% of those trained felt more confident to raise matters with clients and 92% felt they had improved skills that help clients make lifestyle changes. In addition, 55% reported making a change in their own lives as a result of training.

Join the movement and help it grow!
We actively encourage more people in Tower Hamlets to pursue MECC training. If you or your colleagues are not yet trained through MECC, please click the link to sign-up or share online:
http://thcepn.com/making-every-contact-count

What is the MECC Community of Practice?

We asked staff who had received MECC training what Tower Hamlets Together could do to support them following the training. This webpage contains the suggestions that staff made, including resources on MECC topic areas, refresher MECC training, further training, an online forum and case studies on how you are putting MECC into practice during your working day. The Community of Practice is a work in progress, so if you have any thoughts, please do contact us. We’ll also be arranging opportunities for MECC-trained staff to get together - watch this space.