Our Community Wellness Team comprises staff with experience and expertise from a range of backgrounds with a range of expertise. They include Nurse Practitioners, Specialist Nurses, Health Care Assistants, Health Care Coordinators and Social Prescribing Link Workers.

The service originated in 2014 when DDHF was contracted to provide a wrap around service for the most vulnerable 2% of the patient population. This Vulnerable Adult Wrap Around Service became known as VAWAS.

The aim was to provide consistent and continuous care, moving the work away from GP practice and freeing up time and appointments for others.

In the years since, the service has continued to grow and has developed into a fully fledged Community Wellness Team, with a far wider remit than the original scope.

The team now works with a range of patients in a number of different settings.

As well as those identified as most vulnerable, there is an additional element which reaches out to people who are being discharged from hospital or different services. Assessments and personalised plans help to identify and tackle risks patients may face before they occur. 

More than 20 care homes throughout Durham Dales are also covered by the team, with quick access to advice and guidance, as well as proactive visits – both of which work to greatly reduce avoidable hospital admissions.

And Health Care Coordinators – a role evolved by DDHF to address unmet needs and a precursor to Social Prescribers – add a vital non-clinical layer to the service tackling issues from housing and mobility to social isolation.