Living Well With Chronic Conditions

Living with a long-term health condition can be physically and mentally challenging. We support you to live as healthily and happily as possible with your condition.

The Living Well Programme

Living Well is a free group programme for over 18s living with long-term health conditions. You can also be a carer for someone with a long-term health condition. The programme helps you develop skills to live well, control what you can and see a brighter future.

What do we cover?

A key part of Living Well is setting goals you want to achieve. Each week you learn how to reach these goals by making an action plan. You also get support from the group to problem solve. During the Living Well course, we cover:

Using your mind to manage symptoms
Fatigue and getting a good night’s sleep
Introduction to action plans and planning for the future
Physical activity, exercise, preventing falls
Pain and medication management
Healthy eating and reading food labels
Breathing techniques
Positive thinking, dealing with difficult emotions, low mood and feelings of depression
Making informed treatment decisions

The Living Well programme has proven to be effective in helping people to manage their health conditions better.

How does the Living Well Programme work?

There are 6 workshops in total – one per week over 6 weeks. Each workshop lasts 2.5 hours.
Two trained leaders run the workshops. At least one of the leaders lives with a long-term health condition.
People taking part in the workshops may have the same or different health conditions to you.
Workshops are delivered in a relaxed and friendly way so that all participants can learn from each other. You can also share experiences of living with your condition.
Each person who takes part gets a book about self-management.

What participants have said:

I found the [leaders] very good at their job and they explained things very well. They have long term illnesses themselves, so they had great empathy with everyone.

In the six weeks of class I have learned so much about my conditions. I found that there are lots of ways to get information to help deal with them…I like the reclaim your life section of the book, it has made me want to do more with my life, instead of feeling sorry for myself. I feel I can now go forward with a more positive attitude.

The action plan was a great idea and is a great incentive to get me to see places I have not seen in years and got me more active than I have been in years…I have seen a great improvement in my everyday life. The pain has not gone away but I am learning to cope better. I also understand my illness better.