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Commonwealth Games knocked it out of the park with health initiatives

9 Aug 2022

The Commonwealth Games are a celebration of sport, bringing over 5,000 athletes together to compete in multi-sports events, with a much broader purpose. The games champion diversity and humanity and aim to help improve health and wellbeing across the nation – something that is also at the heart of Ingeus. They also provided opportunities for more than 7,500 unemployed people, providing training to help people take advantage of the thousands of roles the games created.

The legacy of the games is to inspire and offer opportunities for people to improve and sustain levels of physical activity. The Department of Health & Social Care’s games-inspired campaign, Better Health, echoes this with an aim to get people to try something new and get active as a means of improving their mental wellbeing (as well as their physical health!). 

The campaign launch comes as a nationwide survey of more than 5,000 adults revealed that over 4 in 10 (41%) said they had put on weight since the first lockdown in March 2020. Kickstarting your health can seem daunting to some, but healthy changes start with little changes, and Better Health offers a range of free evidence-based support and guidance to those working towards a healthier lifestyle.

Thinking of something different? Everyone has their own personal health journey and it’s important to remember you are the creator of your own path. So, whether you’ve been watching the hockey or the aquatics, volunteering at the events, or simply following the activity on the news (or even if you’ve no idea what games we’re talking about!) – there is no better time to take the inspiration of the games and do something new to help give your mental and physical health a boost!

Don’t know where to start?! 

Since Healthier You was launched in 2016, the programme has helped thousands of people improve their health, including Parveen Akhtar, a mother of two from the West Midlands, who has been able to increase her physical activity to a moderate level and feels incredible for it. 

Parveen says: “I feel great that I can actually run up and down the stairs with my children and not find it difficult. If I had carried on the way I was before the NDPP programme, my health would have deteriorated and then who would have been able to look after my family?”

If you’re experiencing mental health issues that are affecting you at work, you can also access Able Futures, a free service that gives you nine months of confidential, advice, guidance and support.

Dave, a 50-year-old nurse was grieving the death of both his mother and father-in-law when the pandemic struck. Dealing with this grief whilst also working on a ward where so many people were suffering from COVID-19 really took its toll:

“Able Futures has allowed me to become better” Dave said. “It’s fantastic and I feel very, very lucky to have that external support mechanism. They gave me different ways to cope with my grief and different strategies to allow me to function, stay at work and not go off sick. I would not be able to go to work if it wasn’t for the help Peter has given me.”

Find out more about how Able Futures can help you as an employee or an employer.

If this blog still wasn’t enough inspiration for you, read about Ingeus’s Restart scheme and how it supports people like Aaron who has started a career in fitness, which has changed his life for the better and helped him to get his mojo back. 

If you’re fresh from the skills and experience of working at the games and are now looking for a new role, don’t forget to check out our careers page.