Just six weeks after celebrating the end of their first 100 Day Challenge, Manchester has just embarked on the launch of their second! Another four neighbourhoods have begun their journey...and there is still more to come.

In partnership with Manchester Local Care Organisation (MLCO), Nesta is supporting the delivery of three 100 Day Challenges across the city’s twelve neighbourhoods to tackle place-based health and social care issues defined by local communities. A key aspect of this approach involves building the capacity of local practitioners from across the city to sustain this way of working long after day 100.

The overall scope of the challenge has now been refined to focus more on the distribution of leadership throughout neighbourhoods. Building relationships, changing mindsets and behaviours, and growing local networks are acts of leadership that MLCO is actively encouraging in those working on the frontline.

Using the learning from the previous challenge, Neighbourhood Leads are working hard to ensure they are engaging wider voices in their neighbourhoods, as this is critical to shaping innovative approaches and producing lasting results. Team members include GPs, mental health nurses and people with lived experience.

Speaking of innovative approaches, just days before the launch of wave two, one neighbourhood team was interviewed on BBC northwest radio about the 100 Day Challenge, to help them recruit a person with lived experience and raise the profile of the local testing in one go!

Coaches have now been redefined as ‘catalysts’ as the traditional view of ‘external’ individual coaching was not helping teams understand the agile and adaptive nature of this role in relation to their work. In our efforts to build local capacity, so far we have trained 17 catalysts and demand for this training continues to grow.

At the launch event itself, teams grappled with conversations around how to develop neighbourhood engagement with asylum seekers, how to develop services for Asian females experiencing low mood, how to engage people diagnosed with chronic diseases who are not currently engaging with GP services and/or social care, and how to connect with community services for young men with mental health needs. They came up with goals focusing on increasing people’s access to appropriate and sustainable community offers, friendships, connections, self-care and making more targeted use of medical support and disease management.

The Manchester work feels like a ‘genie out of the bottle’ - it will be very difficult to put back in. Stay tuned to find out how the city continues to adapt and make the 100 Day Challenge method its own.

To find out more about the work of the People Powered Results team read our report reflecting on five years of the 100 Day Challenge.