GM Moving and Noisy Cricket to host joint event looking at movement and social care

By GM Moving | 08 January 2026 | TAGS: Health and Care Integration

Movement matters to all of us, and our shared Greater Manchester Moving in Action is an ambitious plan to ensure active lives for all. 

We know there are groups who are more likely to be inactive, completing less than 30 minutes moderate physical activity a week, than others.

The greatest benefits of moving a little bit more are felt by those who are least active.

At GM Moving, we’re working to design movement and physical activity into health and social care for the benefit of patients and staff, clinical and non-clinical.

Earlier this year, we commissioned Noisy Cricket to look at Greater Manchester’s social care system specifically to discover what role movement and physical activity plays.

Noisy Cricket completed desk research and spoke to numerous stakeholders as part of a system mapping exercise to learn who has a role to play and the main levers for change.

From their research, GM Moving are investigating how devolution is creating the space for new, innovative models and standards within social care.

Specifically, we believe there are opportunities within the social care workforce, which is often insecure, unpaid labour, to shift working patterns and incorporate moving more.

As opposed to a top-down, task focus to care; provision could engage a bottom-up approach allowing care staff to work in new, progressive ways.

To investigate further, GM Moving are holding a shared learning event on Wednesday 4 February to bring together partners utilising movement and physical activity within social care.

You can learn more about the event and register to attend here. 

Kate Harding, Strategic Lead for Health Inequalities, said:

“GM Moving have enjoyed some fantastic successes in recent years embedding moving more and physical activity into Greater Manchester’s health system.

“With Noisy Cricket’s support, we’re beginning a journey alongside the social care system to learn more about the role movement and physical activity can play.

“It’s a complex system but we know that for the least active patients, moving just a little more can have huge physical and mental benefits and bring so much joy.”   

Lauren Coulman, Founder of Noisy Cricket, said:

“The need for person-centred care speaks as much to how we treat the social care workforce, as it does to the people those roles exist to support.

"As a vastly undervalued but deeply integral part of the health and social care system, capacity is required for people to consider their own wellbeing alongside the residents and patients they care for.

"So much of that starts in commissioning, and in the willingness and ability of social care providers not only to provide infrastructure and resources that enable more physical activity and movement, but also to embed the beliefs and behaviours that support it.

"Only then will the system be able to truly consider the context of people’s lives, and best enable the journeys needed to enable dignity, independence and wellbeing for the people of Greater Manchester.”