Nurse sets up app to help address problems

All the information out there is in separate places and different formats, from daunting government and NHS websites to local Facebook groups, notes in shop windows and everywhere in between.

Nurse Helen O’Connell has been helping care for her community in the Haworth area for a decade. She recognised there was something missing in the overall care and advice she could offer patients during appointments and felt determined to do something about it.

"As a nurse in a GP practice, many of the people I see have health problems brought on by social problems. I could see the whole picture with these patients," she says.

"A patient would be struggling with a particular issue such as debt, anxiety, family or relationship problems and while I knew there were organisations out there that could help, there was no easily accessible way of either myself or my patients finding them."

Helen demonstrates the app she devised

That frustration and her experience of the huge benefits of ‘social prescribing’ led to a tantalising, yet seemingly impossible idea: a directory bringing together all this UK-wide and local help and support into one easy-to-navigate website. An online hub that both patients - and the front-line health professionals working to help them - could use.

After sketching out ideas, she enlisted the services of a local website designer while “searching the internet, looking at social media groups and even signs outside churches advertising community activities.”

And so followed months of hard work, while working as a nurse during the pandemic and having to adapt a busy family life to fit in home schooling as well.

The Treacle website was launched in July 2020 and quickly became a much-valued resource for local health and care professionals. “They loved it. And in the days and weeks that followed the launch, I’d often hear that doctors and nurses were talking to patients about Treacle,” Helen says.

While initially created for patients and health professionals, as news of Treacle spread, she learned that schools and social workers were also finding it helpful “as they had the same problems accessing details of organisations offering support and advice”. The app was launched a year later.

Nurse Helen O'Connell

Helen continued to spread the message about Treacle, advertising its details in the local community magazine and even on Covid vaccination leaflets.

It soon expanded to cover the whole of Haworth, Keighley, and Skipton and following more hard work covered the whole of Bradford and Craven from April 2022. More was to come as Treacle went ‘live’ in Bolsover in Derbyshire and even made a guest appearance on BBC TV’s Look North.

As Treacle’s reach has increased, so has Helen’s workload. To devote more time to the “mammoth work” involved in running the site, she has had to cut down her nursing hours, and recruited a small team of like-minded local people to provide much of the administration and research involved.

“Although run as a strictly not-for-profit group, Treacle has become very business-like - a trademark-registered, community interest company - and a commissioned service that reaches out to many people,” she says. "It’s really taken on a life of its own, and appealing to sectors other than healthcare, such as local government, education and social care."

The website and app feature seven main, colour-coded sections covering a huge variety of issues, while remaining simple to navigate. There are no advertisements or sponsorship on any of the pages.

Examples from the free service include ‘My Money’ which helps with money difficulties and debt; ‘My Mind’ for mental health issues, including information about bereavement and mindfulness; and a special section called ‘Make Friends’ dealing with loneliness, giving details of how to meet up with local community groups.

“As well as launching the app, on-boarding our first ‘non-Bradford’ area and talking to various local authorities all over the country, we have almost completed the huge task of translating the main screens and details of all the organisations on the app into 12 non-English languages,” says Helen.

She would love every area in the UK to have its own Treacle and she is hopeful of announcing new local areas coming on board soon. Although it is worth pointing out that the website and app include many hundreds of national organisations and so can already be used by anyone, anywhere in the UK.

Visit Treacle.me