A look back on Self Management Month 2022: Celebrating Change

The ALLIANCE hosts a national self management awareness raising campaign each year. This year, it took the form of Self Management Month , running throughout September and focusing on Celebrating Change as its central theme.

Throughout the month, we hosted a variety of events, each offering insight to the diverse approaches to self management being developed across Scotland. There’s always an incredible range of work happening across the country to showcase, with  this year’s events extending from a health walk around the Glasgow Necropolis with the ALLIANCE Community Links team to the Self Management Awards celebrating exemplary people and organisations, held online for the third year in a row.

We shared a series of videos on social media, through which people answered the question: ‘What keeps you healthy, happy and well?’ This encapsulated one of our key messages – self management is for everyone. Whatever you do to keep yourself healthy, happy and well, whether it’s managing your medication, going for a run or spending time with family and friends, you are self managing.

On 21 September, the ALLIANCE and IFIC Scotland hosted a webinar as part of Self Management Month; the IFIC Integrated Care Matters Webinar Series 7: Self Management and Co-production webinar in collaboration with the ALLIANCE’s Self Management Month September 2022. As part of the session, we heard from two Self Management Fund projects about their experiences throughout the past couple of years, North East Sensory Services and Bijli Productions, and from speakers offering an international perspective on the topic. As we mainly focus on self management work across Scotland, it was inspiring to hear about work taking place elsewhere and consider how we can bring these approaches to the country and implement them to innovate self management for all.

If you would like to learn more about our work and keep up to date with self management in Scotland, you can sign up for the Self Management Network Scotland to receive our monthly bulletin and take part in networking events throughout the year. If you would like to speak to one of the team about any of our self management work, including our free Self Management Reflective Practice workshop, available to healthcare professionals, please send us an email at SMNS@alliance-scotland.org.uk