About the Get Well UK Relief Map
The Get Well UK Map is an online map showing services that provide free and low cost complementary medicine treatments. The map was originated and developed with funding from the Wates Foundation. This took the form of a strategic grant, as it was thought that this map will play a significant role in increasing access to affordable complementary therapy services, and increase the leverage which can be used for change within the National Health Service of the UK.
Further support came from the Salesforce Foundation, who have donated access to their Salesforce software, which powers the website.
Freepository kindly donated their project and source code management services, used by our website developers.
Google Maps provide the mapping software for free – thank you.
And the talented Dennis Williams developed the site, voluntarily, for which we are most grateful.
We hope the map will be useful in 3 ways:
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Helping the public who are increasingly looking for affordable, accessible complementary therapies. You will be able to look for services nearby, or specialising in services for particular conditions or patient groups. If you find that your GP does not offer access to osteopathy and there is a practice down the road that does, you might want to change your GP or talk to your practice about making such a service available. With help from the fabulous tools built by My Society you can write to your local councillors and other elected representatives to let them know you want access to these therapies for your health. Remember it’s our money and our NHS, so we must make it work for us. |
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Supporting and linking groups and organisations providing complementary therapies. Many of us are so busy providing services that we hardly have time to look up and see what everyone else is up to. At Get Well UK we think that working together is more effective than standing alone, so we encourage networking to share ideas, develop best practice and for the encouragement to keep going. |
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Changing the system. For too long the Department of Health has been unable to see complementary therapies, despite 20% of us using these therapies. Colleagues at the DH only seem able to see the NHS and medical insurance. We want the map to visually make an impact – showing the increasing numbers of services available to people. By collecting information such as who funds these services we are able to understand more about our health services, and how we can influence them. We hope that the map will be useful for the media as well – one resource where you can send people to find accessible services. |
How did the map come about?
The Wates Foundation made a strategic investment to make these therapies visible. Wates have been funding complementary therapies for more than 20 years – they assisted the first integrated NHS service in the Marylebone Health Centre in 1986, and have funded projects in the field and research ever since. We are delighted that they are supporting this online map and a local community network Get Well Camden for two years.
Get Well UK has been providing quality assured NHS access to complementary therapies since May 2004. We quickly realised that access involves knowing what is available, that political leverage works best when you are well informed and that we were not going to transform the NHS or our own; nor would we want to. We love the map and are very interested to create networks amongst providers. People often come to us for advice and we often don’t have the right answer – but we know someone who does. This map is one way of cutting out the middle person.
Get Well Camden is a network managed by Women & Health in Camden and Get Well UK. As well as providing an online networking opportunity we are testing out what works in a local network. Get Well Camden so far has 37 members and 26 associate members who work in hospitals, the council, universities and many community projects in Camden. What unites us all is our commitment to increasing access to quality assured complementary therapies for NHS patients.
How you can help
Please help us to make this map as complete as possible. If you know of a GP offering complementary therapies, a hospital, community project or anyone else where the service is free or low-cost please let us know so we can contact them and find all their details. Please fill in our form with as many details as you know and that will be a great help.
You could donate us some money. We love Wates for getting this going, but sadly their money won’t last forever and the more people visit the site, the bigger our servers have to be. Also the more contacts we get to follow up the more calls we have to make confirming details etc. If you give us your money we will spend it wisely.
You can also volunteer your time. We need people to help verify information and to search the internet looking for more leads. Opportunities exist in London in our office and through the web.