Referral pathways at the specialist roles CMHS included; a dietician, an exercise physiologist, a well women's group, a diabetic educator, a podiatrist, council initiatives (Jamie's Ministry of Food and a leisure programme), a YMCA exercise programme, a Quit programme for smoking cessation, a volunteer fitness instructor, and general practitioners.
We had some content lined up: lists of scheduled work from road engineers and leisure centre programmes, as well as someone stationed in the social care contact centre in the small hours.
Practitioners 'signposted' patients to a variety of opportunities and services within their local community but there was high use of 'self-directed' options due to practitioners' concerns that leisure facility programmes and timetables may not be accurate.
Last year's winning projects included an astonishingly popular free leisure services programme in Birmingham, an innovative housing scheme in Derby for women victims of domestic violence who also have mental health or addiction problems, and a hugely successful travel training initiative for young people in Gloucestershire with physical and learning disabilities.
Children born in the years 1999 2000 were recruited from the baseline measurements (September November 2010) of a cluster randomised trial aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a leisure-time programme of physical activity for the prevention of childhood obesity (clinicaltrials.gov number: NCT01277224).
Of the three exercise referral studies, one involved referral to a leisure centre based programme, one to a community walks programme, and one involved small group exercise sessions at an unspecified location.
The authority said funding for the project was secured through its leisure centre transformation programme.
37 We found weak evidence of a short term increase in physical activity and reduction in the levels of depression of sedentary individuals after participation in an exercise referral scheme (typically a 10-12 week, leisure centre based programme) when compared with usual care.
This notion was supported by allowing the participant to inform the robot about their preferences in terms of drinks, snacks and leisure activities, and TV programmes that they preferred in their own daily life prior to the first interaction with the robot.
