The award winning ARC Centre is a registered charity managed by a voluntary Board of Directors. ARC Ltd was formed in November 2000 to undertake the management of the ARC Healthy Living Centre capital build and to oversee the ongoing operation of the Centre and associated programmes.
The ARC Centre, a refurbished building based within Sallyswood estate was officially opened in 2001, the ethos of inclusion and positive expectation was fundamental to the survival and success of the project. The ARC Centre responds to the needs of the local community by providing opportunities to enable and empower people to develop their own resources for creative and healthy living.
The ARC Healthy Living Centre aims to address health inequalities and improve the well-being of local people by bringing together a partnership of community health activities and services. The Marmot Review into health inequalities, published in February 2010, draws further attention to the evidence that most people are not living as long as the best off in society, and spend longer in ill health, premature illness and death affects everyone below the top. One of the reports key contentions is that positive health outcomes are significantly more influenced by social determinants than clinical determinants; indeed, that our health is 70% driven by social determinants and only 30% by clinical factors.
Central to the report’s approach is to create the conditions for people to take control of their own lives. This requires action on the ‘social determinants’ of health. These are described as the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. They can lead to health inequalities the unfair and avoidable differences in health status that arise because of inequalities in society.
The ARC was named as the Northern Ireland Health & Social Care Social Enterprise of the Year 2015