Local Implementation

Strengthening the local infrastructure - Community Planning

Community planning is an important system for meeting locally identified needs and delivering national policy.

Community planning is a partnership between the local authority, the NHS, other public agencies, employers, voluntary and community groups, service users and businesses. Together, they are the community planning partnership.

The purpose of community planning is to make a difference by:

Committing the partners to developing an agreed strategic vision for their community; and
Dealing with cross-cutting issues that affect the social, economic and environmental health of the community.

The community planning partnership will achieve this by working together for the benefit of local people by:

Involving all sections of the community;
Collectively identifying needs and deciding how these can be dealt with; and
Co-ordinating activity to help deliver improved and effective services.

Different tools may be used in this process, such as setting objectives and targets, drawing up plans and monitoring and evaluating the work done.

The Community Planning partnership is charged with producing a Joint Health Improvement Plan for each local authority area as an integral part of the Community Planning Process.

The shared vision for health will be laid out in a clearly expressed set of objectives known as the Joint Health Improvement Plan, which is part of the community planning process.

It is recommend that community planning partnerships:

Deal with the strategic priorities of this strategy, taking account of local needs and priorities;
Make sure that these are expressed clearly as objectives within the Joint Health Improvement Plan;
Put these objectives into practice across relevant service areas;
Monitor progress relating to these objectives and evaluate their effects; and
Make sure that everyone involved acts in line with any existing or new legislative or audit requirements that may affect community planning partners.

Community Health Profiles

The Glasgow Centre for Population Health has created a new set of community health profiles, building on the success of similar health profiles produced by NHS Health Scotland in 2004.

There are ten community profiles, one for each Community Health (and Care) Partnership within the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde area. Data are also provided for smaller areas within each community. The profiles are based on a socio-ecological model of health and include indicators of health outcomes (e.g. deaths and hospitalisations) and health determinants (e.g. behaviours and socio-economic factors).

The profiles aim to:

Provide organisations and communities with up-to-date and locally relevant public health intelligence.
Highlight health and social inequalities.
Show trends in key indicators.
Provide local level information for targeting resources and priority setting.
Develop knowledge of the complex nature of health and its determinants.

The profiles are available to download at: www.gcph.co.uk/communityprofiles.

Please note, ScotPHO will be publishing general health and well-being profiles for all CHP / CHCP areas across Scotland later this year.

Resources relating to Local Implementation

National Library for Public Health
The new National Library for Public Heath is a constantly developing resource and information will b...

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