Health & Wellbeing

Tommy McLean of Corstorphine Community Council offers (25 Sep) his opinion on the central role CCs should be looking to play here:

City of Edinburgh Council’s (CEC) Helen Bourquin, from the Community Engagement & Empowerment (CE&E) Team, spoke to EACC on 31 August about the LIP programme. (Here are the slides from the meeting.) I set out below my thoughts on how Community Councils can meaningfully participate. This is an excellent opportunity for Community Councils to be involved in identifying and shaping community priorities within the compass of their own LIP, working alongside CEC and other statutory Partners.

The current plan (covering 2017 to 2023) was justifiably criticised because local communities felt they were not given much opportunity to determine what they considered to be local priorities. The Edinburgh Partnership have asked CEC to engage with communities more effectively this time.

The CE&E Team is leading on this. In the North West Edinburgh Locality (the first plan to be worked on this time) CE&E have led several meetings to engage representatives from local groups (including Community Councils). The joint meetings have proved useful, encouraging and drawing involvement from a broad spectrum of community interests and networks. I understand a similar model of engagement will be used in each locality.

Simply put, Community Councils have a central position within their communities. It’s important that the knowledge and experience that sits there is fed into the LIP process to help develop programmes that are meaningful, realistic and useful for our communities and that make improvements to the lives of people living in them.

Possible roles for EACC:

• Act as a general point of contact and information exchange between CEC and Community Councils to aid effective communication
• Support better communication between Community Councils in different localities so that good practice can be exchanged and knowledge gained can be shared.
• Broadcast updates from the CE&E Team on ongoing work and stay involved in reviews of the effectiveness of the LIPs, to identify changes or improvements where required.

Possible roles for individual Community Councils

• Look for interested Community Councillors who will be the main point of contact for the CE&E Team.
• Have your LIP on the agenda on a regular basis and route feedback, comments and suggestions on priorities and actions needed to CEC. LIPs themselves will only be effective if they are used as living documents and if they improve community work in the areas where we live.
• Make sure representatives attend the review and planning sessions in your locality convened to draw up your new LIP for 2024 to 2029
• Use your own networks to encourage local organisations and individuals to contribute to and participate in the LIP; encourage them to help make it relevant to their community.
• Stick with it once the LIP is in place; take part in ongoing review and evaluation to make sure the plan remains relevant to your local community and is delivering exactly what is agreed and intended.

END / TMcL

The Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership is responsible for delivering community and bed-based health and social care services for adults in Edinburgh.Read the full article is HERE