Many of you will have heard about the Communities workstream of the Scottish Government’s Place and Wellbeing Programme at our annual conference earlier this month. We’ve now set up this page so we can publish regular updates on the work of the programme to keep you informed of progress.

The Place and Wellbeing Programme forms part of the Scottish Government’s Care and Wellbeing Portfolio; a reform programme designed to improve population health, address health inequalities and improve the sustainability of the health and social care system. The programme is focussed on the actions which can be taken at a national level to support primary prevention activities which address health inequalities in local communities.

The Communities workstream of the programme aims to empower the community and voluntary sector to act locally to complement the actions of the public sector in tackling health inequalities. It has four objectives:

  • Promoting the contribution of the community sector in reducing health inequalities.

  • Increasing the influence local community organisations have over decisions that impact on health and wellbeing within their communities.

  • Increasing the capacity of local community organisations through fairer funding.

  • Increasing access to resources (other than grant funding) that will further enhance the sector’s capability to create the conditions for health and wellbeing within their communities.

The workstream is governed by the Communities Core Group, made up of representatives of the NHS, local authorities and the third sector, and is chaired by Susan Paxton, Director of SCDC.

Recent developments

In late 2023, Third Sector Interfaces in three randomly selected areas were commissioned to undertake an engagement exercise, asking local community organisations what actions would be most beneficial to increase their influence and capacity. The findings were presented to policy officials from a range of Scottish Government departments at a workshop in December, giving an opportunity to highlight the sector’s challenges and how these could be addressed through holistic, cross-policy working.

Work is also going on with grant holders in Scottish Government’s Health and Social Care Directorate to explore how grant management processes can be improved to minimise the administrative burden and increase flexibility for grant recipients in the community sector, while ensuring any funding achieves its aims.

Next Steps

We will hold an engagement workshop in the spring for network organisations, along with their public sector partners, to agree tangible actions which could be taken forward to improve the capacity and influence of the sector. These actions, along with the TSI findings will inform a set of recommendations which will be taken forward by the Core Group and relevant policy leads in Scottish Government.

An evidence review, collating existing research to highlight the contribution of the community sector in tackling health inequalities will be completed by the summer.

The review will underpin a communications strategy to highlight the work of the community sector in reducing health inequalities, both within Scottish Government and across the wider public sector, in order to improve support and collaboration in this space.

Many of you will already be engaged with this work but we hope to provide more regular updates through this platform to increase the reach of the programme, and keep CHEX members informed as work progresses.

If you have any questions or would like to talk to someone about this piece of work, you can email Susan or the Place and Wellbeing team.