Tag: equally well

Healthy Happy bairns – the conference

Advance notice of conference – put the date in your diary and book early .

Healthy Happy Bairns

Celebrating success and sharing learning from Support from the Start

the early years Equally Well Test site

 Date : 7th Feb 2012

Venue: Quayside Musselburgh

Chaired by Susan Deacon

9am                       Coffee and registration

9.30am                 Welcome from  Councillor Knox – Depute Provost

9.35am                 Opening Remarks from  Angela Constance – Early years Minister

9.45am                  These are the things that matter to me

A parents view of early years services

10.15am               Making a Space for Change

Don Ledingham, Director of Education & Children’s Services, ELC

10.45am                               Refreshment break

11.15am –             Healthy Happy Bairns –

The evaluation of the first two years of Support from the Start  –  ChangexChange team

                             Early years development in East Lothian Communities

The First report from the Early Development Instrument pilot – Dr Rosemary Geddes

Midday                         Transforming services – an assets based approach

Karen Grieve Equally Well national programme manager

12.20.                     Lunch & champions marketplace

Afternoon Session – Support from the Start the next phase

1.00pm                 Opening remarks – TBC

1.10pm                 The Vision – Ronnie Hill, Head of Children’s Services, ELC

1.30pm                 Making the vision a reality

                                  The Best possible start in My community 

                                   Community Workshops

3.30pm                 Close

To book a place contact pmclaren@eastlothian.gov.uk

 

National Evaluation Report on Equally Well Test Sites

A report from the team leading the evaluation of all eight Equally Well test sites is now available on-line at
http://www.healthscotland.com/documents/5342.aspx
This evaluation focuses on the generic service redesign for health inequalities learning from the full programme. This is in addition to the 8 local evaluations carried out in each test site. A communication plan is being finalised, which will include promotion of these learning points and approaches via routes such as presentations, conferences, email distribution, web distribution, distinct and bespoke products to help others adopt these approaches etc.

‘These are the things that matter to me…’

 

A group of parents who use voluntary sector services for families of early years children were supported to make a short film about what made a difference for them and their children. The film was made at Stepping Forward a Sure Start centre in Penicuik.

The idea for the video came from conversations that Susan Deacon had with groups of parents in Mid & East Lothian as part of her evidence gathering for her report to the Education Minister.  A previous post  ‘Conversations with Susan’ described the content and impact of the discussion she had with parents. Parents were supported by the Media Co-op to make the video. Many thanks to Shelley for uploading the video to YouTube (I still haven’t mastered that)

We will use the video as part of Support from the Start  ‘civic conversation’ about health and the early years. Its first public viewing will be to East Lothian councillors.

Starting a conversation

‘Support from the Start’ aims to improve health in areas of East Lothian that have the poorest health outcomes by focusing on early years and parenting. Engaging service providers and members of the community is key to its success. 

But what does ‘enagement’actually mean and how can it be achieved?

Communties scotland has developed standards for community engagement, and the guidelines for the standards gives the following definition :-

 

 Developing and sustaining a working relationship between one or more public body and one or more community group, to help them both to understand and act on the needs or issues that the community experiences

So in this case community engagement means :

Developing and sustaining a working relationship betweent council, health and voluntary sector services that provide or support services to parents and children between 0 and eight, and the communities of Tranent, Wallyford, Whitecraig, Prestonpans and Musselburgh East to help them both understand and act on the issue of health inequality.

How can this ‘working relationship’ be developed and sustained?

In my experience good working relationships are like good conversations created from a mutual interest, and a mutual acceptance that the other person has something valid and important to offer / say. Crucially both sides need to demonstrate that they are listening to maintain the interest and involvement of the other partner.

At a national conference on Equally Well I heard a speaker from the International Futures forum talk about a ‘civic conversation’ as method of community engagement. The idea of a ‘civic conversaton’  was first put forward by philospher Anthony Grayling and has since been developed as a methodology for  trying to find out what people and services thought was important for the future of Glasgow, and to develop an understanding between services and community about the desired future.

 If we have health as part of the ethos of the city, then what policies and actions ought we develop to make this apparent and explicit. A civic conversation explores aspirations and possibilities for worthwhile action to ensure that both Glasgow and Glaswegians flourish. The basic premise underlying the civic conversation is that the way a community talks to itself, how it forms its values, beliefs and policies ultimately influences how it behaves. 

On the 16th March Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer is coming to a conference in East Lothian to help us start a ‘civic conversation’ about health inequality. He will  tell us why acting on health inequality is so important to East Lothian’s and Scotland’s future, and why the early years of life are crucial to improving health and preventing illness. Having intiated this ‘civic conversation’ we will need to be able to develop and sustain it, and the afternoon session of the conference will look at how we can take this conversation into the target communities. However, the end of the conference will not be the end of the conversation only the end of its beginning. We hope the community members and service providers that attend will go away with ideas about how to continue a ‘civic conversation’, and that the result of the many conversations that take place will be brought together in the following year at an event that will focus on developing and deepeing the conversation by showing how services and communities have listened to each other on the issue of health inequality.

Support from the Start

Scotland’s public health minister Shona Robinson chaired a ministerial taskforce to look at how Scotland can challenge the kind of inequality that leads to significantly different health outcomes for different parts of our community. The taskforce published a report called ‘Equally Well’ which amongst a number of recommendations called for the setting up of ‘test sites’ to lead on the learning that is needed to address the issue of health inequality. East Lothian has been selected as one of eight test sites in Scotland with a focus on early years and parenting. We have called the test site in East Lothian ‘Support from the Start’ to reflect the aim of ensuring that communities and services are doing all that is possible to address the health needs of the youngest members of our community in the areas where we know that health outcomes are poorest.

Support from the Start is not a short term project but rather a focus within all mainstream services on health inequality in the early years of life. Governance for the programme will be provided by a steering Board consisting of Councillor Roger Knox (Depute Provost & Health Spokesman); Councillor Ruth Currie (Cabinet Member for Joint Future & Community Care & Youth Champion); Sue Ross (Director of Community Services & Chair of Joint Health Improvement Project Board); Don Ledingham (Acting Director of Education & Children’s Services & Chair of Children’s Services Chief Officers Group); Gerry Power (General Manager East Lothian Community Health Partnership)  This group will provide strategic leadership and ensure that all relevant planning groups are involved in developing Support from the Start.

Four broad outcome areas for mainstream services in relation to health inequality have been identified:-

  • Community Engagement with key health issues in the early years,
  • Improving Support for Parents & Carers,
  • Improving Support for Families,
  • Creating Child Friendly Environments

We know that there is already lots of good practise in these areas but ‘Support from the Start’ will be asking service providers to review what they are are already doing with the following questions in mind : –

  • How do we get our communities, parents and children involved in key health improvement challenges for the early years of life? e.g. increasing the number of breastfeeding mothers, reducing passive smoking in the home environment, increasing physical activity levels of children in the early years, improving diet and dental hygiene
  • Do East Lothian services make it easy for parents to be ‘good enough’, and can parents access the right support, early enough when they are finding it hard to cope?
  • How do we target support for children and families that are at risk of poor health, and is it effective?
  • Does the physical space of our communities contribute to creating good health in the early years and support parents in raising healthy children safely

 Key to ensuring success in this endeavour will be engagement, leadership and learning. A process has started to identify individuals from across a range of services who can act as ‘champions’ for ‘Support from the Start’. These champions will be tasked with creating a learning environment in their service areas on the issues of health and social justice related to tackling health inequality in the early years. The champions will be contributors to this blog.

My hope for this web log is that it will be a space in which discussion and reflection on the complex task of reducing health inequalities in East Lothian can be supported and encouraged.

All views and opinions welcome.

Steven Wray

Health Improvement Development Officer