Promoting Community Cohesion through Health and wellbeing scrutiny CFPS Healthy Accountability Forum

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Promoting Community Cohesion through Health and
wellbeing scrutiny CFPS Healthy Accountability
Forum 13 July 2009 Andrew Lawrence
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Summary

• What is community cohesion and why is it an
  important issue for people in the Health service?
• Better Together guide
• Is the NHS making an effective contribution to
  Community Cohesion?
• How can Scrutiny raise the bar?
• Ten challenging questions

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Better Together

• A guide for people in the Health service on how
  they can help to build more cohesive communities.
  
• Published report, web-based guide, journal
  articles, training workshops,
• Defines Community Cohesion,
• Explains why its important to people in Health
  service,
• Identifies ten key activities and asks ten
  challenging questions about how NHS can influence
  cohesion,
• Identifies key issues and recommends actions that
  can be taken by NHS bodies to have maximum
  impact.

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What is Community Cohesion?

• Community cohesion is what must happen in all
  communities to enable different groups of people
  to get on well together. A key contributor to
  community cohesion is integration which is what
  must happen to enable new residents and existing
  residents to adjust to one another.
• Three foundations
• People from different backgrounds having similar
  life opportunities
• People knowing their rights and responsibilities
• People trusting one another and trusting local
  institutions to act fairly
• Three ways of living together
• A shared future vision and sense of belonging
• A focus on what new and existing communities have
  in common, alongside a recognition of the value
  of diversity
• Strong and positive relationships between people
  from different backgrounds.
• Source The Governments Response to the
  Commission on Integration and Cohesion, DCLG,
  Feb 2008.

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Why should people working in Health be
interested?

• Community Cohesion affects peoples health and
  health affects cohesion.
• It is part of our stock of social capital. In
  cohesive communities people look out for each
  other and reduce costs of dependency and
  institutional care.
• NHS is a sleeping giant. Could do much more.
• Partnerships need the benefit of Health
  experience, particularly in Equality and
  Diversity and in sharing intelligence
• It helps NHS comply with several legal duties.
• It helps them to achieve other NHS priorities.

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What barriers need to be overcome?

• Terminology Its more than Equalities and
  Diversity.
• Its not just about race and faith. Need to
  address all aspects of perceived difference.
• Need to arouse the sleeping giant.
• Not enough is known about how communities are
  changing
• Community engagement needs to include finding out
  how different communities feel about each other
  and how that impacts on health.
• Challenge the practice of single group funding.
• Making patient choice fairer for all communities.

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Ten challenging questions

• Developed in discussions with a group in the
  North West region.
• Leadership and partnership,
• Promoting positive relations between people from
  different backgrounds
• Celebrating all aspects of equality and diversity
• Engaging with everyone in our communities
• Making services accessible to all
• Involving service providers
• Publicity and myth busting
• Using and sharing the best information
• Investing in workforce skills
• Promoting NHS jobs to all

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What does good practice look like?

• Programmes to challenge perceptions about
  difference and to bust myths (not just race and
  faith but also disability, age, etc.)
• Promoting interaction between people who have
  differences through volunteering, challenging
  single group funding, changing the format of
  community engagement, changing the way public
  spaces are managed, inter-generational projects,
  integrating disabled people.
• Taking a much higher profile in Local Strategic
  Partnerships.
• Working with partners on improved information
  strategies to understand better how communities
  are changing.
• Designing the commissioning process so that it
  includes the needs of all communities and ensures
  that service providers deliver services in
  inclusive and integrated ways.
• Promoting interaction within the workforce and
  promoting NHS jobs to under-represented
  communities.