Everyone in Argyll and Bute has the right to lead the healthiest and safest life possible. Whether that means being empowered to make healthier lifestyle choices; being able to access opportunities and services for health and wellbeing locally; or having the skills and resources to manage your own health, health improvement is in everyone’s best interest.
The following values and principles underpin how health improvement is delivered:
Participative
Equitable
Evidence based
Well planned
Effective
Where health improvement happens:
Health improvement can happen anywhere and at any stage of life, for example, early years, young people, adults and older people, and can take place in a variety of settings and communities, such as:
NHS premises
Schools
The workplace
Geographical communities
Communities of interest, such as social clubs, churches etc.
What we will do:
Current thinking around health improvement suggests that healthy people arise from healthy communities. Interventions work best if they are done with local communities and they build on assets and resources already present in these communities. This is known as “salutogenesis” or an “assets based approach” and the Health and Wellbeing Partnership favours this model. It involves engaging local communities in finding out what health issues matter to them and responding to what they want. It also involves breaking down boundaries and not looking at topics such as smoking or harmful drinking in isolation from other factors in health, such as poverty, employment status, educational attainment etc.
The following chart shows how the Health and Wellbeing Partnership works within Argyll and Bute and NHS Highland.
We are here to ensure that the people of Argyll and Bute have the opportunity to be as healthy as possible. Good health and wellbeing is at the heart of a vibrant Argyll and Bute. This website will help you to find out what health activities are happening and can also put you in touch with lots of local projects.
Coordinator: Dee James
email address: hwnbute@ab-rc.org.uk
Anyone who is interested in improving the health and wellbeing of people on Bute is more than welcome to join the network – we have members from NHS, Education, Social work, from local community organisations, health based businesses, and representatives from the community too.
Please join us for the local Bute Health & Wellbeing Network meetings…
The dates of meetings for the coming year are:
Friday 3rd May
Monday 10th June
Friday 6th September
Friday 1st November
Friday 28th February 2020
These will all be held in the Green Tree Café, Moat Centre, Rothesay from 11am-1pm.
The meetings will include information about grant funding, updates from the Health Improvement Team/invited presenters, presentations from local groups/organisations, networking, feedback from previous grantees, local action planning amongst many other things.
Light refreshments will be provided.
Please share widely with your networks
Links to Newsletters
6th March ’19 Bulletin
Adverse Childhood Experiences Newsletter March ’19
20th Feb Bulletin
Argyll and Bute Health and Social Care Partnership has allocated £100,000 from its Public Health budget this year to support community led health improvement activities.
This budget is devolved to local networks to distribute as they see fit using agreed selection criteria. This year we now have the following 4 themes for grant funding:
Theme 1 – Getting the best start in life
Giving children a good start in life enables them to go on to be healthy adults. Ways of giving children a good start in life include: pre and during pregnancy support; breastfeeding and healthy weaning; active lifestyles; and alleviation of poverty.
Theme 2 – Working to ensure fairness
Health inequalities continues to be a priority. One of the best ways to improve health is to increase income levels. Other areas of fairness include: race, religion, disability, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status and pregnancy. Our rural geography can also be a barrier to fairness here.
Theme 3 – Connecting people with support in their community
Health problems can be caused or made worse by social issues like loneliness, relationship breakdown, debt or homelessness. Enabling people to access community and support is called social prescribing.
Theme 4 – Focusing on Wellness not illness
Enabling people to be as healthy as possible and focus on wellness instead of illness. Doing this by building capacity in communities for healthy living and continuing to focus on assets for health i.e. what keeps us healthy.
Hundreds of initiatives have received funding over the years in Argyll and Bute. Recipients range from one off events such as a cookery class or an information resource for carers to supporting ongoing activities such as a befrienders group for older people or swimming lessons for disabled adults. Potential applicants can find out more about how to access the grant fund by joining their local network.
In order to be effective, health improvement activities must balance the needs and aspirations of communities with what the evidence and experience shows can make a difference. The geography of Argyll and Bute means that local communities can have distinct needs and this has resulted in a very diverse range of services across the area. Just because something has been shown to work in one area does not mean it will work in another area. However, strategically those responsible for planning and commissioning services have a duty to ensure equity of services and funding allocations across Argyll and Bute.
The Joint Health Improvement Plan 2017 – 2022 is available to view here:
JHIP 2017-22
The New Joint Health Improvement Plan will be launched soon – keep an eye out!
The Health and Wellbeing Partnership Annual Report for 2017 – 2018 is available here:FINAL Health and Wellbeing Annual report 2017-18 – FINAL
