East Lothian Health & Social Care Partnership - Developing an Engagement Strategy

Overview

The Integration Joint Board (IJB) of East Lothian Health and Social Care Partnership is committed to improving outcomes for our population and for the communities in which people live.  Our Strategic Plan describes this commitment and recognises that central to achieving our vision is the involvement of the different perspectives, skills, knowledge and resources of a broad range of people involved both in health and social care services and in our communities.  The Strategic Plan values the richness and breadth of involvement and articulates a clear aim to build collaborative, meaningful partnerships between all key stakeholders.

Our Strategic Plan also commits to understanding the needs of the different communities in East Lothian, recognising that meaningful engagement and participation with individuals and communities requires us to take into account their individual and collective characteristics and in particular the protected characteristics of age, disability status, ethnicity, gender/sex, religion/belief, sexual orientation and transgender identity.

Our Draft Participation and Engagement Strategy is therefore one of our primary supporting documents and outlines how the IJB will:

• Ensure it has a clear and effective participation and engagement approach at the heart of reforming health and social care services locally
• Effectively deliver its Strategic Plan, which outlines how it will progress and deliver on the agreed national health and wellbeing outcomes
• Enable the Partnership’s vision and how it works to become a reality
• Inform decision making processes in the carrying out of delegated functions

*** You can view our Draft Participation and Engagement Strategy under 'Related' below ***

Mapping What's Already in Place

A key strand in developing our Participation and Engagement Strategy is to map resources and networks already in place. This will enable us to see where we can work together with other organisations on joint engagement projects, learn from information that you have already collected, and identify topics not engaged upon yet and people who haven’t been engaged with yet.

It will also allow us to build a comprehensive bank of engagement tools and resources that we can all access. It will enable us to employ a wide range of engagement techniques appropriate to particular groupings and topics.

To do this we need the help of:

• Area Partnerships
• Community Councils
• East Lothian Tenants and Residents Panel and Tenants and Residents Associations
• Patient involvement groups
• Third sector organisations
• Interest and advocacy groups
• Service providers
• Community Planning groups (for example, the Resilient People Partnership)
• Our staff and unions