Next steps - supporting community-centred healthy places

Community cohesion can be defined as communities or places that:

• offer a common vision and a sense of belonging for all
• positively value diversity
• provide equal opportunities to people from different backgrounds
• provide an environment where strong and positive relationships can be developed between people from different backgrounds (in the workplace, schools and neighbourhoods)

Research evidence shows that community cohesion is important for population health and wellbeing. It affects issues such as:

• trust
• perception of crime and safety
• using outside spaces to be active
• social isolation, loneliness and mental wellbeing
• reduced violence
• greater civic participation
• greater community resilience in preparation for emergencies

Currently, there are challenges to social and community cohesion internationally and nationally and in public discourse. We are fortunate to have a wealth of community organisations and assets across the Borough. There is the opportunity to explore whether specific approaches to supporting community cohesion would be helpful, working across communities and partners and potentially neighbouring local authority areas, for example through restorative community work and intergenerational work.

A community-centred public health approach can be used to help bring together developing health places and healthy communities, in a way that proactively promotes and builds in good health and wellbeing. Some principles can help to take this forward, including:

• bringing together communities and places including building trusting relationships with communities
• co-producing solutions with communities based on new conversations about health and place
• identifying and promoting protective factors that help keep communities healthy

Public Health England also proposed some first steps to help adopt the approach, including developing community insights and strengthening local partnerships. A diagnostic checklist is also available to help areas determine how well they are enabling communities to take part in place-based approaches to reducing health inequalities. 

Where to start?

A community-centred public health approach can be implemented by:

• undertaking insight work with communities, especially with those who are seldom heard - this helps provide a strong understanding of people's health and wellbeing, as well as their priorities and solutions
• recognising and building on what is already going on, using methods such as local asset mapping
• strengthening local partnerships at a strategic level to build a shared vision
• producing a clear and compelling case for change linked to improving community health outcomes
• gaining senior buy-in and identifying champions to drive that change
• accepting that re-orienting how things are done is a messy, complex process that takes time and requires flexible approaches
• taking small steps and using small amounts of funding to get going and develop trusting relationships with communities

Actions

The following actions are proposed, fitting with the commitments and principles in the local Health and Wellbeing Strategy:

1. Move towards a 'health creation' approach, identifying proactive approaches to building or designing in good health and wellbeing wherever possible, in policy, practice and commissioning.
2. Use the community-centred public health approach to inform thinking and next steps on working with communities, neighbourhoods and places, including ensuring common principles are shared across partners to help take this forward with communities.
3. Review our position against the recommendations in the Local Government Association's (LGA's) guide Empowering healthy places: Unveiling the powers and practices of local councils in fostering healthy neighbourhoods. To support, consider completing the Public Health England diagnostic checklist together with partners to determine how well we are collectively enabling communities to take part in place-based approaches to reducing health inequalities.
4. Run LGA-facilitated Health in All Policies sessions for Council officers, Members and potentially wider system partners, to inform adopting this approach.
5. Build in improving health and addressing inequality as a core primary objective of the new Local Plan.
6. Identify key actions and issues arising from health impact assessment tool for developers and evaluate its implementation to inform future practice.
7. Health and Wellbeing Board to undertake a deep dive specifically on the food environment, in the context of the factors that shape places, to understand how levers can be maximised.
8. Build on existing insights work with communities such as Sport England and the learning from this approach.
9. Feed community insights into an organisation and system-wide bank of information, to be used for a range of purposes. Proactively identify key pieces of work to use the insights such as trailblazer Pride in Place and neighbourhood health implementation programme.
10. Respond to issues communities raise through simple, quick actions and potentially small pots of seed-funding, supporting and empowering community groups to take action.
11. The Council as a convenor (where appropriate) and enabler - build or support development of a community partnership or forum, led by the community, with the purpose of connecting community connectors as a network, supporting community capacity building.
12. Develop a network of community connectors further by enabling conversations at places where people meet, led by those within the community.
13. Consider infrastructure support needed to facilitate the network of community connectors lead by the community (systems, venues and funding).
14. Create a small, shared funding pot across the health and wellbeing system, to support community activity on an agreed set of key issues identified and owned by the community. Connect the action on these priorities, into the activity across the Council and wider system to maximise their impact.
15. Trial community ownership of spaces such as parks and neighbourhood assets.
16. Work with the community and Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector on a framework for community collaboration, to enable VCSE and community grassroots organisations to work together, to deliver on key issues and priorities (in place of a traditional commissioning approach) for example the Community Tool Box framework.
17. Consider further actions that build and cement relationships across the system to integrate the community sector as equal partners, for example Devon Integrated Care System (ICS) has a mentoring programme that pairs leaders in statutory organisations with leaders in the VCSE.
18. Explore potential opportunity for restorative and intergenerational approaches to support community cohesion and learning from other areas on this, and explore the role of the Council and other partners in this approach.