How does this impact on Community Wellbeing? This is a collective response from community organisations addressing local wellbeing supported by The National Lottery Community Fund Too many agencies providing support services to communities do not look at the “bigger picture” and instead focus on individual issues. This may help to deal with one aspect of the problem but will not provide any resolution to the wider issue. For example, an agency providing support for addiction issues may not consider the impact of an individual person’s addiction on the wider community. In addition, multiple issues are being supported by multiple agencies with no joined-up approach and a lack of partnership working. This has a negative impact on community wellbeing. A more holistic approach to the design of services as well as encouraging agencies to work more in partnership rather than in silo’s needs to be taken into consideration for services to be designed in a more person-centred manner and therefore benefit communities. Why should the Committee focus on this as part of their future work? There are many services that provide support to communities which have not developed their services to consider the “bigger picture”. There is also a competition for finite resources, especially within the third sector, which deters organisations from working in partnership with each other. The Committee can be a key driver in influencing a step-change in the way service providers design and implement their services in order to serve the communities of Scotland better.
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