Health and social care - Planning with People: community engagement and participation guidance - updated 2024
Planning with People sets out the responsibilities NHS boards, local authorities and Integration Joint Boards have to community engagement when health and social care services are being planned, or when changes to services are being considered and supports them to involve people meaningfully.
Annex A – Supporting information resources
In addition to national policy, each NHS Health Board, Integration Joint Board and Local Authority will have local policies on communication and engagement that should be referred to.
This guidance takes account of relevant legislation, including:
NHS (Scotland) Act 1978 as amended by the NHS Reform (Scotland) Act 2004
Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010
Patient Rights (Scotland) Act 2011
The Local Government (Scotland) Act 2003 gave a statutory basis to partnership working between all agencies responsible for delivering public services in an area, including health boards. This act established the role of Councils in facilitating the Community Planning process, at the heart of which is 'making sure people and communities are genuinely engaged in decisions made on public services which will affect them'.
The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 gave new rights to community bodies and new duties to public sector authorities to help empower communities by strengthening their voices in decisions about public services.
The Islands (Scotland) Act 2018 introduced measures to support and help meet the unique needs of Scotland's islands now and in the future.
The Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014 put in place a requirement for NHS Boards and Local Authorities to work together to deliver integrated health and social care services through Health and Social Care Partnerships.
Principles of Engagement and Participation
A number of standards and principles should be read alongside this guidance to help plan engagement, identify who should be involved and make sure engagement activity is meaningful.
Health and Social Care Standards
Joint Strategic Needs Assessment
Strategic Commissioning Planning
Planning Principles The Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014 contains the 'Planning Principles': Planning and delivering integrated health and social care: guidance'
Evaluating Participation Toolkit
Producing a report on findings
Quality Framework for Community Engagement
Scottish Community Development Centre - The National Standards for Community Engagement
Principles for Community Empowerment aims to raise awareness of community empowerment and promote such a shared understanding across scrutiny bodies to support high-quality scrutiny of community empowerment.
PANEL principles a human rights based approach to ensure that people's rights are at the centre of policies and practices.
Place Standard a simple framework to structure conversations about place, this tool provides prompts for discussions.
The Scottish Approach to Service Design a framework to guide how to design user-centred public services.
Gunning Principles a strong legal foundation from which the legitimacy of public consultations is assessed.
Principles of Inclusive Communication produced to help public authorities deliver effective, well organised and equally accessible services that provide value for money.
Principles of health and social integration The Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014, sets out 12 principles for health and social care integration.
Right First Time: a practical guide for public authorities to decision-making and the law - second edition, January 2021 Right First Time: a practical guide for public authorities to decision-making and the law - second edition
National health and wellbeing outcomes NHS Boards, Local Authorities and Integration Joint Boards work together to ensure that key outcomes are meaningful to the people they serve.
Visioning Outcomes in Community Engagement (VOiCE) can be used to plan community engagement and service user participation, conduct it effectively, monitor progress and evaluate outcomes.
Contact
Email: pwp@gov.scot
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