News

We are planning our budget for 2018/19 and are once again looking for your feedback.

The changes that we face, just like other cities, continue:

• our population is changing and growing
• demand for our services, such as for schools and health and social care, is increasing all the time
• Council income has not kept up with rising demand.

In 2017/18 we invested over £900m on services for residents, businesses and visitors. We focussed on the things you told us are important like education, care for older people, culture and services for vulnerable children and adults.

We have saved around £240m since 2012/13 and continue to work more efficiently and prioritise our services.  Even with this, we estimate that we need to save at least £21m by 2019, over £100m by 2021 and £150m by 2023.

Tell us what you think

Please give us your views on our budget proposals at www.edinburgh.gov.uk/playyourpart. You can also register to come along to Question Time on Monday 27 November, where you can put a question to our panel of senior councillors.

At its meeting on Friday 22 September, the Edinburgh Integration Joint Board (IJB) agreed to extend a number of grants streams forward to March 2019, 12 months beyond the current expiry date.  The Council aligned the end dates of all the above grants to 31 March 2018 on the basis that the budget for these programmes is now delegated and it is for the Integration Joint Board to determine its grantmaking strategy for 2018 and beyond.

In addition to the main grant programme, part of the Social Justice Fund associated with Integration Joint Board functions has also been delegated to the Board by the Council; as has the contribution to the health inequalities programme previously funded through Edinburgh Community Health Partnership. Grants have also been made through the Integrated Care Fund.

All of these grants are now extended and are designed to:

• promote community resilience and local activism;
• encourage self-help and volunteering initiatives;
• complement wider spending on health and wellbeing and inequality strategies;
• deliver a ‘return’ on investment’ by providing the leverage needed to attract other sources of grant funding; and
• support the maintenance of the civic ‘fabric’ of Edinburgh.

During 2018 there will be a full grants review and the scope, methodology and timescale will be reported back to the IJB for approval in November.  The work of this review will be led by the IJB Strategic Planning Group.

Further information is available here – full IJB report.

The Locality Improvement Plans (LIPs) were considered by the Council’s Culture and Communities Committee on 12 September 2017. The Committee decided to defer the item until its next meeting on 14 November 2017.

This action has been taken to enable the Council to develop and align governance arrangements for the introduction of Locality Committees alongside the LIPs and the wider community planning partnership going forward. An options paper is currently with the Council Leader for discussion.

A report will be presented at the Edinburgh Partnership to defer consideration and endorsement of the LIPs to its next meeting on the 7 December 2017. This will allow time for the Council to align the plans within the proposed governance and scrutiny arrangements currently under consideration.

Partners are encouraged to continue with their own sign off arrangements recognising that final conclusion will be at that meeting.

This means that final sign-off will not be concluded in time to meet the Scottish Government deadline of 1 October 2017.

The Council and its partners have demonstrated that substantial work has been undertaken through engagement at both a locality and small area level. Scottish Government will be provided with an update on the process to date and the next steps being taken by the Community Planning Partnership (CPP).

On Monday 28th August, the Scottish Government announced that 13 projects will receive funding in the new Employability Innovation and Integration Fund. The projects represent a mixture across the areas of health and social care, justice and housing and will operate across 15 local authority areas. You can see the full range of projects here

The Capital City Partnership Joined Up for Jobs Integration Project 

Capital City Partnership, along with partners City of Edinburgh Council, EVOC, NHS Lothian and The Action Group, submitted a successful bid to the Scottish Government. The proposal aims to ensure that employability provision in Edinburgh links with the emerging localities model.

 The “Joined Up for Jobs Integration Project” hopes to establish better employment outcomes for customers in regeneration areas, through joined up and ‘whole life’ approaches from key services working better together.

It brings together the Council’s Social Housing, Criminal Justice, and Health and Social Care agendas alongside the NHS and third sector partners represented currently by Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations Council and Joined Up for Jobs Forum. This approach is not about putting more frontline services in place, rather getting existing services to work collectively and bring about genuine, joined up and sustainable integration with a focus on housing, health and social care and criminal justice.

 The proposal will offer:

• Localities Integration team for one year to bring about sustainable change and adapt and influence current services

• Certified Personal Development programme of training and learning to 400 staff to increase understanding of customers’ needs and requirements and facilitate joint working

• Integration Charter Award to establish service standards and approaches when offering interventions to customers with aim of 100 organisations signing up

• Information platform (website) as frontline worker resource on better working together, including directory and search resource function, e-learning modules and co-production of the NHS Edinburgh Choices app

• Evaluation report with shared learning event and good practice for sustainability.

The project will commence in November 2017 and run until March 2019 with secondments to the project encouraged when new posts are advertised.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has a long history in delivering wide and varied prevention activities to improve safety and we take pride in the work we do and the difference we can make.

We routinely attend fires within the home and we see the consequences of such incidents. So, while we can fight fires we believe that prevention is key – and we will make every effort to stop them from happening in the first place. 

With older people clearly being particularly at risk from fire, we offer a free Home Fire Safety Visit service which could save lives.

These are a cornerstone of our prevention efforts and have contributed to a marked decrease in the number of incidents including those involving fatalities and casualties over the last decade.

Our firefighters will visit your home to identify any hazards. They will also assist in developing an escape plan as well as supply and install smoke detectors for free. Every day we work with partners to identify and support those that are vulnerable to the risk of fire….here is a typical example…

We received a referral for a Home fire safety check from a care worker for a young adult with learning difficulties that was easily distracted during cooking.  

Within 24hours a crew from a fire station alongside the care worker made sure the person had a working smoke alarm and that there were no other risks within the property.  It was decided that further more specialist advice was required from the Community Action team and other partners.  The question was – “if a fire occurred could the person raise the alarm and evacuate the property and if not who could raise the alarm for them?”

Working together with partners involved in their care a community alarm linked fire alarm was fitted alongside a timer on the cooker.  This reduced the risk considerably and with a tailored response plan allowed the person to fulfill their wish to live safely by themselves.  

The same approach can be used for gas, drug and alcohol dependent people, those with early dementia or mobility concerns, persons that hoard in the home.  All this starts with one referral to the SFRS keep someone safe.

We are here to help everyone stay safe within the home but we are particularly keen to support the most vulnerable and elderly within our communities.

That is why we appeal to everyone to check if their elderly relatives, friends or neighbours are in need of this vital support – and to contact us directly.

To register for a Home Fire Safety Visit call the SFRS freephone number: 0800 0731 999, text ‘FIRE’ to 80800, or visit the website at www.firescotland.gov.uk

David Girrity

Prevention & Protection Manager

City of Edinburgh

I recently attended Empowering our Communities, an event organised by the Scottish Government’s Ingage team.

The event was billed as ‘a pop-up day of advice, inspiration and connections’.  Like many of the delegates present, I’ve attended quite a few of these ‘inspirational’ events over the years, only to later be deflated by the grinding reality of funding cuts, tokenistic consultations and partnerships that are really partnerships in name only.

Community planning systems and structures come and go, but one key element crucial to making it work is so often the thing that’s missing: the community!  There are reasons to be optimistic that the new Localities being introduced across the city could see this change, however.

Recent legislation like the Christie Commission and the Community Empowerment Act has given communities substantial new powers. Statutory agencies are now obliged to work with communities to produce community plans that have communities at their heart. And with an emphasis on genuine partnership working, we should see an end to top-down community planning, with councils and other statutory services doing things with communities and not to them.

And given austerity and funding cuts in statutory services over recent times, there’s an acceptance that councils and statutory agencies simply can’t deliver services in the way they have in the past. There is a realisation that there really has to be a new way of working.

Some local authorities have readily addressed these changing circumstances, and one of the highlights of the Empowering our Communities event was the premiere of Rocky Road, a short film made by Media Co-op.

Rocky Road tells the story of a ‘switched-on’ Council – East Ayrshire – working alongside community activists, supporting them to help save their local community centre.  Without wishing to spoil the ending (!) the film illustrates just what can be achieved through trust and by genuine partnership working.

The film had a particular resonance for me as community centres in my own neck of the woods are currently going through challenging times as a consequence of the city council’s ‘transformation’ programme. They face uncertain futures as the number of front line Community Learning and Development staff has been slashed, with no indication yet of how centres which provide vital community services are to be managed and run in the future. The film, at least, had a happy ending – it remains to be seen if our local community centres will, too.

The film demonstrated that with enlightened thinking things can change, but there needs to be a will to bring about that change.  That will is certainly there in the third sector, where partnership working has been the norm for as long as I can remember. But this time, there are encouraging signs that the will to work together is also there within the statutory public services – they are certainly talking a good game.

Talk is cheap, of course, and ultimately we must judge our partners not on what they say, but on what they do.  Localities are in their infancy, but if communities are engaged from the outset maybe this time we can get community planning right.  After all, no-one deliberately sets out to deliver poor public services, so it’s in all our interests to make this work.  And wouldn’t we all love a story with a happy ending?

 The film can be found at

https://www.facebook.com/themediacoop/videos/1174208912683599/

Dave Pickering, Community Action North (CAN)

Chair, Forth & Inverleith Voluntary Sector Forum