Healthy communities

"Scotland's health is improving rapidly but it is not improving fast enough for the poorest sections of our society. Health inequalities ... remain our major challenge."

Ministerial Task Force on Health Inequalities 

Equally Well

In October 2008, East Lothian was chosen by the Scottish Government as a test site for Equally Well, which is the Scottish Government's initiative to tackle health inequalities.

The initiative is led by senior managers from the Council, the NHS and the voluntary sector.

As a result of being a test site, our services will be strongly focusing on reducing health inequalities for the youngest members of the community and their families.

Support from the Start

Support from the Start is the name we have given to East Lothian's Equally Well test site. We have called it this because we want to make sure that our services are given the best support possible for good health from the very start of life.

Support from the Start is a partnership between East Lothian Council, its health service and voluntary sector partners. Senior officers and politicians from the Council and the East Lothian Community Health Partnership (CHP) (with support from the East Lothian Voluntary Organisations Network (ELVON)) are leading the partnership. 

Our aim is to improve existing service pathways and/or develop new ones for addressing health inequality in the early years, and to engage communities in improving the health of their youngest members.

Outcome areas

Four broad outcome areas have been identified for Support from the Start:

1. Community engagement
   How we get our communities, parents/carers and children involved in key health improvement challenges for the early years of life.

2. Improving support for parents and carers 
   Ensuring that East Lothian services make it easy for parents and carers to be 'good enough', and that they can access the right support early enough when they are finding it hard to cope.

3. Improving support for families
   How we target support for children and families that are at risk of poor health, and making sure that support is effective.

4. Creating child friendly environments
   Making sure the physical space of our communities contributes to creating good health in the early years and supports parents and carers in raising healthy children safely.

For more information

Visit the Support from the Start Web Log

http://edubuzz.org/blogs/equallywell/