SCHW Programmes & Resources

2019 to 2024 Blueprint

Scottish Communities for Health and Wellbeing (SCHW) has been working for a number of years on producing a Blueprint for a healthier Scotland to present to the Scottish Government. Many community led organisations have contributed to shaping the Blueprint and many critical friends have commented on drafts.  Thank you for your great help.  We now have the final version of the Blueprint.  The executive summary is on the Updates page where there is also a link to the full Blueprint document.

The Blueprint is a detailed, approach to delivering empowering and enabling investment in communities to improve the health and wellbeing of individuals, families and neighbourhoods.  Building on Scotland’s great and under-valued asset of community led organisations and establishing new local partnerships are at the centre of the Blueprint.  The current crisis has illustrated in an amazing way just how communities can respond quickly and effectively in emergency situations.

To download the Blueprint click here

November 23 - The Big Get Together - ‘Talkin’ ‘bout a Revolution: from rhetoric to action’ Event

On 13 November 2023 community-led health organisations and other partners met in the Byres Community Hub, School of Health and Wellbeing, University of Glasgow. They came to

  • Exchange experiences of community-led health in action

  • Hear new evidence of how it makes a difference

  • Discuss what they can do themselves to increase their impact

  • Challenge government, the NHS and others to move beyond rhetoric to support community-led action

The event explored how we can move from rhetoric to action, with insights from partners in the SCHW network, Glasgow Caledonian University, the Scottish and Northern Ireland SPRING programmes and the Scottish Government’s Place and Wellbeing programme. At the end of this document, we record some of the key messages that participants wanted to pass on about the way forward. Workshops on several aspects of ‘community-led health in practice’ allowed discussions on innovative community led approaches and structures for securing health and wellbeing improvement across Scotland. Here we bring together the ideas recorded in those workshops, and the key messages that people wanted to pass on about the way forward at the end of the event. To learn more about the event click here

2021 - 2024 - Common Health Assets Programme

SCHW is actively involved in a major 3 year national research programme (Common Health Assets) funded by the National Institute for Health Research and managed and coordinated by Glasgow Caledonia University.  Below is an outline of the structure and phases in the research programme. Four SCHW organisations are the Scottish delivery partners in the programme.

The aim of this research is to find out how community organisations’ use of ‘assets based approaches’ improves health and wellbeing, and how that might be different in different contexts. Where we find positive effects we will examine whether those effects can be applied elsewhere (‘scaled up’), and how community organisations can find ways to survive (sustainability).  

Assets based approaches are about ‘doing with’ (rather than ‘doing to’) and working with communities to build on their strengths, mobilising the knowledge and skills of local people. We will study community led organisations, or ‘CLOs’, in areas that are often called ‘deprived’ - because of poverty, poor physical and social environments and lower health outcomes. CLOs work with communities to offer a range of activities, such as walking or cooking groups, language classes, and community gardens or cafes.  For more information click here.

2022 to 2024 - Place and Wellbeing

SCHW has actively contributed to shaping the Place and Wellbeing programme over the last two years and is a member of the programme core management group. The Communities workstream is part of the Place and Wellbeing Programme that has been established by the Scottish Government as part of the Care and Wellbeing Portfolio. The Programme was established to look at what we can do at a national level to support local action to reduce health inequalities. This includes:

o Ensuring local partners have the necessary support and resources from the wider health system to effect change and achieve fairer health outcomes.

o Supporting the NHS with its role in Community Wealth Building through decisions on employment, spend and use or disposal of land and assets.

o Strengthening the capacity and relationships of community organisations so they can complement the efforts of the public sector in reducing inequalities.

July 18 to June 23 - SPRING Social Prescribing

The SPRING Social Prescribing project connected people aged 18+ to support within their community to improve their health and wellbeing. Social Prescribers were based in 19 delivery partners, community-led health organisations throughout Scotland and Northern Ireland. SPRING was a partnership between SCHW and the Healthy Living Centre Alliance in Northern Ireland, funded by the UK National Lottery Community Fund. To learn more about the the programme and the evaluation click here

2016 - Out and About (OAA)

OAA was a programme managed by SCHW and funded by the Alliance. The programme supported individuals with long-term health conditions and the wider community to tackle the causes of social isolation and health inequalities. OAA involved a consortium of 5 community-led organisations from Aberdeen to Ayrshire who are using their combined resources, experience and expertise to tackle the issues regarding social isolation and health inequalities. The OAA partnership included Annexe Communities, Glasgow; Healthy Valleys, South Lanarkshire; yipworld, East Ayrshire; Deaf Connections, Glasgow and The Foyer, Aberdeen. To learn more about the programme click here