Food & Health Alliance

Equally Well sets an ambitious and radical programme for change across the key priority areas of children's very early years; the big killer diseases of cardiovascular disease and cancer; drug and alcohol problems and links to violence; and mental health and wellbeing.

Following Equally Well: The Report of the Ministerial Task Force on Health Inequalities, this implementation plan, created in partnership with COSLA, describes how the Government and community planning partnerships can and will turn the Task Force's recommendations into action across the four priority areas, and identifies which organisations can most helpfully be involved at each stage. The plan includes examples of action already starting to happen across Scotland and establishes eight test sites.

Key actions that progress the Equally Well recommendations include:

• Scottish Government publishing the early years framework (December 2008).
• The Nurse Family Partnership pilot in NHS Lothian, which will provide holistic support services for families with very young children at risk of poor health and other poor outcomes (to start in 2009).
• The two year project to increase health and wellbeing support in schools, with demonstration sites in four NHS Boards (started autumn 2008).
• The Scottish Government's drugs strategy, The Road to Recovery, which includes 17 actions that will improve support for children and young people affected by parental substance misuse (published May 2008).

Test Sites

Local test sites are a key way in which the Equally Well recommendations will be taken forward. These are areas where local authorities and their community planning partners intend to improve on both the reach and impact of local services within existing resources, taking the opportunity to use ideas from frontline staff who deliver services, and from the people who use them.

The plan describes how the test sites will transform and redesign public services, to improve client pathways through services that have a big effect on their health and wellbeing. The test sites will learn from each other and we shall make sure that learning is spread more widely and effectively than has been possible through previous pilot- and project-based approaches.

The eight test sites are in:

• Whitecrook, West Dunbartonshire - targeting the high prevalence of smoking in the area.
• East Lothian - looking at health inequalities in early years in Prestonpans, Musselburgh East and Tranent.
• Govanhill, Glasgow - looking at community regeneration and development through the adoption of a neighbourhood management approach involving all key community planning partners.
• Blairgowrie - looking at delivering health inequality sensitive services in a rural setting for people with multiple and complex needs.
• Lanarkshire - focusing on sustained employment and supporting people to find decent work.
• Fife - focusing on anti-social behaviour in relation to alcohol and underage drinking.
• Dundee - focusing on methods of improving wellbeing.
• Glasgow City - looking at integrating health into current and future city planning.

Each of the test sites is a collaboration between local public services. Each has high-level buy-in from those with the authority to manage permanent change and direct spend in an area, and so will demonstrate how mainstream services can be transformed within existing resources to fit with what their clients really need.