Voluntary Sector Representative on the Aberdeen City CHP (Community Health Partnership) Committee.

‘Aberdeen city CHP comprises a population of approximately 270 thousand patients spread throughout Aberdeen, served by 32 practices in three core clusters’. Aberdeen City CHP Induction Pack 09/07.

The context for partnership working in Scotland and for the development of Community Health Partnerships (CHP) was set out in the White Paper ‘Partnership for Care and Delivering for Health’ and further strengthened in the NHS Reform (Scotland) Act 2004, which provided the main impetus for the development of CHPs. The CHP regulations form the legislative base within which the guidance is based and came into effect on 1st October 2004. CHPs are ostensibly committees or sub-committees of NHS Boards, with full delegated functions and resources for primary and community based services.

The original aims of CHPs were to build on the achievements of Local Health Care Co-operatives (LHCCs), and to make a measurable improvement in local population health by providing higher quality, accessible, joined - up services for local communities. CHP’s achieve this through strengthening primary, secondary and community based service planning and delivery in order to develop joint working with local authorities, the voluntary and community sectors along with the other partners. Under the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003, Aberdeen City Council has a statutory duty to facilitate the ‘community planning process’, by which public services in an area are planned and provided in consultation with public & statutory bodies, the communities they serve and the Voluntary sector.

In Aberdeen the ‘community planning’ (process is overseen by ‘The Aberdeen City Alliance or TACA’ (www.communityplanningaberdeen.org.uk) as a challenge group of TACA CHPs are required to take a wider perspective on health as being a state of physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease, and to act as enablers of improved health outcomes across a community, working very closely with all community planning partners, which would include the Voluntary sector.

Membership of the CHP Committee (ref Voluntary Sector) (Taken from Statutory Guidance)

3. - (1) The Board shall ensure that so far as practicable, at least one person falling within each of the following sub-paragraphs is appointed as a member (a full list of members can be viewed by viewing the guidance found on http://www.sehd.scot.nhs.uk/chp/guidance.htm) :- j) a member of a voluntary organisation whose activities include the provision of a service similar or related to a service provided by the Board under or by virtue of the Act;

In Aberdeen City, Bob McDonald is the ‘voluntary organisation’ representative as prescribed as above (3). Bob is employed by VSA as Director for Adult & Community Services, Bob also has links to the Aberdeen Sector Providers Forum, the Aberdeen Voluntary sector Liaison Group and the Aberdeen City Mental Health Partnership Group and also sits on the CHP Executive. (The voluntary sector, as opposed to individual voluntary organisations, has no obvious hierarchy and is very complex in its makeup, VSA do not therefore claim to be fully representative of the sector; instead VSA will where possible identify and articulate the priorities that the sector has in common through existing fora).