A Stronger Future for Fife Fife’s Community Plan Revised edition 2007 Foreword Welcome to the 2007 revised edition of Fife’s Community Plan: ‘A Stronger Future for Fife.’ This is the second revision of the plan since it was first published in 2000. “A Stronger Future for Fife” is the overarching strategic plan for Fife. It provides a framework for every other strategy and plan that we put in place. Fife’s community planning partners – Fife Council, NHS Fife, Fife Constabulary, CVS Fife, Scottish Enterprise Fife, Communities Scotland and Fife’s further and higher education sector - have signed up to the shared vision set out in this plan. We shall continue to work with the people of Fife to achieve our vision. In the three years that remain of the current plan, we aim to make further progress in delivering the community plan outcomes although many of these will take longer to fully achieve. 1 This new edition of the plan has given us an opportunity to ■ We shall target activity across all these outcome themes to take stock of our achievements to date and to make a few ensure that we meet the needs of Fife’s most disadvantaged changes to the plan. These will help ensure that we continue to communities in line with Fife’s Regeneration Outcome deliver what we promised in 2000. We have made the following Agreement. This includes: changes in this edition: ■ People who live in Fife’s most disadvantaged ■ We have focused on the work of Fife’s five strategic geographical areas, as defined by the Scottish Indices of partnerships. Since 2004 the partnerships have revised Multiple Deprivation (SIMD). their strategies to help deliver the community plan outcomes ■ People who live in rural Fife (around a third of the total and to respond to changing national priorities. This edition population), who may have particular difficulties in brings all these changes together and highlights the key accessing services and opportunities. delivery role of partners and partnerships. ■ Specific groups within Fife that can experience particular ■ We have used a ‘scenario planning’ process to track some forms of disadvantage. This includes Fife’s Black and of the key trends in Fife. This enabled community planning minority ethnic communities, people with disabilities, partners to identify and agree upon four key challenges that older people, people from Fife’s LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, will have to be addressed if we are to ensure that Fife has a Bisexual and Transgender) communities and women. successful and sustainable future. ■ We have presented each of the plan’s five outcome themes ■ We have reduced the number of outcome themes from six to on a single page along with the associated outcomes and five by removing ‘Strengthening our Communities’ as a stand outcome measures. More detailed information on how alone theme. This is to emphasise the fact that all the plan’s we are delivering these outcomes can be found in the key five remaining outcome themes should contribute to building strategies listed under each theme. stronger communities. ■ We have identified a lead partner and a lead partnership for each outcome theme. We have also listed the partnerships and partner organisations responsible for delivering the outcomes. This should lead to improved coordination and accountability 2 Our Vision for Fife Fife’s public and voluntary sector organisations are committed Our Vision is: to working together innovatively in ways that promote: ■ An Inclusive Fife – to ensure that everyone in Fife enjoys A confident, ambitious the full benefits of society. This means tackling the barriers of poverty and discrimination, improving the quality of life and caring Fife that for all and ensuring that everyone, whatever their personal circumstances, has access to the opportunities and services is a great place to they need. ■ A Sustainable Fife – to ensure that we sustain a high quality live, work and visit. of life for everyone in Fife through wise use of resources and with regard to the needs of Fife’s future generations. This means that we must take account of the long-term social, economic and environmental impact of all of our actions on the wellbeing of Fife. ■ Best Value and Excellence for Fife – to provide excellent and cost effective services, which are improving year on year in helping to better meet the needs of individuals and communities in Fife. 3 Outcome Themes We plan to deliver our shared vision of A Stronger Future for Fife [Signature] Fife Council by: [Signature] NHS Fife ■ Building a stronger, more flexible and diverse economy [Signature] Fife Constabulary ■ Creating a well educated and skilled Fife ■ Improving health and wellbeing in Fife [Signature] CVS Fife ■ Sustaining and improving our environment [Signature] Scottish Enterprise Fife ■ Making Fife’s communities safer [Signature] Communities Scotland Across all these areas we shall actively engage with communities to improve services and neighbourhoods and work to address disadvantage and meet people’s needs. We shall promote Fife’s success in delivering positive outcomes for its communities both nationally and internationally. We all have a role to play in helping to achieve our Vision for Fife. We hope that this revised community plan will help you to play your part over the next three years. 4 How are we doing? Reporting on our achievements The 2007 State of Fife report also demonstrates that we have continued to work well together as a partnership. More and Over the past seven years, Fife’s community planning partners more services are being delivered in a joined up way, making it have been working together closely to deliver a stronger and easier for people to get the answers they need – irrespective of better future for all Fife residents. which service or agency they contact. The State of Fife Report 2007, which is available online at The 2004 edition of the community plan identified a number www.fifedirect.org.uk/stateoffife, describes in some detail of commitments to promote joint working in Fife over the next what we have achieved since Fife’s community plan was last three years. Here is just some of the work that has been done to revised in 2004. It shows that we have made good progress help meet these commitments. in meeting our community plan milestones and in delivering on key commitments made in 2004. The 2007 Community Plan Milestones Report, which is also available online at www.fifedirect.org.uk/communityplanning, shows the progress we have made in achieving the 47 community plan milestones identified in 2000. The report shows that 43% of these milestones have either already been achieved or are likely to be achieved by 2010. Of the remaining milestones, 31% are not likely be achieved by 2010 and 26% remain unclear. This shows that we still have a lot to do. This analysis of progress to date has been used to help identify the revised community plan outcomes set out on pages 16 to 21 of this report. These build on the existing milestones. 5 Developing the role and capacity of Fife Developing joint approaches to customer Partnership contact The Fife Partnership is supported in its work by a number The Fifelife newspaper is now a shared Fife Partnership of strategic and cross cutting partnerships (see Page…). publication providing seamless information direct to Fife Following a ‘fitness for purpose’ review, the Partnership has residents from all community planning partners. strengthened the support it provides to these partnerships The Fifedirect website has expanded to become a community through the dedicated role of Partnership Manager. This extra portal. It supports over 600 community groups, as well as being support has helped to ensure that the strategic and cross- a one click stop for information and services across the Fife cutting partnerships are at the forefront of work to deliver the Partnership. community plan, both Fife-wide and in local communities. Measuring Partnership Performance Joint planning and commissioning Community planning partners have continued to develop joint Since 2007, Fife’s community plan milestones have been planning and commissioning of services. Here are just a few reported publicly through the Know Fife dataset (www.fifedirect. examples: org.uk). This makes it much easier for the Fife Partnership to track its progress in delivering key community plan outcomes. Fife Health and Social Care Partnership aims to streamline Strategic and cross-cutting partnerships make regular reports access to health and social services through better integration to the Fife Partnership on their key priorities using a standard of health, council, voluntary and private services. reporting format. Fife Drug and Alcohol Action Team (DAAT) has helped to streamline access to services for alcohol misuse, homelessness Getting the Message Across and employment. The Fife Partnership has agreed a communications protocol Fife Community Safety Partnership’s Safer Communities that sets out who does what when communicating partnership Centre brings together over 70 staff from a range of partnership messages both internally and to the rest of Scotland and agencies to provide a one stop shop for community safety beyond. services in Fife. 6 Local community planning Working to increase participation by the New local community planning arrangements are now being put voluntary and private sectors in community in place based on Fife Council’s seven area committees. These planning arrangements will help to ensure that local community priorities are taken into account in the delivery of the community plan CVS Fife represents the interests of the voluntary sector on the outcomes. Fife Partnership. It also supports voluntary sector networks that enable organisations to come together to share best practice and influence service planning. Fife Community Learning Promoting Information Sharing and Development (CLD) Partnership has also taken forward a Fife Constabulary, Fife Council and NHS Fife have signed number of initiatives aimed at increasing participation by the the Fife Gold Standard Data Sharing Protocol to simplify voluntary sector in community planning.