Prevention toolkit

Tool 10 – Improvement Service Community Planning Checklist

The Tool

• This tool provides a checklist for Community Planning Partnerships to help guide development, decision making and ensuring focus on key outcomes.

Use this to

• Assess views on the effectiveness of Community Planning Partnership arrangements and how well the partnership meets the challenges of the outcomes approach.
• Identify areas where there may be scope for improving the operation of the partnership and the impact it has.

You end up with

• A comprehensive initial overview of the “fitness for purpose” of a CPP which can be used to inform follow on conversations and strategy development.
• Potential improvement areas identified, which are identified through a follow-up workshop.

Who can use this?

• The Checklist is targeted at Community Planning Partnerships in Scotland, but could also be used to structure thinking in other community organisations or groups.

How does this tool support prevention thinking?

• As noted in the Public Service Reform Strategy, community planning is a key mechanism for developing joined-up prevention strategy and delivery.
• In order to deliver successfully on prevention at local and national level, there must be a consideration of prevention through community settings.

Using the Tool

The Improvement Service developed the Checklist to support CPPs to critically review their ‘fitness for purpose’ in achieving shared outcomes.

The Checklist contains 6 broad areas as follows:

1. Shared leadership

2. Governance and accountability

3. Community - needs and empowerment

4. Effective use of joint resources

5. Reporting of performance management and outcomes

6. How the Community Planning Partnership (CPP) is making an impact.

For the purposes of this Toolkit, we consider each of the above sections as steps in a process of self-assessment. We provide a high level description of each of these stages in this Toolkit, however for more specific information and support on the checklist – go to the Improvement Service. There is also a National Report based which sets out the findings from self-assessments undertaken in 20 CPPs.

Steps in the Checklist

• Step 1 – Shared Leadership - This section of the checklist focuses on the extent to which the CPP in question demonstrates strong, collective leadership in setting direction and driving outcomes. It considers whether partners work collaboratively toward a shared vision, operate with openness and trust, and create the conditions for innovation and challenge. In a prevention context, this includes whether leadership is actively supporting a shift toward early intervention, promoting long-term thinking, and aligning partners around preventing future harm rather than responding to crises.
• Step 2 – Governance and Accountability - This considers whether the CPP has clear and effective governance arrangements in place to support decision-making, accountability, and delivery. It assesses the clarity of roles, the strength of scrutiny, and whether members have the authority to act on behalf of their organisations. For prevention, strong governance is particularly important to enable cross-system decision-making, where costs and benefits may fall across different organisations and over longer timeframes, requiring shared accountability for outcomes.
• Step 3 – Community Needs and Empowerment - This section focuses on how well the partnership understands the needs of its communities and incorporates their perspectives into decision-making. It asks questions about the use of data and insight to identify inequalities, the quality of engagement with communities, and the extent to which communities are empowered to influence priorities and delivery. In a prevention context, understanding community needs is important for ensuring interventions are targeted effectively at underlying risk factors and that solutions are shaped by those with lived experience.
• Step 4 – Effective Use of Joint Resources - This considers how partners align and deploy their collective resources – such as funding, staff, assets, and data - to achieve shared outcomes. It considers whether resources are being pooled or coordinated, and whether data sharing enables a comprehensive understanding of needs. For prevention, a key consideration is whether partners are shifting resources upstream, investing in early intervention and preventative activity rather than predominantly funding reactive services.
• Step 5 – Reporting of Performance Management and Outcomes - This section includes questions on how systems and processes used to track, report, and use performance information. It assesses whether outcomes are clearly defined, supported by appropriate measures, and monitored effectively over time. It also considers whether data is actively used to inform decision-making and improve delivery. In prevention, this includes ensuring that performance frameworks capture long-term outcomes and leading indicators, rather than relying solely on short-term or reactive measures.
• Step 6 – How the CPP is Making an Impact - This step focuses on whether the partnership can demonstrate that it is delivering meaningful improvements in outcomes and reducing inequalities. It looks at evidence of impact achieved through partnership working, including whether this adds value beyond what individual organisations could achieve alone. In a prevention context, this includes demonstrating a tangible shift toward early intervention, with evidence that preventative approaches are contributing to improved long-term outcomes and reduced demand on public services.

Importance of prevention in the checklist

Prevention is a key component of the CPP checklist. It explicitly assesses the ability of a CPP to facilitate the shift to early intervention and prevention (section 1) and how CPPs can demonstrate evidence that their actions are supporting this (section 6). This reflects that prevention should be a key consideration in the outcomes of CPPs, resources are used and how impact is measured.

The Improvement Service National Community Planning Self-assessment Overview Report 2024 report on the findings from 20 CPPs show that 70% of CPP Board members agreed that CPPs were striving to facilitate the shift towards early intervention and prevention. However, just over a fifth of CPP Board members disagreed that CPPs can evidence the desired shift to early intervention and prevention.

This suggests that the other tools in this Toolkit could be useful for supporting CPPs in their efforts to develop the evidence base on prevention in community settings, how this links to outcomes, and how we can measure impact of preventative activity.

More information on how the tools could be used for community/ place-based prevention efforts, see Prevention Lens 2 on “Prevention through Community”.

More information and support

For more information on the checklist, and wider support available to Community Planning Partnerships, go to the Improvement Service.

Additional resources

• For more information on community planning in public service reform see the Public Service Reform Strategy.
• For wider information on how embedding prevention in community planning see the Improvement Service Guidance

Prevention Lenses

The range of tools outlined in this Toolkit support different analytical and policy teams in different settings to understand prevention.

In addition to the tools, there are some “lenses” through which to look at prevention. By “lens”, we mean an overarching theme/ topic that multiple tools could be used to analyse.

The two lenses focussed on in this Toolkit are

• Prevention through the life course
• Prevention through community