Scottish Government Prevention Unit: Areas of Shared Interest

Area of Shared Interest 3 – Prevention through Community

Introduction

Some of the most important determinants of wellbeing are created through community life itself. Families, friendships, local organisations, shared spaces and informal networks of support all contribute to how people experience belonging, resilience, personal and community safety and opportunity. These community foundations are valuable in their own right, but they also shape longer-term outcomes for individuals and places. This area of shared interest explores how communities create and sustain these forms of value, and what this means for a more preventative Scotland.

Many of the conditions that support wellbeing and prevent problems from emerging are created within families, relationships, communities and local places. Prevention therefore cannot be understood solely through the lens of public services. Communities are often where resilience, belonging, mutual support and everyday care are created and sustained, long before formal intervention becomes necessary. Understanding these community foundations is essential to building a more preventative Scotland

Why We Are Interested in the Topic

Many of the most important determinants of wellbeing sit outside formal public services and emerge through relationships, families, communities, social networks and local institutions. Prevention often happens there first, long before people encounter state services. This is reflected in a shift towards more community-based public services but there is scope for Government to further understand the conditions under which communities are able to operate as a protective factor across a person’s life and how policy can enable or undermine those conditions

Research consistently demonstrates that strong communities are associated with better physical and mental health, stronger resilience, reduced loneliness and improved wellbeing. These outcomes are shaped through everyday relationships, trust, mutual support, participation and a sense of belonging, all of which are important characteristics of thriving communities

Prevention through strong, cohesive communities is also closely linked to wider ambitions around public service reform, community empowerment and place-based working. As pressures on public services continue to grow, there is increased interest in understanding how preventative outcomes can be achieved through stronger collaboration between and within public services, communities and local organisations.

Existing Work in This Area

There is a well-developed body of evidence in Scotland and internationally highlighting the role of communities in prevention.

Within Scotland, the Christie Commission (2011) identified community empowerment, prevention and partnership working as central principles for future public service reform. The report argued that public services should work more closely with communities and build upon local strengths and capacities, rather than focusing solely on responding to problems after they emerge. The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 further established a framework for increasing community involvement in decisions affecting local places and services. This has supported growing interest in asset-based approaches, participatory decision-making and community-led development.

From 2018, the National Performance Framework included a new ‘social capital’ indicator to recognise the value of trust, social networks, community and neighbourhood cohesion, participation, and the power of communities to shape their own futures. This reflected work by Carnegie UK on the ‘enabling state’ and Glasgow Centre for Population Health on social capital. Since then, the Social Capital Index has provided a rich source of evidence on the distribution of social capital across Scotland, how it varies between places and population groups, and how it has changed over time. The concept of social capital highlights that some of the conditions that support wellbeing, resilience and prevention emerge through relationships, trust and participation within communities, rather than through formal services alone.

Across Scotland and internationally there is growing interest in the contribution that communities make to wellbeing, resilience and prevention. Activity in this area spans community development, public health, community wealth building, social capital, place-based working, asset-based approaches, participatory democracy and community empowerment. Research, evaluation and practical learning have been generated by local authorities, community organisations, the third sector, universities, funders and public bodies, illustrating the breadth and diversity of activity taking place across different places and communities.

Areas for Future Exploration

While there is substantial evidence that social connection, participation and community life contribute to health and wellbeing, important questions remain about how this insight can be translated into policy, investment and evaluation approaches that recognise the cumulative and system-wide value created through communities.

• Understanding Prevention as a Community Ecosystem - Prevention is often described through individual services or interventions, yet many preventative outcomes emerge through a wider ecosystem of relationships, networks, organisations and places. Families, friendships, community groups, voluntary activity, local institutions and trusted spaces all contribute to wellbeing and resilience in ways that are interconnected and cumulative. Further work is needed to understand how these different elements interact, the interplay of power dynamics, and how value is created across communities, and how this differs between places and populations.
• Understanding the Conditions that Enable Community Capacity - Communities do not all have the same capacity to generate and sustain preventative value. Factors such as social capital, local leadership, trust, participation, infrastructure, funding and organisational capability all help shape the strength and resilience of communities. There is a need to better understand the conditions that enable communities to thrive, how these conditions vary across different places, and what contributes to the development of strong and resilient communities over time. This includes understanding inequalities in community capacity and the implications these may have for outcomes and opportunities across Scotland. Related to this it would be useful to know more about how preventative services can successfully facilitate community connection, e.g. Community Link Workers who are often the bridge between the health service and community-based services.
• Understanding the Role of Government - While communities create significant value independently of the state, public policy, funding systems and governance arrangements can either strengthen or weaken the conditions under which that value emerges. Further exploration is needed into the role of government in recognising, supporting and protecting the community foundations of prevention, including how public bodies can contribute resources, influence and support while preserving local ownership, autonomy and trust. This includes understanding how funding, accountability, regulation and service design can enable community action, as well as the ways in which they may unintentionally constrain or crowd out it. There is also a question about the role of government in situations where there may be fragmentation or tension that develops within communities.
• Wider Challenge - Taken together, these themes point to a wider challenge: moving beyond seeing communities primarily as partners in the delivery of prevention towards a richer understanding of communities as places where preventative value is created. Doing so requires greater attention to the relationships, trust, participation and collective capacity that underpin thriving communities, and to the ways in which policy and public services can recognise, protect and contribute to these foundations over the long term

Shared research and policy questions

To support the development of thinking in the area of community-based prevention, we have established a set of shared research and policy questions set out in Figure 4.

Connecting on this area of shared interest

The Prevention Unit will use this area of shared interest to build a stronger understanding of the role that communities, community organisations and community-based public services and the third sector play in delivering preventative outcomes. This will include identifying and synthesising existing evidence, highlighting examples of effective practice, and improving understanding of how community-based approaches contribute to outcomes across a range of policy areas.

As part of its wider programme of work to strengthen the evidence base for prevention, the Unit will explore opportunities to develop the data, analytical approaches and evaluation evidence needed to better understand community-level impacts. This includes examining how preventative outcomes can be measured, understanding the contribution of community assets and social connections, and identifying where further evidence generation or research is required. The Unit will also use this work to support knowledge exchange between partners and ensure learning from community-led prevention is reflected in wider prevention policy, investment and public service reform activity.

Contact

The leads for this area of interest are the Prevention Unit, working with a network of policy areas interested in community and prevention. The Prevention Unit PreventionUnit@gov.scot can support coordination of contributions to ensure they reach the right teams.