Two Islingtons: Understanding the Problem - Islington Council

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6.13. Islington’s Food Strategy was developed in partnership with LBI, NHS Islington, Cambridge Education and organisations from the voluntary sector. The strategy is based around 3 key themes; Food and Poverty, Food and Health and Food and the Environment. It sets out 10 key objectives including; Promoting a healthy diet, Making healthy food accessible, Making healthy food affordable, Promoting safer food, Reducing our environmental footprint, Promoting local food, Promoting ethical food, Reducing food waste, Celebrating food and diversity, Identifying and targeting high risk groups. A detailed action plan has been developed for each objective which is now being delivered by key stakeholders from the Council, NHS and voluntary sector. As part of this a borough Food Partnership is being set up, involving residents, community groups and organisations in developing projects which will tackle local food issues. 6.14. One of the key projects to be delivered in the first year of the Food Strategy was the Council’s community food growing programme Edible Islington. Edible Islington was developed to meet a number of key aims in tackling inequality. These were to: • Increase the availability of healthy affordable food to communities on low incomes • Increase levels of both physical and mental health through food growing • Increase social cohesion and community wellbeing • Increase knowledge and awareness of the production of local food and its wider benefits The programme is nearing completion and has establish new community food growing projects across Islington as well as providing support, training and resources to residents to help them grow local food. Edible Islington has funded over 85 new food growing projects. It is estimated that the programme has benefitted around 7500 residents through the development of these spaces with a further 1000 residents benefitting from the range of training and support programmes that have run alongside the programme. 6.15. The impact of the various initiatives in place to tackle health inequalities will take time to be realised, as long term health outcomes are hard to measure over short to medium periods of time. Poor health is also attributed to many other issues such as poor housing and access to good quality open space and therefore projects and activities which improve outcomes in these areas, particularly for the most disadvantaged, will help to improve long term health outcomes. 7. Empowering the community to tackle inequality 7.1. Under the Transforming Social Care programme a number of activities and actions have been implemented to broaden the choice and improvement in the quality of care and support service supplied. The Council is working with providers to influence their development. We have been running education seminars for local providers to help them prepare for personal budgets. We are starting a series of capacity building events focusing on developing the services that we know users want more of, such as personal assistants. (A personal assistant is a flexible care worker, who will carry out a range of personal and social tasks and is typically employed by the service user directly). The transformation of adult social care is being developed with existing service users, their carers and other citizens, for example we fund and support two dedicated forums that work alongside staff on the implementation of social care transformation, including personal budgets. One group is a network comprising over 40 local groups that represent service users and carers, such as the Islington Mental Health User Group and the Learning 14
disability family carers’ group. The second is a ‘citizens’ jury’ of 14 service users with different disabilities who are reviewing the detailed process of self-directed support. Both groups have shaped many aspects of the new processes, such as the tools for assessment and care planning, the appeals process and a new framework for safeguarding vulnerable adults. During 2009/10 the service received 395 self directed support cases. For 2010-11 the government has introduced a target of 30% of all cases to be self directed. 7.2. The Council and the NHS have developed new services to respond to the requirements of Putting People First, such as the Re-ablement service which opened last year. This is a model of home care that enables people to regain their independence, working with people for a 6 week intensive period. Over 400 people have now used the service, which is offered to suitable people at their first point of contact with social services as a means of both increasing their independence and well being and reducing longer term need for social services input. Data from the first 9 months of operation showed that 56% of people using the service were fully independent at the end of their 6 week programme and 36% needed less support from care services than previously. 7.3. The Council and its partners support and fund a number of projects and activities which build upon the capacity of community groups and voluntary organisations in order to ensure that the borough has a sustainable third sector. This is achieved through providing training for people in voluntary sector organisations and assisting community and voluntary organisations to gain and sustain quality marks. During 2009-10 9 voluntary and community organisations were supported to achieve a recognised Quality Mark for the first time. 7.4. The Volunteering and Timebanks scheme recruits and places volunteers in various organisations, undertaking outreach work and targeting minority groups. During April-June 2010-11 outreach work was carried out at the Bangladeshi Women’s Association and St Magdaline asylum seeker centre under the diversity project and visits to the mental health rehabilitation hostel and Islington Learning Difficulties Partnership Employment Fair were carried out under the disability project. An additional 13 disabled people were supported this quarter, with a range of impairments. The 13 people supported include 2 people with severe and enduring mental health problems and 5 with physical disabilities. 45 disabled people were supported to take part in volunteering during 2009/10. Timebanks bring people together to help each other and improve their local community. Participants 'deposit' their time in the bank by giving practical help and support to others and are able to 'withdraw' their time when they need something done themselves. There is a network of eight timebanks in Islington located in some of the most disadvantaged parts of the borough and hundreds of local residents take part in timebank activities. 8. Equalities based approach to fairness 8.1. The Council is currently working towards achieving ‘excellence’ in the Equality Framework. The framework embeds equality standards across the organisation which address the six equality strands of age, disability, gender, race, religion/belief and sexual orientation. The Equality Standard is a tool to combat the institutional processes that can lead to discrimination as part of the culture, administration and governance that can be found in many public organisations. 15
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