Working with partners to build healthy, sustainable communities

Highland Council has been updated on collaborative work between the council and partners to address skills gaps, attract key workers, retain young people and build healthy, sustainable communities.

Members noted the progress of the Strategic Partnership Priority “People – Living Healthy, Thriving and Inclusive Lives, which is the third priority of the “Future Highlands” strategy considered by the Council in September 2021.

This priority of the strategic partnership identifies some key issues, such as repopulation, developing sustainable communities, recruitment and retention, investing in our young people, connectivity and healthy lifestyles, which are essential to the revitalisation and recovery of Highland communities.

The report sets out a number of initiatives which illustrate the work currently taking place with our partner agencies.

The intention is to build on this initial work with our key partners to develop integrated workforce planning strategies.  These will seek to address skills gaps, attract and develop key workers, create opportunities for young people to study in the Highlands and encourage young people to return to work and live in the Highlands.

Some key projects highlighted include:

• New working practices - Changes to hybrid work practices will provide an attractive option and open up a wider talent pool including improved opportunities for individuals with disabilities. This approach will also support climate change through reduced travel and carbon omissions throughout the Highlands.
• Partnership with blue light services – Development of a Multi-Agency Community Safety Officer role which aligns with all four organisations in relation to protection, prevention and response, providing a unique and innovative approach community safety matters, identifying and targeting issues collaboratively, providing sustainable jobs in local communities.
• Employment opportunities – working with partners to developing a three-year Delivery Plan which aims to offer a flexible, person centred “all-age” employability support service to clients across the Highlands to provide training, skills, apprenticeships and pathways into fair and sustainable work.
• Community food growing - Supporting communities to be resilient, empowered and supported to grow their own food is the aim of the Council’s Food Growing Strategy “Growing our Future”, which was agreed at the Communities and Place Committee in February. Community food growing includes allotments, community gardens, pockets orchards, school growing and a range of scales in projects from a small cluster of fruit trees on a roadside verge to a social enterprise run garden feeding dozens of families.
• Active Highland Strategy - the Community Planning Partnership Active Highland Strategy sets out a plan for promoting opportunities around physical activity and sport in our population. The aim of this work is to reduce   inequalities, increase accessible opportunities, and using physical activity and sport to promote and nurture a culture of inclusion and participation.
• Volunteering - encouraging and supporting volunteering opportunities and volunteering across our communities and within our staff groups
• Mental health and wellbeing - The impact of COVID has led to increased levels of social isolation and loneliness and some deterioration in population mental health and wellbeing. Intelligence suggests that certain groups – young people, people on low incomes, people with existing mental health conditions – were at greater risk. Partnership work during this period has focused on supporting communities to identify and signpost individuals to key resources and support. There also been a focus on suicide intervention and prevention, a key challenge within Highlands.

Leader of The Highland Council, Cllr Margaret Davidson welcomed the report. She said: “I am delighted to hear of the work which is ongoing with our partners to tackle some of the very real issues in our communities – unemployment, skill gaps, inequalities, transport issues and mental health. Many of these have been made worse by COVID and it is only through working with partners we can find sustainable solutions.”