Manifesto Ask: Health: A Commitment to Cross-Departmental Working
This is Part 7 in a blog series on the Crowd-Sourced Cultural Manifesto for 2021. The culture sector has collaborated on 8 Asks in advance of the Scottish Parliament Elections in May 2021.
Health: A commitment to cross-departmental working between Health and Culture, with a resourced action-plan to ensure an arts and culture offer supporting health, wellbeing and quality of life in all Health and Social Care Partnership areas in Scotland.
The health benefits offered by the cultural sector are well-known and both culture and health are eager to work together more. The opportunity to connect and the financial resources are currently missing and we must find a way to build these connections and strategically plan for the future. In order to ensure a cultural offer supporting health, wellbeing and quality of life we need a resourced action-plan in every Health and Social Care Partnership in Scotland.
Community link workers are a good thing, though not every community has one and access to culture for health is currently determined by postcode. The local cultural plan / group would look similar to the ‘Paisley Partnership Group’ (who were originally brought together from all over the area to work on a bid for the city of culture), culture and health planning partnerships would include for example general practitioners, cultural trusts, care homes, prisons; community link workers, women’s aid; local social enterprises, social workers, health visitors, artists and cultural freelancers.
The culture sector has great potential to reduce recidivism (working on mental health in particular), and this has been used in projects that receive funding such as the Violence Reduction Unit http://www.svru.co.uk/ who have used a public health approach. The Justice sector should seriously consider the power of art (in the broadest possible sense) across all stages of its work. This includes working with at-risk young people, young people in custody, adults in prison, and also people serving community sentences.
Manifesto 2021
Read the Full Manifesto on our website here.
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