North-west Kilmarnock Primary Care Neighbourhood Services Centre
The final item of business today is a members' business debate on motion S2M-5332, in the name of Margaret Jamieson, on neighbourhood services. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament congratulates East Ayrshire Council and NHS Ayrshire and Arran on the establishment of the North West Kilmarnock Primary Care Neighbourhood Services Centre, an ambitious multi-agency partnership project delivering world-class public services for local communities through the co-location of interconnected public bodies at a single site where those who need them most can access them, exemplifying the practice of building public services around the people who use them.
The opening for business last month of the £9.4 million north-west Kilmarnock centre, which is in my constituency, is a further example of the development of neighbourhood services centres in East Ayrshire. The north-west Kilmarnock centre is the third such centre to have been developed in recent years in a way that addresses the needs of specific communities. It takes the concept of integrated public services to a new level.
The vision and impact that such centres bring to communities has been recognised at United Kingdom level through a leadership award from the Office of Public Management and awards from the Health Service Journal and the United Kingdom agency NHS Estates, as well as recognition from the Labour Party. Those awards followed the opening of the first area centre in Dalmellington in the constituency of my colleague Cathy Jamieson. The Auditor General for Scotland's recent best-value audit report of East Ayrshire Council specifically highlights the impact that such centres have.
Those developments did not happen by accident; it took vision on the part of East Ayrshire councillors to pursue this method of delivery of services to improve the life chances of people in areas of deprivation within the council area.
North-west Kilmarnock displays some of the most alarming health and deprivation statistics in East Ayrshire. It has almost three times as many adults who are unable to work because of illness or disability, four times as many children who are living in workless households and almost twice as many adults who are dying as a result of coronary heart disease as there are in the least-disadvantaged areas of East Ayrshire.
The developments tested the true commitment of other public service agencies to partnership working and joint resourcing. NHS Ayrshire and Arran had undertaken a review of its estate and identified north-west Kilmarnock as a hub for the provision of health care services. Community planning became the vehicle for identifying the shared needs of the community. The buy-in of the community was then explored to determine how people wanted their services to be delivered in order to meet their needs. The community continues to be consulted via a citizens panel. Community groups are also involved.
I wish I could have brought pictures of this third-generation centre tonight to show to members. The centre accommodates a general practitioner branch practice, the local housing team, podiatry services, midwives and nine clinical suites, which provide accommodation for a range of consultants, senior registrars and clinicians, including a dermatologist, a psychiatrist and a psychologist. It accommodates the Hunter sports centre, a day-care centre for elderly people and mental health services for children, adults and elderly adults. It also accommodates community psychiatric nurses, physiotherapy, paediatric clinics, group therapy—including music therapy and art therapy—occupational therapy, a community learning and development team, social work services, chronic disease prevention services and rehabilitation services. It accommodates the Hillbank nursery and family centre, 10 NHS dental surgeries and Scotland's only teach-and-treat facility, which is operated by the University of Glasgow.
The GP surgery, albeit that it is a branch surgery, is very welcome. It is the first in Kilmarnock to move from the town centre. I thank Dr Allan Green, the deputy medical director, for making that possible. The 10 dental surgeries at north-west Kilmarnock will serve the wider population of Kilmarnock by providing NHS facilities where previously there was very little NHS provision. The wide range of services that I have just listed was put together by officers in the public sector who genuinely believe in partnership and who have the drive to ensure the delivery of services for communities that need them.
In particular, I would like to thank the chief executive of East Ayrshire Council, Fiona Lees, and the former director of estates of NHS Ayrshire and Arran, Heather Knox, and their respective teams. The trust between the two organisations was made easier by the trust that those two women have for each other. We owe much to them—they worked tirelessly to ensure that bids were made to various Scottish Executive departments. That was a risky process, because if one bid had not succeeded the whole pile would have collapsed. That issue is being addressed in the Audit Committee's review of community planning partnerships. I hope that the minister will comment on that tonight.
The north-west Kilmarnock area centre is the future model of delivery of integrated public services. The services will deliver health improvement, reduce "did not attends" at out-patient clinics, further reduce waiting times and ensure that comprehensive packages of care are accessible in the immediate neighbourhood. I commend that approach to other public sector organisations if they truly want to make a difference for the communities that they serve. I look forward to the delivery of the fourth-generation and fifth-generation centres in Crosshouse and Galston in the coming years.
I am happy to support Margaret Jamieson. I cannot add detail to what she has said, because I have not yet visited the centre, so I must make a big effort to include it in my commitments in Kilmarnock the next time I visit facilities in that area. As she says, the way forward for local services is to bring them together in one place, to make them accessible and to get them to co-operate better.
I had experience of a similar activity 10 or 15 years ago, when I was a councillor in part of west Edinburgh. We got two groups of offices to co-operate a bit, but their co-operation did not extend to the garden, so for six months nobody looked after the garden at all and it became totally weed-ridden. It required heavy political pressure to get those wretched people even to attend to the garden—the centre in Kilmarnock has obviously done better than that.
There is an old cliché about taking a horse to water and making it drink. Successive Governments produce quite good services for people, as does local government, but the services often do not get to the people who are meant to receive them. The Kilmarnock centre obviously represents a good effort, although one can never guarantee a 100 per cent success rate. Scots are always difficult, and one or two will always turn up their noses at what they are offered, but that sort of co-operation allows people to get services in one place where they can be dealt with efficiently. Trailing round different departments, national or local, can put a lot of people off.
The involvement of the community in such initiatives can be a basis for real community democracy, which we are still not very good at delivering. Getting local or voluntary groups involved together in one place allows them to co-operate with the council and the health board so that, between us all, we can produce a much better service. I warmly welcome the new centre and the fact that we are debating it to show how strongly we approve of it. I hope that other councils will, in their own way, develop similar initiatives.
I thank Margaret Jamieson for bringing the issue to the chamber and I join her in congratulating the north-west Kilmarnock primary care neighbourhood services centre, which provides a wide range of services from a single point in a highly deprived area. The centre results from a successful partnership between East Ayrshire Council and Ayrshire and Arran NHS Board.
Margaret Jamieson has already mentioned some of the services that are available. Of particular interest to me are the mental health, nursery, crèche and family centre facilities. As she rightly said, the Kilmarnock project could provide the blueprint for similar schemes in other deprived areas and I hope that it will be a catalyst for such development. However, it is important to monitor such initiatives and I would be interested to see an Executive report on how the scheme has improved the situation and helped to combat inner-city social exclusion in that part of North Lanarkshire.
My party supports better partnership between social, health and community service providers, which can prevent much duplication and improve communication between the different services. It is also important to support community groups, as Donald Gorrie said, as they help to create community spirit and to address many health and employability issues, particularly in highly deprived areas.
It is important that money invested is well spent. Investment for the sake of it that does not secure clear results is a missed opportunity for investment elsewhere. However, I am sure that that will not be the case with the neighbourhood services centre, in which I understand that around £9.3 million has been invested.
It is important to note that the centre represents a central-belt solution to social exclusion and poverty. Such a scheme might not be possible in the Highlands and Islands—my area—where the population is more sparsely dispersed and catchment areas are larger. I would like to hear what the minister plans to do about social exclusion and severe poverty in more rural and island regions.
I will continue to monitor the progress of the north-west Kilmarnock primary care neighbourhood services centre and, like Donald Gorrie, I hope to visit it some time, to consider the effect that it has had on the health and well-being of the surrounding population. Society faces big problems with poverty. Social mobility is falling and I am losing faith in Labour's ability to tackle the problem effectively. It is important that we try as hard as we can to end the blight on our society. We must give everything a chance to work. We welcome the initiative and look forward to the extension of the approach throughout Scotland.
I had the honour of joining the Audit Committee on a visit to the north-west Kilmarnock primary care neighbourhood services centre before it opened. We were shown round the empty building by enthusiastic staff, who told us what would happen there.
The approach represents an acknowledgement that in areas of multiple deprivation individuals are multiply deprived. A person who presents to one service might not identify their biggest problem; they might have two or three other problems. The beauty of the neighbourhood services centre is that people can be transferred quickly and easily from one service to another, so that they can receive the best help that is available. In the keenness of the staff whom I met, I recognised the development of an ethos of public service that is without equal in Scotland. I am certain that the centre will provide a magnificent example of what can be done when all social services work together and that it will be a beacon of light throughout Scotland.
Dave Petrie was right to say that neighbourhood services centres are not necessarily the answer to problems in rural Scotland. However, I am convinced that such centres must be the way forward in urban areas of multiple deprivation.
Dave Petrie was also right to talk about monitoring—I raised that issue during the Audit Committee's visit, as Margaret Jamieson knows. Advantage should be taken of modern techniques—I say "modern", but sociometrics has been around for 30 or 40 years—to measure how the community feels better about itself.
Children, in particular, will benefit from the approach, in an enormous number of ways. I do not have time to go into detail but, for example, the existence of the centre will make it much easier for a disposition of the children's panel that involves two or three agencies to be put into effect.
I was affected by a story that we were told about police attitudes to young people in East Ayrshire, which reflects the ethos that is developing. We heard that if a problem arises in one of the small villages—Dave Petrie should note that this relates to a rural area—the police send a van, not so that they can threaten to impose antisocial behaviour orders but so that they can offer the young people a lift to the nearest youth club. I think that that is wonderful.
I thank Margaret Jamieson for securing the debate. I am sure that the people who work in the centre will be pleased that attention has been drawn to the wonderful work that they are beginning to do. I hope that the centre will be carefully monitored and that the rest of Scotland will learn as much as possible from the initiative.
I congratulate Margaret Jamieson on securing the debate. I am sure that the project that she has outlined has secured the support of all those who have spoken in the debate. I welcome the opportunity to highlight the way in which the Executive is working to drive forward the reform of public services in Scotland, providing the user focus that Margaret Jamieson mentions in her motion and described in her speech.
The Executive's vision is for world-class public services that provide the people of Scotland with a platform on which to build better lives for themselves and their children. Sustainable partnerships such as the north-west Kilmarnock primary care neighbourhood services centre are enabling public bodies such as East Ayrshire Council and Ayrshire and Arran NHS Board to work together for the benefit of the end user. They are a role model for others to follow throughout Scotland. We want organisations to work together to deliver a seamless service to local people in East Ayrshire, and we hope to see that type of model rolled out throughout the rest of Scotland where that is appropriate.
The list of services that Margaret Jamieson described indicates what can be achieved when two organisations come together. The amount of money that they have committed to the centre—more than £4 million is being put up by East Ayrshire Council, £5 million is being put up by Ayrshire and Arran NHS Board and there is a contribution from the Executive—shows the scale of the project and the commitment that has been put into making the centre a success.
The Executive also has an initiative called on the ground—a multi-organisational programme that is delivering more joined-up and efficient public services across Scotland through the delivery partners of the Scottish Executive Environment and Rural Affairs Department family of public bodies. That project may address some of the concerns that Mr Petrie raised about public sector reform and the joining up of services in rural areas. It provides a mechanism through which we seek opportunities not only to share services and facilities but to build a habit of joint working. Developing that ingrained approach to joint working is essential. Even with co-located facilities, we must ensure that there is an underpinning cultural change to enable the transformation of public services in Scotland.
During my summer tour visits as part of the extensive dialogue process following the publication of "Transforming Public Services: The Next Phase of Reform", I saw several examples of co-located services. In each one, the key to success was the overarching drive by all the staff—regardless of which public agency they worked with—to place the welfare of the user at the heart of their work. Whether it was in child protection, as I saw in the Borders, or in other examples that were shown to me throughout Scotland, the key to success was the public agencies working together and pulling together to share information and to deliver for the end users and customers whom they served in their particular areas.
Too often, attempts at closer working, let alone co-location projects, fail because of a clash of cultures or a communication failure. However, there are encouraging signs that public sector leaders are clearly setting out the need for all staff to work closely together and are taking action to encourage and enable that closer working. It seems that the two ladies whom Margaret Jamieson spoke about set an example of such leadership in ensuring that both organisations were willing to commit not only to working together but to bidding to the Executive for extra funding to enable the project to get off the ground. That appears to have been at the heart of the success of the project in East Ayrshire.
It is also important to note that the chief of police in East Ayrshire is a woman.
Point taken. Maybe that is the key to the success, but let me not go there.
As I said, "Transforming Public Services: The Next Phase of Reform" sets out the Executive's vision for transformed public services in Scotland. In nine geographic events across Scotland, we have talked and listened to nearly 300 leaders of public service delivery organisations from throughout Scotland. In addition, we have held specific sector events, for example with the voluntary sector, the police and fire and rescue. The key message that we have been getting is that user-focused customer services are central to any reform agenda, as is a willingness to work together.
The reform dialogue will continue into February, with further events for front-line staff and public service users, but several clear themes have already emerged: broad support for the Executive's principles of reform; enthusiasm for joining up services across community planning partnerships; some excellent examples of success; and concern about the current levels of monitoring and scrutiny. We have agreed to set up the Crerar committee to examine the last of those issues. There is also a clear wish for the Executive to provide strong leadership. Please believe me: we will provide that leadership in ensuring that public sector reform is delivered.
Many important reforms have already taken place in the past four to five years. They include the abolition of health trusts and the introduction of the single transferable vote for the next local government elections. Many new initiatives for public sector reform are already under way in Scotland. The Glasgow pathfinder project is a classic example, and the project in Stirling and Clackmannanshire is another of the most prominent.
Let us recognise and praise the work that has been done so far. I am very happy to support Margaret Jamieson's motion, and I am sure that I speak for all members in wishing the north-west Kilmarnock centre well for its formal opening and every success in the future.
Meeting closed at 17:31.