There’s quite a lot of policy discussion currently focusing on the ‘assets approach’ and the potential of empowering individuals and communities in Scotland. For example, an ‘Assets Alliance’ held an inaugural session in Glasgow in December 2010; the LTCAS Annual Conference later this month is all about this theme, and the Scottish Government Health Directorate are busy drafting a supportive ‘Framework’.
But what can you do practically? Where to start if you’re not working within the assets approach already? If you’ve already identified local solutions for local problems what can you do with your list?
ALISS can help with asset gathering
One of the ALISS project‘s goals is to help by being a platform for innovation. So, we’re holding an event on April 11th to help asset-finders to compare notes. It’ll be at the Long Term Conditions Alliance Scotland Hub, 349 Bath Street, Glasgow.
We’ll be looking at the two key stages:
First, find your assets;
One of the first and energising things you can do is find and identify assets of all types in your community. When it comes to self management support, we reckon assets can take a variety of forms – care services, advice, exercise, emotional support or maybe a chat over a cup of tea.
Then, make sure they know each other…
Once you’ve made a list or drawn a map, don’t keep it to yourself. It’s most useful if assets can find each other, so the network goodness can spread around. ALISS is working at tapping into these lists and maps, making Self Management support more findable. While we’ve been developing this, people living with long term conditions have made it very clear that one of the most helpful things we could do would be to create better support for being in touch with each other – so they can be assets for one another.
- From afar, we’re looking forward to hearing from the RSA’s Connected Communities project, and Tessy Britton with her amazing Travelling Pantry workshop format, where mapping is fun.
- From near at hand we will be hearing from the Links project about local signposting in Primary Care. And Renfrewshire will be telling their story about what they took from the ALISS Open Innovation Process. And more…
- The ALISS Engine will also be on hand, for excursion tours and trials for indexing and curating content. Bring an asset and add it to the Engine!
But we’d like to co-produce this event with you too. So we’ve booked extra space. If you have a project on this theme that you’d like to share notes about – please do let us know!
You can Register here!
Hope to see you on the 11th.
P.S. If you’re feeling a bit light-hearted, the event is a Jamboree. If your manager will only let you out for serious-minded stuff, it’s also a Conference.
