Community wellbeing: key points - ARCHIVED

• Wellbeing, or the quality of people's lives, is increasingly seen as an essential component of population health. In recent years, policies and other reports have highlighted its importance.

• Communities can be defined by place (where people live) or interest (a shared characteristic, set of values or aims).

• Community wellbeing might therefore be understood as the quality of people's lives linked to both the places in which they live and the communities of interest they belong to.

• In 2019, 57% of adults in Scotland rated their neighbourhood as a very good place to live, an improvement from the 49% reported in 1999.  There is evidence the pace of improvement slowed after 2010.

• Neighbourhood satisfaction is lower in urban and deprived places and higher in rural and less deprived places.

• In 2019, 40% of adults in Scotland reported most adults could be trusted, down from 50% in 2015/17.  The proportion of people reporting that people can be trusted is higher in the least deprived places and lower in the most deprived places.

• Power relationships between communities and institutions (e.g. local and national government, other public bodies), within communities and between different communities, can influence community wellbeing.     

• The 2015 Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act aims to "make it easier for communities to have their voices heard, to take ownership over local land and buildings, to shape local services and to have more influence over the decisions that affect their area."

• Community engagement, defined as "a way to build and sustain relationships between public services and community groups", can contribute to improving community wellbeing by developing a shared understanding of community needs and co-producing public service responses to them.

• In 2019, 19% of adults in Scotland agreed they could influence decisions affecting their local area.

• The Scottish Community Development Centre, Scottish Government and What Works Scotland have also published a set of National Standards for Community Engagement which could be helpful.  In addition, the Community Development Alliance Scotland has published a booklet on how community development happens.
• The Place Standard (launched December 2015) provides a new tool to evaluate the physical and social quality of the places where people live.
• Data is available on various measures of community wellbeing linked to the places where people live, including neighbourhood satisfaction, involvement in the local community, influence over what happens locally and trust.  The population groups section of ScotPHO presents some data on the wellbeing of communities of interest.
• Publications by What Works Scotland, Audit Scotland, the International Making Place Conference and Glasgow Centre for Population Health provide principles, messages and case studies for improving places and empowering communities.