Scottish Government

Area

Great Northern social inclusion partnership area, Aberdeen. The Great Northern Partnership area experiences low rates of participation in further and higher education, high levels of unemployed school leavers and health inequalities.

Target group

A wide range of health staff and professionals including health visitors, general practitioners, dieticians, and physiotherapists.

Aims of project

The aims are to:

• strengthen networks between health services and adult literacies providers through developing awareness of the issues the available provision.
• increase levels of referrals to literacy providers
• to develop greater awareness amongst health services staff on how literacies issues impact on their professional lives
• to foster greater awareness of the active role health services staff can play in referring patients to literacies providers.

This will ultimately benefit patients, who should be able to make more informed choices about health care, and lead to an increase in literacies levels in the Great Northern Partnership Area.

Activities

• contact with health staff and literacies providers in the area
• a programme of workshops and presentations to raise awareness of literacies issues amongst health staff
• users of health services will be engaged to identify needs, and develop a strategy for producing accessible health information.

Intended pathfinder legacy

It will produce guidelines on how to increase awareness of literacies and health as well as giving examples of accessible health information. The work carried out by this project could be disseminated to national training providers and health related literacies awareness training made available to all Scottish literacy partnerships through Communities Scotland.

Contact details