To be joined up’

The City Plan’s three priorities in health, care and wellbeing are straight to the point — although the solutions are unlikely to be simple.

Dundee is the drug death capital of Scotland, with more deaths per head than any other local authority.

In addition, the city has Scotland’s second-lowest life expectancy, a primary one population that is 25% overweight or obese and an estimated 6,000 people who live with a mental health condition.

However, the plan will face these challenges head-on, aiming to reduce mental health hospital admissions by two-thirds, cut childhood obesity and reduce the number of alcohol and drug deaths by 2026.

David Lynch explained that the THE Dundee Partnership’s City Plan is a new vision for the future, exploring how to make the city a better place in which to live and work. In the third of five interviews with some of the plan’s key figures, David Lynch and Ann Eriksen, co-chairs of the Dundee Health, Care and Wellbeing Executive Board, explain how the blueprint will shape the next few years in the City of Discovery. city’s approaches to substance issues “have to work differently” to avoid problems repeating themselves.

Although specifics are yet to be agreed, he used the example of “fix rooms” for heroin addicts as an approach that Dundee could adopt.

Joining up services would also see those with substance issues getting help while their families get support from relevant agencies.

Mr Lynch said: “There’s a general sense that there are a lot of services in the city.

“But they aren’t as joined up or as accessible as they should be.

“We need to have a different conversation, speak to different communities and look outside of Dundee at national or international work on other approaches.”

Ann Eriksen (pictured right) added that the City Plan has given a “renewed focus” to health bosses to improve connections between services, saying: “Sometimes we inadvertently make it difficult for people to access the services people need — sometimes we pigeon-hole them.

“People can present with substance misuse problems but issues can be much more than that. We don’t always make it easy to get support.”

Ms Eriksen said the conversation on mental health would shift towards getting help early, and encouraging people to open up.

She said: “We’re recognising the importance of earlier interventions and identifying individuals who might be beginning to struggle with their mental health. “We’re also recognising the role stigma has had to play.” Meanwhile, the issue of obesity will be targeted from all angles – not just encouraging kids to eat better. Ms Eriksen said: “This is about a whole city approach to the environment we live in – encouraging healthy choices, how we get to work, the choices we make in our food. “There’s an appetite for us to create a movement around this in the city. “Having these three priorities gives us a much greater focus. There’s a much greater chance of us being able to make headway.”

FIGHTING obesity, tackling Dundee’s ongoing substance abuse problems and promoting good mental health for all.

In tomorrow’s Weekend Tele, we speak to Colin Grieve, Tayside’s area manager for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, about the plan’s vision to make Dundee a safer place to live.