Partnerships

Local Strategic Partnership.

The LSP is the over-arching multi-agency body that brings together strategic partnerships in the county borough to coordinate and integrate activity more effectively, to reduce duplication and promote joint learning and share good practice.

Local Strategic Partnership

The LSP currently has six priority projects:

1. Prevention and Age Discrimination - 'Never too Old'

This is a project with two main objectives.

To develop a range of initiatives throughout the Borough that assist in the prevention of older people needing to receive either health or social care services. It is about enabling older people to maintain their potential within communities and maximising their life chances.
To address issues of age discrimination throughout the Borough and thus ensuring older people are able to remain valuable contributors to the livelihood and economy of Bridgend.

2. Physical Activity

The links between physical activity and health are well recognised and the extent of long term health problems, cardiovascular disease, heart disease and obesity is a serious issue for the UK, for Wales and for Bridgend where we have higher than Welsh average rates of long term limiting illness and obesity.

In May 2006 the Local Strategic Partnership agreed to support a project to make leisure services free for those on means tested benefits.

This project supports a number of the Community Strategy aims and objectives, in particular:

To achieve a healthier County Borough, by tackling health inequalities and promoting healthy lifestyles;
To have a more inclusive County Borough where vulnerable and excluded people are supported to maximise their potential and live a full life.

3. Countryside Management Service

This is a project to find a solution to the lack of proper management of the wider countryside in Bridgend County Borough, to assist with reducing antisocial behaviour, providing education about the environment and its conservation, and to encourage proper use of the countryside including recreation and healthy activities. There is a need to establish funding for a feasibility study into the identified solution.

4. Pathfinder Project

This is a project to find a transport solution to assist economically inactive people in Bridgend to return to the workplace, and in the first instance to establish funding for a feasibility study into the identified solution.

The desired outcomes of this project are, in line with the aims and objectives in the Community Strategy:

to bring economically inactive people back into work;
have sustainable employment for local businesses;
increase prosperity in the County Borough.

5. Strategies for Engaging Disaffected Learners

This is a project for developing a skills centre that can provide complementary learning opportunities for young people between 14 – 19 years who are at risk of becoming 'not in education, employment or training' (NEET).

6. Transport

This is a project to develop a model of accessible service provision. The objectives of this project are to:

Minimise the 'bad' journeys;
Tackle access barriers to take up of services and use of facilities and opportunities in the County Borough;
Enable access and take up of services by those most disadvantaged groups that need to but don't currently access those services.

For further information on the LSP and the Community Strategy, visit www.bridgendlsp.org.uk

Voluntary Sector Partnership Council Ministerial Meeting (Community Strategies)

Minutes of the Voluntary Sector meeting with Sue Essex (Minister for Finance, Local Government and Public Services) Thursday 22 March 2007 can be viewed here :

http://new.wales.gov.uk/topics/housingandcommunity/voluntarysector/partnership/ministers/2007/070322flgps/?lang=en