Public Access Strategy - Review &Analysis Health & Social Exclusion

The statistics about the health and socio-economic status of North Lanarkshire residents suggest that their prime health need is to promote an increase in healthy lifestyles, and that their different characteristics and locations will require a strategy which encompasses the whole population rather than the relatively affluent and highly mobile few, who can (and do) drive to new paths or parks.

What Is Social Exclusion?

Social exclusion arises from systematic disadvantage in may different areas of life.  The disadvantage often lies in a combination of finance, poor health, few or missed opportunities, poor amenities and poor physical and social environment.  In it's own paper "Social Inclusion, Opening the door to a better Scotland", the government note "social exclusion manifests itself in a number of ways, many of which are connected and mutually reinforcing: for example, bad health can be both a cause of unemployment and an effect of the poverty which unemployment can bring about".  Helping to break that cycle needs to be part of this access strategy.

The roots of social exclusion are intergenerational poverty and lack of (or restricted) opportunities from childhood, through education and onto adult life.  A public access strategy can do relatively little to address the macro-economic issues of poverty and unemployment, but it may make a valuable contribution to combating the inequalities in opportunity which exist in our communities and which hold some groups of people consistently at the bottom of the pile.

Those most socially and economically disadvantaged are proven to be at highest risk of death from heart disease, lung cancer, and many forms of respiratory disease as well as poor physical and mental health at all ages. Any opportunity to increase the amount of exercise, recreation and stimulation amongst these groups will have a beneficial effect on both physical and mental health.  However, the potential benefits from a well deployed access strategy are not only centred on exercise opportunities and their associated health benefits.

Contemporary health research shows that a stimulating, active and caring community may also be a healthy one.  There is strong evidence to suggest that participation in community process and contact with the community members can have a beneficial effect on physical and mental health.  In other words, where a community is actively involved in the process of defining, creating or maintaining its public access opportunities, that process itself can be a potential source of health benefit to all those who participate.  The community consultation processes which ought to surround public access form an ideal basis for developing community interaction and support, for socially including those most often excluded.  In "Opening the Door To a Better Scotland" the government notes that promotion of social inclusion can be achieved through "promoting opportunities to participate, whether in work, in learning or in society more generally and "strengthening communities".

A Strategy To Include Everyone

Ensuring comprehensive community participation in this process must thus form a central part of any public access strategy.  The provision of access must not only be about equal opportunity for all to use and enjoy access routes - it must be about equal opportunity to participate in the process of their creation and maintenance.  Creating equality does not mean having an 'open to all' policy at public meetings and events.  It requires active recruitment, encouragement and even rewarding those parts of the community which are hardest to reach.  Equality and inclusion requires an unequal amount of effort on different groups within the community.

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