Aim & purpose of guidance
The purpose of this guidance is to provide an easy-to-follow interactive guide to support partners undertaking JSNAs. It describes a 5-staged approach with helpful tips and tools to ensure a more structured and consistent approach to undertake JSNAs in Grampian. It is hoped that this consensus approach will strengthen communication and collaboration between senior public health leaders, NHS, Grampian, Health and Social Care Partnerships and Council partners.
JSNAs are key to guiding local decision making and strategic planning. The key principles which underpin the approach outlined in this guidance are based on feedback from a range of stakeholders involved in undertaking JSNAs locally in Grampian. These include:
- The need for a consistent and systematic approach.
- The need for a clear understanding of the purpose and scope.
- Use of a common language and understanding of terminology.
- The need for clarity on the roles and responsibilities of those involved.
- The Importance of effective collaboration in providing a truly strategic assessment.
- Use of human learning practice to improve our collective approach.
- Need for adoption of a flexible and iterative approach, with consideration of optimal frequency to inform local service and strategic planning.
Role of JSNA in informing local planning and commissioning of services
Joint Strategic Needs Assessments are a kind of needs analysis used within strategic planning and used to inform subsequent commissioning. Other guidance on needs assessment within strategic planning can be found within Healthcare Improvement Scotland’s (HIS) guidance on good strategic planning.
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Needs assessments are a critical component to planning and commissioning and they enable us to plan with the population’s current and future need as our starting point, rather than the existing service and system. This means we aren’t limited to just continue our current approaches within planning, but are able to keep us accountable to the changing needs of the population we support.
Needs assessments are a critical input into planning, but shouldn’t be considered in isolation. They should be drawn from and triangulated with other forms of evidence and insight such as lived experience, management data, staff views, and prior research and literature to form a comprehensive evidence base for planning.
Please refer to the HIS resource portal (Strategic Planning Role | HIS Engage) for more information.
Information on needs assessment are included in the Good Practice Skills for Strategic Planning(Who we are, what we do) on p17 (fig 2 below), and Good Practice Skills in Strategic Planning skills framework on p7 (fig 3 below).
Fig 2 – Reference to needs assessment in HIS Good Practice Framework for Strategic Planning guide (p17)
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Fig 3 – Assessing the needs of the population is a skill outlined in the HIS Good Practice Skills for Strategic Planning (p7)
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