Our impact
What has been the impact, to date, of the Scottish Deep End Project?
- Establishing identity, profile, voice, collegiality, solidarity and impact for a previously neglected group of practitioners serving the most deprived individuals and communities.
- Creating a body of evidence based on scientific research, service evaluations, worked examples and practitioner experience and views as to the nature of the challenges and how they can be overcome.
- Demonstration project and national rollout of community link practitioners.
- Demonstration project and rollout to all Deep End practices of embedded financial advisors.
- Demonstration that the inverse care law is not an immutable fact of life but a social challenge that can be overcome.
- Spread from Scotland to similar projects in Ireland, Australia, Denmark and eight areas of England.
- Demonstration project of GP Pioneer Scheme, putting early career GPs into deprived practices, protected time for host GPs, service developments and shared learning (copied in the English Trailblazer Scheme) but not rolled out (yet) in Scotland.
- Demonstration of an Integrated Care Project (Govan SHIP), with extended consultations for selected patients, GP protected time, attached and embedded co-workers, including social care and link workers (evaluated locally but not rolled out (yet).
- Demonstration project and regional rollout (to Deep End practices in Greater Glasgow & Clyde) of primary care-based alcohol outreach nurses.
- Demonstration of support for Deep End general practice (for the NHS to be at its best where it is needed most) at each stage of the career pathway, from widening access initiatives (e.g. REACH and GAP programmes) to undergraduate teaching (e.g. Deep End student conferences and placements) to postgraduate training and life-long learning (e.g. West Scotland Deprivation Interest Group).
