Putting Community Hubs at the heart of a National Care Service.
― The notion of resilient communities coping with the pandemic has revived the notion of community hubs as significant centres for public service delivery and voluntary activity.
― Community development as a component of the shaping and delivery of services has a long history, but suffered through the years of politically-contrived public expenditure cuts and austerity.
― Notions of community empowerment already enshrined in law ought to be compatible with the decentralisation of public services and bottom-up community partnership and control.
― Community hubs could offer a physical base for a model of public service based on relationships at local level, local networks and partnerships, and local democracy.
― The National Care Service that Scotland needs could be managed and delivered at local level through community hubs.
― Just as the 1939-1945 World War crisis led to visions of a different kind of world in the peace to follow, so should we be similarly ambitious in our vision of our country post-pandemic.