Reduce the proportion of unemployed working age people. (Milestone 13)
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The Economic Development Sub-group has worked with impressive speed to pull together an Economic Development strategy for Craigmillar. There are two key underlying principles to the strategy:
This will be achieved through a wide range of programmes, including employment access, training and up-skilling, intermediate labour market initiatives, social enterprise development, Third sector capacity building, town centre / business district redevelopment, new office space and retail provision, start-up and SME business support, public transport access and area promotion and marketing. The key Partners that support this include Scottish Enterprise Edinburgh and Lothian, CEC City Development, the Joint Venture Company, Cre8te, Forth Sector and the Craigmillar District Business Association. Over the last year the Scottish Enterprise network have invested £596,397 in the Craigmillar area, of which SEEL's contribution is £295,238. The majority of this has been through three programmes: Skillseekers, £361,617, Getting Ready For Work £125,137, Training for Work £46,643 and New Ventures (Business Start-ups), £63,000. This investment in local training and employment will clearly affect a number of the other work related indicators and should be borne in mind when examining them. SEEL's Training for Work programme, and its contribution to the Healthcare Academy are aimed at getting people back to work. In addition its New Ventures programme helps people start their own businesses. Relevant SIP funded projects working to meet these objectives are:
UnemploymentLooking at the impact of SIP funded projects, and SIP partners such as SEEL, we can see that the average unemployment rate per year fell from 1997 to 2000. It remained stable in 2000 and 2001, but unfortunately has crept up again 2002. In 2003 the rise was mainly among women. This fall and subsequent slight rise in Craigmillar matches what has been happening in Edinburgh as a whole. The area covered is the 1991 Niddrie and Craigmillar Wards. This area is nearly the same as the Craigmillar SIP area. The Rates are based on a working age population (16-64 years for males, 16-59 for females). The yearly average is for the period. February - January.
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Reduce the proportion of working age people with low incomes.
(Milestone 14)
| This will be achieved through ensuring that residents in Craigmillar have full access to the opportunities on offer both in the local area and in Edinburgh as a whole. The Partnership through sponsoring employment access, training and learning projects is directly supporting this aim. Figures, although they must be treated with caution, tend to show that in Craigmillar, women's hourly pay rate has grown steadily since 1999, with a dramatic increase in 2003. It is now £1.46 per hour, or 17% higher than that of men. The basic hours that women work were rising, but in 2003 they dropped back again. Men's hours have also fallen. Women also work less overtime than men, and fewer hours, so their gross weekly pay is not quite as high. In the four years from 1999 it has however risen from 74% to 95% of men's. (Although the actual gross weekly amounts are above the official poverty level, they are less than the median income of £320 per week in 2001). Men in Craigmillar have not kept pace with the steady increases in hourly rates of pay, and gross weekly pay experienced by men in the rest of Edinburgh. In 1999 Craigmillar men's hourly rate was 71% of Edinburgh men's, but in 2002 it was 61%. In 2003 men's weekly pay dropped in Craigmillar and Edinburgh compared to the previous two-year mean. In Craigmillar this was due to a drop in hours, while in Edinburgh it was due to a drop in the hourly rate (in Craigmillar this rose). Women on the other hand have kept pace with other women in Edinburgh. Up to 2002 their hourly pay had gone from 83% of the Edinburgh rate to 81%, but in 2003 it went up to 93.9%. Their gross weekly pay had gone from 73% to 78% of the Edinburgh amount, and stayed at this level in 2003, due to the drop in hours worked. Despite the improvements in pay rates experienced by Craigmillar residents, local surveys show that household incomes have not risen in the period 2000 - 2004. The table below shows that the number of people who live in households where the total income is at or below the official poverty line of 60% of the national median income has mainly stayed the same at approximately two-thirds of households. (As we have seen the MORI 2000 survey over-states equivalent household incomes, while the two Craigmillar Peoples' Panel surveys are based on very small samples, so their margin of error is much greater.) 26% have incomes up to the national median, and about 10% have incomes over this level. |
Improving the health of families by reducing smoking, alcohol misuse, poor diet and mortality rates from coronary heart disease. (Milestone 18)
| This covers a huge area of work, both
in terms of the interventions required and also in terms of the
length of time that these interventions may have to be applied.
The Craigmillar Health and Community Care group address this milestone.
Three SIP funded projects address these issues:
Partner agencies supporting this milestone are Lothian Health, through funding to HOT and Craigmillar Health Project, and its own statutory services. SmokingThe 2004 Household Survey asked about respondents smoking habits. The Table is encouraging in that half the 16-24 year olds have never smoked, or only tried smoking once or twice, while there is a very standard 37% response for the other age groups. On the whole 45% of people smoke some or every day, although worryingly this is much higher for 25-34 year olds. As people get older higher proportions tend to have given up, and so the proportions of over 65s who smoke is much lower than average. Figures compare to Scotland as a whole, where 30% of men and women smoke. However, smoking rates are associated with deprivation and social class, so that rates for Social Classes IV and V are between 50% and 55% for women and men. Alcohol MisuseIn the Scottish Indices of Multiple Deprivation 2004 recently published by the Scottish Executive one index used is the average rate of alcohol related hospital episodes per person. There are twelve data zones that cover the Craigmillar SIP area. The average rate of episodes is 0.0261 from 1998 to 2002, which works out at one episode for every 40 people. Mental HealthThe number, and rates per 1,000 of emergency admissions to hospital for self-harm/poisoning for women and men has decreased over each two-year period, and particularly in the years 2000 to 2002. The rates for women and men are also very similar over the period. However, in the one-year of 2002/03 they have increased again, particularly for women. These changes in Craigmillar mirror the changes in Edinburgh as a whole. In the Scottish Indices of Multiple Deprivation 2004 it is estimated that 9.7% of the population in the relevant data zones are being prescribed drugs for anxiety, depression or psychosis in 2002. This compares to 7.3% in the Scottish population as a whole. Mortality RatesThe age standardized mortality ratio for women in Craigmillar is showing some signs of improvement between 1999 and 2002. When these four years are divided into two-year means, it goes from 140 to 129. The particular worries are for the 25-44 and 45-64 year age group, where for the four years combined the ratios stand at 369 and 245 respectively. In other words two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half times as many women in these age groups die than one would expect. The situation for men is rather worse than for women. Firstly, there are more deaths among boys, while the rate for infants and young children of both sexes is of general concern. Again the rates for 25-44 years olds and 45-64 years are high, albeit not as high as for women. The two year means for the overall age standardized mortality ratios goes from 155 to 146, which does show some improvement. Across both sexes, the age standardized mortality ratio over the four-year period stands at 143, which means that 43% more people die than one would expect. This figure is slightly better than the average of the Comparative Mortality Factors for the data zones that make up the Craigmillar SIP area, recently published by the Scottish Executive in the Scottish Indices of Deprivation 2004. The numbers of people, men and women, who die from Ischaemic Heart Disease in Craigmillar, are small, and so the age standardized ratios vary widely. Averaging the results over two year periods gives rates for women of 152 and 148. Men's rates have improved from 160 to only 104. This latter figure gives some cause for optimism. For both sexes, over the four-year period the ratio is 140. |