Draft Strategic Plan 2025-35 Consultation

We want to support people to live healthier and we believe we can do this by continuing to focus on Prevention and Early Intervention.

So what does Prevention and Early Intervention mean? Basically, it means that we need to focus on supporting people before they suffer from preventable ill-health in all respects.

As the demand for health and social care services continues to grow, how we deliver services is changing and we will need to work closely with our partners and the third sector to empower people and local communities to live healthier lives that supports individuals to make great choices.

To what extent do you agree with the priority "Prevention and Early Intervention"?

When we were developing this Strategic Plan, we needed to consider a number of things to ensure that we balance service demands with population needs, including:

Ageing population: Aberdeenshire is getting older with our over 85s set to grow by 37% by 2030.

Deprivation: People living in our most deprived areas are facing real challenges—men in these areas are living around 6.5 years less than those in the least deprived areas.

Living with Ill Health: Whilst people are living longer, which is great, they are often living longer in poorer health and with complex needs and this has an impact on the type of services we need to deliver.

Geography: Aberdeenshire’s rural geography plays a big role too - deprivation looks different in rural areas compared to urban ones, and access to services can be a real challenge. One of the key messages from our engagement survey was how difficult it can be to get to services or even just to travel around.

All of these considerations mean that we will continue to redesign health and social care services to make sure we are supporting and responding to those with the greatest need.

To what extent do you agree with the priority "Health and Social Care Services - Supporting those with greatest need in our community"?