About The Project
The East Dunbartonshire Asset Map is an interactive map with information about resources, organisations, places โ all coming under the heading of โcommunity assetsโ โ which the people of East Dunbartonshire can use to support their health and wellbeing, both physical and mental.
Asset Mapping is an established approach that is widely used in Person-Centred Planning, collaborating with others to create a personalised set of resources that the individual can use to maintain their own health and wellbeing.
Asset Mapping is part of the Asset-Based Approach to care and support, which looks at the positives, at the things in the community that support good health and wellbeing. This is in contrast to the Deficit-Based Approach, which we are probably all more familiar with and which concentrates on support when something has already gone wrong with your health and wellbeing.
If you are unwell โ a deficit โ you can visit your GP or local pharmacy to get help. But where do you find information about positive things โ the assets โ in the community, to help you stay healthy? If you are socially isolated โ a deficit โ you can get social support. But where can you find social activities โ assets โ that will stop you becoming isolated in the first place? That is where the Asset Mapping approach comes in.
This interactive map is for the whole community of East Dunbartonshire, and it will always be a ‘work in progress’. As well as finding things in the area that can help support your health and wellbeing, you can add your own community assets, you can tell us about changes in services and support, and together we can help other people in the community support their own health and wellbeing.
The Original Asset Map
Beginning in 2011, East Dunbartonshire Council and the Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Sciences (IRISS) undertook an exercise to map out the community mental health assets across the area.
The original project started off as a pen-and-paper exercise to map the community assets around Kirkintilloch. The paper exercise was then expanded to create an online resource, a literal map, of community resources in Kirkintilloch. The project was then expanded to cover all of East Dunbartonshire rather than just Kirkintilloch.
The original East Dunbartonshire Asset Map was a big hit. It was interactive โ people could submit their own suggestions to the map โ and you could search it in a number of different ways to narrow down what you were looking for. Professionals could use it to find support for their clients, members of the public could use it to find the support they were looking for.
Many people working in health and social care in East Dunbartonshire really valued the original Asset Map. It was a great way for me to find local information in a variety of different ways, and it was accessible to the community in the evenings and at weekends.
Unfortunately, websites do not last forever, and due to technical and security issues with the underlying software, the original Asset Map had to be taken offline in 2016. You can find out more about the original East Dunbartonshire Asset Map project here: IRISS Blog.
About Asset Mapping
Asset mapping is an approach that can be applied to individuals and to communities. For an individual, it helps them to identify the positive things in their community that can support their participation in the community, and thereby support their health and wellbeing.
For a community – particularly a community where there are significant health inequalities – asset mapping can identify the positive assets in the community that can reduce the impact of those health inequalities, but it can also help to identify where there is scope to develop new assets to support the reduction of health inequalities.