The Aliss programme - Via Alliance Scotland -monthly newsletter

The ALISS Programme The end of the year is approaching, and the ALISS team and programme have seen a number of new developments since the last Newsletter Apr – July 2013. There have been some changes within the team itself  – with the arrival of  a new developer Dougal Matthews, and another developer Kevin Brolly starting on 25 November 2013. Jane Ankori has now settled into the Alliance as ALISS Programme Director, having been in post for 6 months now. Joanna Ptolomey has completed her work with us for the time being: her contribution to the programme has been significant over the past few years - our thanks to Joanna for all her work. The programme itself has moved on, with the establishment and first meeting of the new ALISS Programme Board on 23 September 2013. This meeting reviewed the revised programme definition, risks, issues, strategy and budget, and led to the programme securing additional funding from the Scottish Government Digital Directorate to support the development of the ALISS engine for scaling across Scotland. This work on the engine has begun, and is expected to continue over the next 6 months.  Meanwhile, we have been working on a number of developments: Living it up We have integrated the ALISS engine with the Living It Up platform, ready for Ministerial launch on 14 November 2013. This will allow users of the Living It Up website to search for local sources of support listed in ALISS from within the Living It Up site. Our thanks to the Living It Up teams who have gathered an additional 1036 resources to date across Lothian, Forth Valley, Western Isles, Highlands and Moray and worked with us to achieve integration in a relatively short space of time.  Improving Links Continuing our work with GP Practices and local communities in Nairn, Dundee, Lothian and Kinross, we have developed two new tools with communities: a customisable web page that allows communities to search the ALISS engine and a search box that can be added to any existing website or web page. These tools can be used by anyone - for more information please contact Lesley Roome  Asset Mapping Tool kit Available on the Alliance website, this pack is designed to assist champions to work within their own communities / groups to identify, collect, share and maintain information about local assets using the ALISS approach. Early adopter champions have been trialling the pack and providing feedback. If you would like to know more or feedback please contact Andy Hyde Police Scotland/Prisons Police Scotland – we have been working with Police Scotland to support their national strategy and local community police officer signposting initiatives using ALISS. ALISS is now available via the Police Scotland intranet and work is ongoing at a national and regional level. Prisons – we have engaged with the Prison Service as well as Positive Prisons to support initiatives within prisons and communities to link ex offenders with local supports and ultimately reduce recidivism. Contact  Lesley Roome to find out more.  People Powered Health and Wellbeing We have partnered with SCDC and IRISS to offer asset mapping support to the programme – the final proposal / plan is approaching completion. Further information is available from Peter Ashe  Soiree We have partnered via the Alliance with Voluntary Health Scotland and Scottish Health on the Web to develop supported websites for the third sector that are indexed automatically by ALISS. For more information contact Nancy Greig Want to work with us?  if you are interested in working with us , whether it be as a community champion, partner, account holder, volunteer – please do get in touch! For more, please visit alliance-scotland.org.uk »