3. Inclusive public health and wellbeing

The wellbeing and health of its citizens are the top priority of Avannaata Municipality. Therefore, we will continue our efforts to improve services for all citizens and secure good offers of support and counselling for vulnerable citizens. That calls for cooperation, preventive measures and a focus on both citizens’ physical and mental health.

Family-oriented holistic case processing

We want to make sure that citizens are met at eye level in the public system when they need help, and that case processing starts from the entire person and its family.

Through preventive measures, we will reduce the number of out-of-home placements. In order to succeed, we need to apply a holistic approach to case processing, focusing to a higher extent on the resources of the child and the entire family. Focus should not be on the individual child or its parents, but on the child’s entire network. We will also boost our family counselling offers and put them to better and more use, and strengthen supervision and various support measures.

We also need to secure a better overview of the different offers and options available to help our citizens. We will focus on increasing awareness and information and work to increase flexibility in how we help citizens. In that regard, it is vital that we strengthen the interdisciplinary cooperation between the municipality, health services, police and other key actors, to offer citizens the right support, guidance and treatment across institutions

Drop-in centres and support for vulnerable citizens

Citizens in socially vulnerable positions due to violence, abuse, homelessness or other challenges must be able to go to the municipality for protection and help. That means advice and guidance, but also the offer of safe, physical settings.

A safe place to sleep is one of the most basic needs, and very important to public health. As a result, we will work to provide drop-in centres and temporary overnight accommodation for citizens in vulnerable positions and with special needs. We need more facilities that can be used in case of domestic problems. We also see examples of homeless people committing crime, just to get to spend a night in an institution. Soon, the municipality will open its first shelter, which is expected to solve part of the problem.

We will also work to ensure that all towns in the municipality have drop-in centres for disabled persons and good disabled facilities. We also want senior citizens to be able to stay in their own home as long as they want. Therefore, we will boost our support options by means of home care and day centres. We must also work to establish good senior housing and explore if private housing can be optimised for walking-impaired. We will start a dialogue with the housing association INI and join forces to establish suitable housing for disabled, senior and walking-impaired citizens. 

Youth and adult abuse and homelessness are increasing problems in the municipality, resulting in a number of negative effects such as mental illness and financial trouble. Today, we are short of treatment for adults facing challenges, so we will prepare a policy for adults to better care for vulnerable citizens through preventive efforts and offers of counselling.

Promote physical and mental health

Today, Greenland faces massive public health challenges, e.g., an increasing number of persons with lifestyle-induced diseases and obesity. The mental health is also struggling, which is demonstrated by the high suicide rate. Treatment is mainly provided by hospital services, but as a municipality we can support these citizens through preventive measures and increasing information.

For instance, we will help them to help themselves by creating a good foundation for citizens to organise themselves in selfhelp groups. We can make available facilities and help groups get started and organised, allowing, e.g., suicidal citizens, cancer-stricken citizens, victims of abuse or others with similar needs to create good settings for meeting and supporting each other.

We will reduce health inequality. This work highly depends on a stronger cooperation with the health services. That calls for more information, and more treatment options for persons with lifestyle challenges such as obesity and smoking.

We will support the Sports Confederation of Greenland’s goal to make Greenland the most physically active country by 2030. We will do that by backing associations and night-school offers, and work to provide better sports facilities in the municipality.