A new statutory duty on Local Authorities and Primary Care Trusts to compile a Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) came into effect on 1st April 2008.

Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) is the process by which Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and local authorities describe the unmet and future social, health, care and well being needs of local populations. JSNA will inform the development of a Joint Commissioning Strategy, other commissioning intentions, the Local Area Agreement (LAA) and the Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS). JSNA describes a process that identifies current and future needs of the community, in light of current services, and informs future service planning,

In Swindon, we recognise that significant progress has been made recently towards describing and identifying need in the community. This progress comes in the form of completed needs assessments of service streams such as in the Children and Young People’s, the Drug and Alcohol and the Sexual Health Services, as well as high-level reviews of current needs in Swindon including the Annual Public Health Report. This document builds upon these needs assessments and provides a summary of what is currently known about need in Swindon.

The issuing of this document is not an end in itself. In Swindon, JSNA is seen as a rolling programme of work informing our commissioning and service delivery rather than as a publication containing a single definitive needs assessment.

Further Information

To view the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment as a pdf downloadable document, please use the link below:

Joint Strategic Needs Assessment July 2008