News Summary of Collaboration and Shared Services from 26 March 2014

It’s time to make yourself a nice coffee or tea, sit down and spend 10 minutes skimming through this report from Locality and Vanguard…

Saving money by doing the right thing

This must read paper from Locality, argues that today’s public services are not designed for “people who need help”. They are designed to batch-process fixes for predefined one-off issues and then close the books. Read more >>>

It is not saying much that you had not heard before, and there is some Vanguard propaganda, but it is evidencing, in heart-breaking stories, how badly public service users can be treated by the costly and frequently ineffective systems we create.  

Setting up a new shared service gives you an opportunity to destroy the old ways of working, focus on the people who need the service, and change the game. This is summed up in the report’s introduction:…far too many public service systems ‘assess rather than understand; transact rather than build relationships; refer on rather than take responsibility; prescribe packages of activity rather than take the time to understand what improves a life’.

Following hot on the concept of locally designed initiatives, and overshadowed by the Budget pension news, was an announcement that the Troubled Families programme is being expanded. I don’t see any mention of new additional funding though (is this a re-announcement?)…

Budget 2014: Troubled Families expansion brought forward

The expansion of the government’s Troubled Families programme is to be speeded up, the Chancellor announced in the Budget. Read more >>>

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Delivering Differently Fund Winners

Out of the 150 local authorities across England who applied for Delivering Differently Challenge funding, the 10 winning local authorities chosen to receive support were announced yesterday…

·         Cheshire West and Chester Council (School Support)

·         Devon CC (Libraries, Youth and Day Care)

·         Dover DC (Heritage)

·         Kingston upon Hull Council (Social Care)

·         Kirklees Council Environment (Open Spaces)

·         Manchester City Council (Domestic Violence)

·         North East Lincolnshire Council (Environment)

·         Nottinghamshire CC (Children’s Disability)

·         Portsmouth City Council (Community Safety)

·         Walsall Metropolitan BC (Adult Learning)

There are some in-boundary collaborative projects included in these projects…

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Scottish Blue Light Transformation

Blue Light Transformation in Scotland has been very radical and fire and police have gone down collaborative routes that the Scottish councils have avoided eg shared services or merger. Here are two examples in the news this week…

Fire control staff visit

DUNDEE-based fire control room staff will travel to Shetland as part of their training to familiarise themselves with the islands’ geography and place names. Read more >>>

Millions saved by forces merger

Largest public sector reform of Scotland's police forces has achieved savings of more than £72 million and force could meet main savings target two years early. Read more >>>

 

I haven’t seen any predictions on mergers or shared service working for Scottish councils if there is a “yes” vote this September. But, if the Barnet Formula is revoked as a result, local government in the fledgling nation may have to rethink its current, reluctant stance.

News Summary of Collaboration and Shared Services from 20 March 2014

Don’t you love a helpful toolkit when they turn up? And, like the proverbial bus, it’s even better when two turn up at once – one in Housing, and one in Health and Social Care. The two turned up in this week’s news and could prove really valuable to you no matter what your sector…

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Housing

One of the challenges in cross-sector collaborative working is evidencing how the new, better, lower cost service is providing social value, in addition to efficiency and improvement.

I would recommend you explore this new calculator/toolkit from the Housing Sector, to see if it can help you in your social value benefits realisation:

Unique partnership develops innovative model for measuring the sector’s social impact

Groundbreaking new research by Affinity Sutton and Catalyst Housing, with the London School of Economics and HACT, has created the ‘Social Value Bank’, a set of 53 measures that will enable any organisation involved in community investment activity – from reducing antisocial behaviour to helping residents into work – to calculate the impact of their activity. Read more >>>

 

Talking of Housing, last week I reported on the key discussion bubbling up in Housing about their need to fill the vacuum created by cash strapped providers (councils, TSOs, etc) withdrawing support services from estates and localities. The danger is that Housing will over-stretch themselves by stepping into the vacuum rather than harnessing collaborative leadership across their communities to fill the vacuum. This article adds to that discussion…

Should housing associations build homes or neighbourhoods?

Housing associations have expanded their brief within communities and now play key roles in tackling poverty and worklessness. Can – and should – they become neighbourhood leaders, asks Austin Macauley. Read more >>>

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Health

The next toolkit is in Health and Social Care. To quote the LGA website: The toolkit should enable Health and Wellbeing Boards and local partners to understand the evidence and impact of different integrated care models on service users, as well as the associated impact on activity and cost to different parts of the health and care system. Good luck with that…

 

Integrated care value case toolkit

The LGA has partnered with NHS England, The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS), The Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS), Monitor, NHS Confederation and the Department of Health (DH) to deliver a programme of work carried out by Integrating Care. Read more >>>

This could be really handy though  as, according to Deloitte, health and social are going to hell in a handcart (my words not theirs – I just wanted to add a bit of drama to the subject).

To quote their introduction: A further systemic barrier is the fragmented model of care delivery which remains focused on the institutional, episodic care and silo pathways into primary, hospital and social care. If you have elderly, frail parents, you may have personally experienced this.

 There are some very helpful diagrams and stats in this report if you are working in this area…

Integration of system-wide services in health and social care for older people with long-term illness

In a new Deloitte Report on health and social care for older people with long-term illness, they evidence that it costs £30 billion per year. Read more >>>

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Fire

Anybody remember FireBuy? We teach the SS(PRAC) programme for CFOA and there is much stronger collaboration across the fire and rescue service than back in the noughties, so it may happen this time…

Improving procurement could deliver fire service savings

Fire services across the country could save millions of pounds by streamlining the way they source and procure clothing and equipment. Read more >>>

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Local Government

Finally, congratulations to the Kent Resource Partnership for their award last week. I had a small part, back in 2008, in the gestation of this joint waste management project  and put about £50k of improvement funding into the project. It was tricky from outset but I had the privilege of working with good Members and Officers who were willing to tough it out to get this result. Must go, I feel a tear coming to my eye…

Partnership working in Kent to deliver £60m net benefit

Two projects delivered by the Kent Resource Partnership (KRP) will achieve a £60m net financial benefit to taxpayers in the county. Read more >>>