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 >>>