News Summary of Collaboration and Shared Services from 9th July 2014

Local Government

Fortunately I didn’t bet on Brazil beating Germany last night, but maybe I would bet that the shape of local government across the UK will very different in five years’ time. The Welsh Government is beginning to unpack the Williams report using some nice Lewin Change Management Modelling by stating how bad things are now (unfreeze) and how change will make it better. If the Williams report is fully ratified, then make the change from 22 to 10 councils and refreeze…

Council mergers: Poor services 'letting people down'

People are being "let down" by poor public services, according to a member of the commission that proposed a major overhaul of the public sector. Read more >>>

So what about England? Over the last year or so in this email, we have tracked the growing calls for unitary local government to replace two-tier. Some of the CLG Innovation Fund bids are thought by some, to be funding for re-organisation of two tiers systems by the back door. This new NLGN collection of essays on the subject makes great holiday reading for the beach (!)…

Right Tier, Right Now

The future of two tier local government is one of most vexed questions facing the sector as a whole. It is quite clear that the current division of labour between counties and districts is unsustainable for some parts of the country as both tiers struggle to cope with unprecedented budget cuts. Read more >>>

The real issue though is that it’s too late to be building bigger back office silos through shared services. Collaborative Transformation is the only game in town that can save £bns, rather than the £500m maximum that can be gained from shared services. So, adventures like the following in Dorset, could offer the opportunity for restructure decisions that blur the traditional boundaries between departments and services to serve the needs of their communities with new, better,  lower-cost services…

Dorset councils propose shared working

Three Dorset councils are considering sharing a senior management team and developing joint services as part of a bid for transformation funding. Read more >>>

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Blue lights service

I was teaching a collaborative leadership day in a Fire Service a few weeks ago, when the comment was made to me that the Fire Service has been too successful and is putting itself out of a job…

Fire deaths fall by 5% in past year

The number of fire deaths in England has fallen by 5% in the past year, according to official figures released by the Office for National Statistics. Read more >>>

However, one of the deputy chiefs in the room was quick to point out that the Fire Service has very successfully transformed into being the major Prevention Service in the UK. They have saved billions of downstream costs to the emergency services, A&E and private sector insurance companies, by ensuring that incidents do not happen. Maybe collaborative transformation for them could start by changing their name from the Fire & Rescue Service, to the Prevention Service, counting the cash benefits of the downstream savings they are making and see who wants to play. Me? I would invest in the Fire Service, not cut its funding.

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Social care

To complement that theme, you may remember a few months ago, a news item reporting that councils in receipt of substantial social care funding were applying it to upstream activities to prevent the need for the costlier, downstream direct social care. This hurt the social care providers who were only geared up to do things to people who already have social care needs. It looks like this could be the hot topic for 2015 as the full funding and new Care Act comes online…

The social care sector must pull together to address the funding crisis

No-one who works in care services would have been in the least surprised at the two pieces of news this week. The LGA told us on Monday that care for disabled people was at "make or break point". Read more >>>

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News Summary of Collaboration and Shared Services from 11th June 2014

Well done LGA! They have created another map to help identify collaborative working, but this time around Health and Wellbeing. Through the SSA Collaborative Leadership programme we are being drawn into working in the Health Sector. We are meeting great people, working in very complex, collaborative systems-wide environments. But many are stumbling their way to success by attempting to lead hierarchically because they have not been skilled in collaborative leadership. Please spend a few seconds looking at what the map has to offer. It may be worth just knowing it’s there for the future…

 

Health and Wellbeing Boards priorities across England - Map

This map is designed to support health and wellbeing boards and provide a practical tool that stimulates collaboration. Themes and summaries have been developed drawing on the headline priorities identified in the Public Health England Health Profile 2013 summary for each area. Read more >>>

 

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Local Government

 

After the report last week on the terrible treatment of the elderly in a care home in Crawley, Essex County Council brings us good news of “relationship-centred care”. They report how, among many things, they have created “…positive changes in the relationship between Essex County Council and the county’s care home sector driven by …a focus on quality improvement rather than monitoring compliance, effective leadership and a support network for managers”.

Many of the ideas in the report are worth stealing with pride and applying to your context…

 

Commissioning relationship-centred care in Essex: an evaluation

How can local authority commissioners work with the care home sector to ensure older people consistently receive high-quality, relationship-centred care? This report reviews the improvements Essex County Council made to the commissioning of its care home services for older people. Read more >>>

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Fire & Rescue Service

 

When teaching the Shared Service Practitioner programme for CFOA, we have heard a number of stories of the co-location of emergency services which have worked well, and ones that have not. The common theme of the ones that have not is that the focus has been on the plans for the building (the deal) and not on how the different cultures will live together in the building (the relationships).

Drawing on academic reviews, and other evidence, we teach that in any form of multi-organisational collaborative working, probably 75% of the leaders’ time should be spent on the relationships and shared vision, and only 25% on the deal. Hopefully this new shared emergency service centre will take that into account…

 

£8m for new Wrexham emergency services centre

The creation of a new joint Ambulance and Fire Services Resource Centre for Wrexham is moving forward with a £8.4 million capital funding boost from the Welsh Government, Health Minister Mark Drakeford announced today. Read more >>>

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News Summary of Collaboration and Shared Services from 4th June 2014

It’s been a quiet week on the news front, but big on the job front. If you are looking for either consultancy or PAYE vacancies there are nine below.

But let’s look at some of the news that bubbled up this week…

 

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Local Government

Here is some recommended reading. This high level business case for four councils in the Oxfordshire area will provide you with a guide to laying out your high level business case. What I really like is the exit strategy statements as we don’t often come across them…

Four councils set out plans for ‘most radical joint working’ in local government

Four councils are proposing to launch a jointly-owned local authority company to transform the way they run services and save more than £55m over the next ten years. Read more >>>

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Central Government Shared Services – in Australia (!)

What have the Aussies ever taught us? (…apart from cricket, Fosters and a sunshine lifestyle…). Actually they have taught us very little about shared services. In fact their state based shared services (losses of $300mAus) have been almost as disastrous as the UK central government shared service (losses of £1bn+). So, as a result of the failure of their state based centralisation of services, they have decided to centralise everything even more tightly (doh!)…

Govt lays groundwork for shared services, job cuts

The Department of Finance has laid out its draft vision for a streamlined and efficient government back office, in a plan that will set the ball rolling for federal government shared services and further reductions in the public sector workforce. Read more >>>

Our new Collaborative Leadership Across Communities toolkit, is focused on community engagement and therefore this Northern Ireland piece of work should be of interest to you, if you have been on the Collaborative Leadership Across Communities seminar…

‘Sharing’ on the agenda in Greater Whitewell

A survey carried out as part of our Shared Communities Programme has highlighted a desire for ‘sharing’ in the Greater Whitewell area. Read more >>>

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