By Gary Craig, Marilyn Taylor, Mick Wilkinson and Kate Bloor with Surya MunroRelationships between local and central government and voluntary and community organizations have been controversial for some time, and particularly since the introduction of the ‘contract culture’ during the 1980s. New Labour now argues that it wishes to develop a ‘partnership culture’ in which the voluntary sector is a major partner. New local partnerships, or compacts, of varying kinds are now being developed across the UK, involving a range of local public agencies including councils, health bodies and Learning and Skills Councils. This report is the first national evaluation of how this new approach to partnership working is being implemented at a local level.
People acting in an anti social way and causing harassment, alarm or distress are going to find life more difficult. Currently the police or local council can apply to magistrates for an Anti Social Behaviour Order which is a preventive measure placing restrictions on the subject such as a curfew. The orders work in the same way as an injunction and breeching them becomes a criminal offence.Under new proposals there will be a fast track to civil legal action against those committing disorder in the community. An interim order will be introduced to allow immediate action to be taken before going through the full process. This interim order would be made at the first court appearance and it would protect the community from a persistent offender without delay. To deal with the problem of people moving to other areas and resuming their anti-social behaviour, it is proposed that an order should travel with the person on whom it has been served
Over half of prisoners discharged from UK jails re-offend within two years. The National Audit Office in its latest report: ‘Reducing Prisoner Re-offending’ reveals that many prisoners leave prison without having had the opportunity to address their offending behaviour. The auditors found that the degree of support prisoners receive to reduce the risk of re-offending was a postcode lottery. This lack of a strategic approach to the issue was characterized by the absence of a reliable information system to show the impact of programmes and the performance of individual prisons.The report re-states the well known characteristics of the re-offending problem. Many of the prisoners have drug problems and poor levels of literacy and numeracy. Prison regimes do little to improve educational or work skills. Finding accommodation and work on discharge from prison can be a major challenge for many. So called ‘unaccredited’ schemes have addressed these issues with varying levels of success, but the Prison Service has not built on this experience.
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Health care delivered through the health service and other types of care delivered by some 150 local councils are continuing to merge at the point of delivery. Older people who need help with some of the activities of daily living, or who live in residential or nursing homes are among the 1.5 million people in England who receive help from social services. They will benefit from a new ‘single assessment’ process that will allow different professionals to share information across organizational boundaries. This will remove the need for them to repeat their personal details and needs when they enter nursing care. The ‘single assessment’ arrangements will be introduced over the next two years.Closer working between health and social services is also be fostered by the proposal to strengthen the powers of councils to scrutinize health services bodies within their areas. A number of councils are already undertaking health scrutiny, which involves working across local government and other boundaries such as a hospital or other NHS care provider. The new powers are unlikely to come into effect until April 2003.
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Home Secretary David Blunkett has raised the pay and allowance increases agreed by the Police Negotiating Board in December last year as part of the reform package. Rank and file police offers will vote on the reform package on 7th February and it was thought that the decision was finely balanced. The new cash is likely to swing the majority to vote ‘yes’.The increases include a 400 pounds across the board addition to all pay points and a shortening of pay scales from April 2003. A competence-related payment of 1,002 pounds a year will be paid to officers at the top of the pay scales and it is expected that some 75% of officers will meet the qualifying criteria.. Special priority payments will be made where posts involve arduous and onerous duties involving permanently long hours of overtime such as surveillance work and kidnap cases. Payments will vary from 500 to 5000 pounds. The starting salary of older recruits will rise from the current 17,733 pounds to 20,244 pounds in April 2003. Proposed reductions in premium payments for overtime working will now be phased in over two years and some of the reductions for bank holiday working have been restored.
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By Linton Barker, PricewaterhouseCoopersThis report commission by HM Treasury asks politicians and civil servants to base their policies and operations around the needs of customers, informed by customers wherever possible. The ‘user as customer’ is familiar in government reforms, but the concept has been limited in scope and focused on front line service delivery, with little consideration of the role of policy making. Without a change in attitudes, sustained improvement to meet public demand is unlikely. To achieve lasting results organizations need to embed customer focus throughout the system. Implementation must start by understanding the needs, expectations and behaviours of the public and then by adjusting every aspect of the organization to align with customer values. This includes the entire delivery chain from policy through to front line services, including strategy, performance measures, information systems and support processes.
Parents should be allowed to choose the school for their children and the control of place allocations by the local education authority should be ended. This is a key recommendation of the Adam Smith Institute in its report ‘Learning from Europe’. The Institute has looked at the education arrangements in Denmark and Holland and found that parental choice combined with a per capita system of finance where the money goes to state and independent schools, delivers higher standards. It also results in high levels of parental satisfaction.As well as abolishing official barriers to school choice, the report urges that organisations, parents and teachers should be allowed to set up their own new schools or expand existing ones. In the Netherlands new schools qualify for funding provided that over time they can enroll a minimum of 333 pupils in the cities and 200 pupils in rural areas. In Denmark, support from the families of 28 pupils is required. These liberal provision policies have promoted a beneficial form of competition that has squeezed out most of the problem of failing schools that is so stark in the United Kingdom.
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Conservative shadow education secretary Damian Green returning from a fact-finding visit to Germany has made it clear that his party’s education policy will be changed radically. When the policy proposals are published it will be clear that they relate closely to the party leader’s shift of priority from tax cuts to protecting public services.Greater autonomy for head teachers and teacher training are areas being examined closely. Giving heads greater freedom would allow them to mould schools more closely to the needs of the children, rather than following a prescribed pattern. A proposal is also being examined to set up a Royal College of Teaching which would play a similar role to the medical royal colleges in promoting good practice and supporting research.
Martin McKee and Judith HealyHospitals of the future will confront difficult challenges: new patterns of disease, rapidly evolving medical technologies, ageing populations, and continuing budget constraints. This book explores the competing pressures facing policymakers across Europe as they struggle to respond to these complex challenges. It argues that hospitals, as part of a larger health system, should focus on enhancing health outcomes while also responding to public expectations. Adopting a cross-national, cross-disciplinary perspective, the study assesses recent evidence on the factors driving hospital reform and the strategies used to improve organizational performance. The book concludes that hospitals cannot be managed in isolation from society and the wider health system, and that policymakers have a responsibility to define the broader health care goals they should strive to meet.
And Police Forces have also been told that they ‘must do better’ at consulting their communities on crime. The second round of crime and disorder strategies is about to be drawn up jointly by police and local councils as a way of encouraging co-ordinated crime prevention.There are 376 Crime and Disorder Partnerships across England and Wales, who each drew up their first such strategy in 1999. All have been reminded that they must consult widely with all key stakeholders and their local community when they conduct an initial audit of crime and disorder in their area.