A campaign to involve tens of thousands of tenants in fighting crime and anti- social behaviour has been launched today by Home Office Minister John Denham. The Home Office in collaboration with the Tenants Participation Advisory Service, designed a new training programme to help residents groups tackle the issues that most affect their communities. There will also be a new award scheme ‘Participation into Practice Award 2003’ which showcases the best practical examples of community groups tackling anti-social behaviour and crime.The ‘Crime Reduction Basics’ training manual for community groups covers in detail what groups and individuals can do to tackle the issue of crime reduction in their area. It includes advice on how people can help in individual ways, factual information on what people are entitled to expect from their local services and case studies of what works.
The Audit Commission has found that local councils, NHS trusts and the police have a long way to go to meet the modernizing agenda demand for involving service users. User involvement is crucial because people benefit most from public services that are based on a real understanding of their needs. The Commission also found outstanding examples where successful involvement brought real benefits to users.The new Management Paper from the Commission ‘Connecting with Users and Citizens’ compares service providers with effective involvement processes with those that were less successful. The comparison reveals a cultural divide. The successful embed user involvement across the organization and seek commitment from all staff. The less successful believe that people do not want to be consulted, because they are not interested. They also feel that it is not really necessary to consult. The reasons they quote for low level of user involvement include lack of time, resources and staff expertise.
By Martin Knox, David Alcock, Anna Roderick and John Iles Involving people in community governance at neighbourhood level has become a priority. Because of the ‘right to buy’ and the growth of housing associations, large estates of exclusively social rented dwellings have all but disappeared. The authors look at governance mechanisms for empowering residents across the tenure divide between tenants and property owners. They explain their preference for an independent legal vehicle such as a company limited by guarantee, rather than a parish council.
In a move to further reduce the boundaries between health and social care, two new inspectorates are to be created. Although the Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection (CHAI) and the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) will have separate structures, they will have a joint responsibility to provide independent inspection and assessment of the management, provision and quality of all public and private health and social care in England.The inspectorates’ work programmes will be developed in parallel and one of their major concerns will be promoting joint working. As well as streamlining inspection arrangements they will strengthen the accountability of those responsible for the commissioning and delivery of health and social services.
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Town hall managers are set to benefit from an on-line strategic leadership programme launched today. The programme is a joint venture between the Cabinet Office and the Improvement and Development Agency. It also involves a public-private partnership with Epic Group plc and iMPOWER plc.An online leadership programme for central government, known as PRIME: Leadership, was launched in March 2002 and has proved very successful. The new programme PRIME: Local Government, has been created to drive through a transformation in leadership skills across the public sector. It offers individuals an intensive learning programme based on a range of learning methods including tutorials, case studies, scenario-based simulations, off-line exercises and links to qualified sources of information. The programme encourages managers delivering front-line public services to develop practical leadership skills. It uses a wide range of examples of successful delivery of services.
By Peter C. BrinckerhoffUntil very recently, popular belief held that business skills were not needed at charitable organizations. No longer. In order to deliver services charities need techniques such as marketing, cash flow analysis, property management, and good use of technology. The successful not-for-profit is really a mission-based business. In an era of rapid change, increasing competition, and the need for more accountability to governments, foundations, insurers, and donors, knowing how to innovate, compete, and take reasonable risks on behalf of the mission is critical. It is, in short, the era of the social entrepreneur. This book describes the techniques needed by the social entrepreneur with a focus on community wants and needs.
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The magistrates’ courts have been waiting for a new IT system for ten years, and the wait goes on. The National Audit Office sets out the ten year saga in a critical report which highlights management failures in the Lord Chancellor’s Department.IT systems in magistrates’ courts have been inadequate for many years and current systems do not allow information to be shared electronically with other courts. A further weakness is that electronic information transfer to other enforcement agencies is piecemeal. Development of the first project designed to meet the information sharing need was started in 1992. The project failed and was abandoned, as was the project which succeeded it. A third project was started in 1996, using the public finance initiative. In July 2002 the project was scaled down and this resulted in the signing of a separate contract for software. Nothing has been delivered so far.
Procurement has a low profile in local government with a short term focus on costs. A strategy to produce a radical change in thinking about procurement is being developed by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Local Government Association. A key aim will be engaging decision makers and winning the “hearts and minds” of members, Chief Executives and officers. There will be a joint publicity campaign with top down messages from the ODPM and bottom up messages from the LGA.The national strategy will identify leading edge experience and good practice that can be shared between authorities to deliver improvements across the sector. It will address key issues such as how to build skills and competencies, engaging council members in procurement at a strategic level and securing a long term focus on strategic procurement. The aim will be to avoid prescription, but rather provide a facilitating and enabling framework with a clear objective to improve procurement performance throughout local government within a reasonable timeframe. The Byatt report published a year ago found that 75% of councils had no procurement strategies and it is hoped that the new national strategy will provide the impetus for developing local strategies.
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By Mark L Lengnick-Hall and Cynthia A Lengnick-HallMore organizations are recognizing the importance of intellectual capital and knowledge management to success, yet the field of human resource management continues to be criticized for its operational and bureaucratic focus. Human Resource Management in the Knowledge Economy examines how it must change if it is to remain a vital part of the organization. The Lengnick-Halls show how HR departments can move beyond a simple operational focus on attracting, selecting, developing, retaining, and using employees to a more strategic focus on managing human capital and managing knowledge. The authors outline the new roles of human capital steward, knowledge facilitator, relationship builder, and rapid deployment specialist,.that HR must adopt in order to help organizations succeed in this new environment:
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In a move to shift the focus of service delivery away from the provider and towards the customer, a pilot to join up local councils and Jobcentre Plus has been launched. Jobcentre Plus staff in Calderdale and Kirklees, Buckinghamshire and Gateshead and South Tyneside will collect information and verify new claims for Housing and Council Tax Benefit at the same time that they deal with applications for Jobseekers Allowance, Income Support and Incapacity Benefit. This will remove the need for claimants to answer the same questions twice.The pilot supports the drive to provide a single seamless benefit service, but there is uncertainty about how effective it will be in practice. Jobcentre Plus staff have no knowledge of Housing Benefit and cutting out the expertise of the staff in council offices may lead to increased fraud. Because of the fraud risk, council office staff may be reluctant to accept claims verified elsewhere. It is also unclear whether moving the responsibility for verification will actually speed up the processing of claims overall.