By S Markwell, J Watson, V Speller, S Platt, and T Younger.This resource was initially designed as a response to the World Health Organization, Investment for Health initiative. As a benchmarking and assessment tool, it enables partnerships to assess their progress against evidence-based criteria and share good practice. The Working Partnership has been devised with and for people whose role it is to support partnership development and improve the quality of partnership working in both established or newly evolving partnerships. It is relevant to all types of partnerships and can be used to demonstrate achievement and build on good practice, identify areas for improvement and capacity building, track progress in delivering shared objectives and improving services. The resource takes a self-assessment approach and offers partnership members the opportunity to develop self-awareness and an honest, open approach to the assessment of strengths and weaknesses.
The Centre for Public Scrutiny has this week launched the first dedicated interactive resource for non-executive scrutineers and their support officers. Their re-launched site www.cfps.org.uk now provides detailed information and improved services for scrutineers from across government and other areas of the public sector.The website has been redesigned so the home page offers quick access to areas of the site, including a library of scrutiny reviews from across the UK, to assist those who are tackling a new topic. Scrutineers can search by subject, region or type of authority type and upload their own reviews to share them with others. The Forums area carries discussions, offering more opportunities for scrutineers to share their experiences and advice.
A report out today says pressure for more police officers on the beat has led to more private patrolling of housing estates using security guards, community support officers, neighbourhood wardens, ‘active citizen’ volunteers and officers provided under contract by police forces. This has left the public confused about what the various services can do to deal with crime.The research, for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, says the roles of these additional policing services are often unclear, and that people are left confused about their responsibilities and what can be expected of them in tackling crime. The study highlights uneven co-ordination and weak accountability and it calls for new regional regulation arrangements to be introduced to ensure fairer competition between the different providers, as well as more effective policing.
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