Health service staff can now go on-line to find out the gaps in their knowledge and skills in information management and technology. The new service provides individuals with the ability to assess their own learning needs and relate these needs to their particular profession, while identifying relevant courses to improve skills. The tool also acts as a support for managers in drawing up personal development plans.The self-assessment tool works by allowing staff to input information about their current skills into a computer. It takes about 40 minutes for them to work their way through the questions. Using national health informatics standards for their particular profession, a profile is then generated, providing a detailed analysis of their skills and identifying areas where improvements could be made.

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The Local Government Association is gearing up to for the next general election with a campaign to persuade politicians of all parties to give real commitment to local government. The Association wants to ensure that talk about new localism is turned into reality with greater freedom and flexibilities for councils to decide what is best for their local communities. It will also seek to ensure that partnership working between central and local government and between county and district councils is promoted.The Chairman, Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart and the Executive of the Association will work with leading politicians to coordinate public affairs and the corporate agenda to deliver the Association’s manifesto and persuade each political party to give real commitment to local government.

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By David Crimmens, Fiona Factor, Tony Jeffs, John Pitts, Carole Pugh, Jean Spence and Penelope Turner The Youth Service is viewed as a key member of Crime Reduction Partnerships and street based youth work is having an impact by reducing the numbers known to be offending and by discouraging anti social behaviour. The authors challenge the rationale for target-driven youth initiatives and time-limited funding for street-based youth work.

The NHS drive to cut waiting time for emergency care to a maximum wait of four hours is getting close to achievement. In 2003 almost a quarter of patients spent more than four hours in Accident and Emergency Departments. Now, it is less than one in 20 patients and it is predicted that at the start of 2005 it will be one in 50.The improvement has been achieved partly by employing more doctors and nurses in emergency care work, but also by re-thinking processes and the mix of skills and by better integration with other parts of the health service and social services.

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Local communities in the country’s most deprived neighbourhoods are having greater influence in decisions which affect them. The change is being driven by the single community programme which provides grants for community groups. The National Audit Office has looked at how the programme is working and in its report ‘Getting Citizens Involved: Community Participation in Neighbourhood Renewal’, it concludes that an increasing number of people are able to influence decisions affecting their local public services owing to accessible funding. The report also highlights the difficulties of cultural change surrounding community empowerment and calls for a concerted effort to overcome the barriers to change.The single community programme has so far supported around 25,000 separate community projects in the country’s most deprived neighbourhoods. 88 per cent of these projects contribute directly to neighbourhood renewal targets. A grant of 5000 pounds, for example, was given to the Company Fierce dance group in Manchester to start “The Boyz Project” to give direction and confidence to young black men through positive role models.

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The New Local Government Network report is the second in a series that aims to pin down the main implications of the Government’s new localism agenda across a range of key public services delivered locally. It argues that there are success stories of localism in education, but there could be more if head teachers didn’t have to spend so much time bidding, pitching and wheeler-dealing. Evidence suggests that government needs to think more laterally about the funding process – schools should not have to plug into such a large number of different funding streams to enable them to play a role in responding to the often localised issues that affect their surrounding communities. It proposes that a system should be devised where schools were given sufficient funds to enter the extended school’s arena and play a much wider role in the community than teaching children, especially in disadvantaged areas, without the bidding. There needs to be transparent funding so everybody can see why the funds were allocated in the way they were.The report is available at: www.nlgn.org.uk/publications

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This programme is now available to view on egovtv.tv, the online television channel for public service modernisation. It reviews ways of implementing new flexible working practices that can help deliver local authority-wide efficiencies and savings, as endorsed by the Gershon Efficiency Review. By freeing staff from their desks, service professionals can get closer to the customer to increase service levels and efficiencies, executive staff can work together more effectively and substantial savings can be achieved from better use of office space.”New Ways of Working” includes discussion panels, interviews and case studies providing insight into the opportunities of flexible working and the technologies and organisational change management required for its successful implementation. Panel discussions range over building the business case for new ways of working, examining the business drivers and benefits for changing traditional office-based work, and some successful approaches undertaken by pioneering organisations.

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Ballot papers are going out to pharmacists offering a new contract to provide a wider range of services and a revised basis for payment. It will give them an incentive to broaden the range of services they offer to their community. The principle of payments related to volume of medicines dispensed will be replaced by new arrangements to reward them for the range and quality of services they provide. If there is a ‘yes’ vote to accept the contract, the new services will start in April 2005.The new contract offers pharmacists payments for services such as checking people’s blood pressure, monitoring blood glucose levels, offering smoking cessation services and generally promoting healthy lifestyles. It also provides for supporting self-care and the management of common ailments and helping patients to get the best from their medicines.

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Sir Andrew Turnbull, head of the Civil Service, has responded to the Gershon efficiency report which called for central government departments to adopt a more professional approach. He has launched a Professional Skills for Government programme to equip the more senior ranks of civil servants with key business skills and an in-depth knowledge of their own professional area.Under the programme the work of civil servants is divided into three basic competencies. For policy expertise and analysis, the traditional area of senior civil servants, individuals will have skills in economics or social and scientific research, but they must also have experience of managing the business of government and making change happen.

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This paper sets out proposed arrangements to give GP practices commissioning budgets. from April 2005. The right to hold a budget is a first step towards the development of a sophisticated range of ways in which practices are involved in commissioning which support the principle of greater devolution. Practice based commissioning will assume greater importance in the NHS system overall. It will raise the profile of patient choice as a driver for quality and empowerment. Practises will be able to secure a wider range of services, more responsive to patient needs and from which patients can choose. From 2008 the impact of free choice for elective procedures will change the dynamic further. Practices could then use their commissioning abilities to identify alternative provision, including in primary care, to give patients greater choice.Patients will benefit from GP commissioning through a greater variety of services, a greater number of providers and treatment in settings that are closer to home and more convenient to patients. The NHS as a whole will benefit from more efficient use of services and greater involvement of front line doctors and nurses in commissioning decisions.

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