More areas of the country are to be covered by the Pathways to Work initiative, which has been running in pilot areas since last year. The extension is part of the government’s intention to base its policy on the best practice of doctors and employers to shape the strategy to help sick and disabled people back to work.The Minister for Work, Jane Kennedy, said joint working through the initiative had shown a doubling in the number of recorded job entries in the pilot areas compared to other parts of the country. About six times as many people are taking up further help to get back to work compared to the national average. The initiative combines job help by specially trained personal advisors, health advice from the NHS and better links with local GPs and employers.

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This report from the Home Office sets out a framework for community capacity building. It identifies six underlying principles and puts forward priority areas for action to bring about change. It stresses that the Government will only achieve many of its objectives if it fully involves citizens and communities. This means investing in successful efforts to build the skills, abilities, knowledge and confidence of people and community groups, to enable them to take effective action and play leading roles in the development of their communities. It also means expanding learning and development within public services, so that professionals, practitioners and policy-makers are better equipped to engage with citizens and communities. The report highlights the need to recognise both geographical communities – neighbourhoods, parishes – and communities of people with a common interest or identity.It sees the way forward as targeting of efforts to build strong, sustainable community anchor organisations which can provide a crucial focus and support for community development and change in their neighbourhood or community, and for the building up of the community sector. It will also promote local action-planning as a vital tool for involving citizens and community groups and giving them the confidence to influence their quality of life, shape the services that affect them and contribute to achieving sustainable development in the wider world. Stronger collaboration and co-ordination at local, regional and national levels is also required.

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A survey by Hays Accountancy and Finance of senior managers found that NHS finance departments are feeling the strain as they try to cope with a succession of Department of Health initiatives. It found that 50-60 hour working weeks becoming the norm. More than half of the finance managers surveyed thought that they should have more help to implement initiatives such as shared services and payment by results and a similar number referred to a lack of support for Agenda for Change and Foundation Trust developments.Finance skills were found to be lacking within organisations, with a majority identifying investment and benchmarking, with a significant proportion pointing to commissioning and procurement. Business case development was lower in the list. Fewer than half said that their organisations had recently undertaken any form of analysis of the financial management skills required to deliver new initiatives. Only a handful mentioned any kind of external audit or consultancy.

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Local authorities and the voluntary sector are to get an extra 60 million pounds to reduce the number of homeless people. The announcement has been made as the Government faces criticism over the increase in the number of homeless families living in temporary accommodation.Figures show that the number of homeless people is at a record 100,810, which represents a 123 per cent rise since the Government came to power in 1997. Shelter called on the Government to make a strong commitment to a coherent, effective strategy for tackling the problem and said this should be published as part of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister’s forthcoming Five Year Plan.

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More than nine out of ten government services will be available electronically by the end of 2005 according to a report from the Cabinet Office, which also shows that three quarters of those services are already online. As a result there is to be a shift in the focus of the work of the e-Government Unit.The report says the outlook for use of the services is also positive with transaction levels rising compared to traditional delivery methods such as such as face-to-face meetings or telephone transactions.

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Local authorities want assurances from the government that funding for running elections will not be ring fenced. The Local Government Association is calling for councils to have flexibility as part of its response to the Electoral Commission report “Voting for Change”.The LGA wants more commitment from government to modernising the electoral process, making it safe and secure and to give voters options on how they cast their ballot. It is also concerned about the prospect of all postal ballots and about what it fears may be the government’s lack of commitment to funding electoral services. The LGA says authorities must have the flexibility to run local elections without the restrictions of ring fencing that would fail to take local circumstances into account.

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The government is being urged to use new indicators that reveal concentrations of child poverty, poor housing, school underachievement and crime in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, to step up the campaign against deprivation and social exclusion over the next 20 years.A report published today to mark the 100th anniversary of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says the new measurements should inform a comprehensive strategy for helping the poorest places and the poorest people and to ensure that people’s life chances no longer depend so heavily on the places where they are born and live.

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This paper from the Department for Trade and Industry describes how broadband content can aid the delivery of regional and devolved administration’s economic strategies. Broadband will impact on all aspects of the economy, affecting growth, productivity and competitiveness and is seen by some as having the potential to equal the advent of the railways, the passenger jet or even domestic electricity in terms of its impact. The four target markets where broadband content can effectively influence regional economic strategies have been identified as business, learning, public sector and community.The public sector has a major role, both as a large scale customer and as a channel for aggregation of broadband demand, pushing broadband usage and capacity to new levels. In partnership with the private sector there are huge opportunities in areas such as eHealth and eGovernment to drive up the efficiency of the public sector and to improve the service that the public sector provides to citizens. The paper recognises that many of the skills needed to properly commission broadband content and applications are currently in short supply within the public sector, and this is one of the areas where effective action might be taken.

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Dr. Johannes C. Scholtes Disasters resulting from weather, fire, theft, burglary, computer hacking, and acts of terrorism occur without warning. Surveys reveal limited planning for disaster recovery, particularly from the loss of paper records. The author describes the likely effects of a disaster and looks at the problems of recovery and of maintaining business continuity.

The Department of Health has announced it is moving to develop a national consistent approach to assessment for fully funded NHS continuing care, in anticipation of one of the key recommendations to be included in the Health Service Ombudsman’s forthcoming report on funding for long-term care, which is due for publication before Christmas.The Ombudsman’s report will highlight problems arising from the lack of a national policy and guidance and say that from the patient’s point of view applying for continuing care funding has been a lengthy and sometimes hit and miss process, causing real hardship for a number of disabled and elderly people and their carers.

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