Headlines: December 9th, 2009

The pilot projects cover a wide range of topics including providing better and more efficient services for children, young people, the elderly and the vulnerable. Crime reduction is also part of the agenda, as is tackling its causes such as abuse of drugs and alcohol. Cost savings are also being pursued through better asset management by making more efficient use of buildings.

Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole with 27 per cent of the population over retirement age are focusing on services to older people. They are seeking to shift investment from acute to preventative care to improve the services and reduce costs. This will be done by avoiding hospital admissions, increasing early intervention and prevention services, helping people regain skills after illness and helping people to remain independent in their own homes.

Bradford are seeking better ways to support young people leaving care into independence. The partners and young people involved in the pilot are designing a more effective service approach which will establish a clearly defined integrated pathway for each young person. Initial findings indicate that the potential impact of these changes on organisations will include, prioritising spend for the benefit of the “place,” rather than organisation, establishing a collaborative working relationship between central and local government departments at the point of service delivery, and creating a public sector culture that is service user centric.

Kent is focused on improving services to the customer, reducing duplication and improving efficiency across the public sector. The Gateway multi-channel project has potential to radically improve the customer experience of accessing public services, simplify processes within and between organisations, increase the efficiency of transactional services and reduce costs overall. The Single Asset Management strategy is focused on buildings and seeks to migrate from the current asset base of all partners to the base required for transformed public service delivery. The Margate Task Force is developing new ways of working, connecting strategic decision-makers into action at a very local level where poorly supported, transient and vulnerable individuals have continued to be placed into an area already under considerable stress..

Lewisham has projects on unemployment and worklessness; crime and offender management, commissioning of health and social care services for children and adults and assets and energy. A sophisticated approach to offender services and intervention has been developed based on strong joint working and multi-agency collaboration. Health and social care functions are being integrated to deliver a borough-wide seamless services to vulnerable residents cutting out duplication, overlaps and complexity. Unemployment is being tackled through better collaboration among agencies. The assets project has resulted in the co-location of a leisure centre, library, doctor’s surgery and access point to information and advice services. The projects will explore the interaction between citizens and services and agencies because it is often at those points of contact and on the journey through and across different agencies that most inefficiencies occur.

South Tyneside, Gateshead and Sunderland are exploring the potential for securing safer, stronger and healthier neighbourhoods.

The approach to alcohol abuse is to intervene early to redirect resources from treatment to prevention. A project is also exploring the outlook for influencing the supply chain of drugs and alcohol in neighbourhood hotspots and town centres. This involves changing behaviours of suppliers and ensuring traders take greater responsibility for the impact of their trade on society. Another project is exploring ways of changing the social acceptability of high alcohol consumption and drug availability within communities and influencing communities and individuals to change their behaviour to reduce both individual substance harm as well as the wider negative impact on society. Responsibilities in the handling of treatment for substance misuse have been sharpened to get a better focus on leadership, operational decision making and resource allocation and opportunities for data sharing are being explored.