Welcome Knowledge readers!

I'm very pleased that we've had a mention in the IDeA's Too Good to Miss feature this May. If you're new to this blog, let me show you round the place...

• First off: what's a blog?
• Do check my links on the right hand side of the page, I link to other public sector blogs I think might be of interest (there's bound to be more - if you know of any, please leave a note in the comments section).
• Recent posts include: the link between local government and football, and local government and the Chelsea Flower Show.

And of course, we have serious posts here, too. This blog is in support of a project called Performance Management in Partnerships (PMiP). We have a website chock full of links and guidance and next week, we'll be announcing how you can participate in the project, too.

If you like what you see, just enter your email in the box at the top of the right hand side bar and click "Subscribe me!".

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Opportunities for healthier communities

Topics: public health, voluntary sector

The Department of Health announced today its Opportunities for Volunteering grants - which total over 24 million pounds for this year.

The Department's Section 64 scheme will allot an average £47,000 to over 300 organisations - a total of £17.2m for projects that promote health and wellbeing. The DH Opportunities for Volunteering (OFV) scheme, will allocate £6.7m to support local health and social care projects, enabling them to involve volunteers in their work and complement local service delivery.

This is good news, particuarly in light of recent budgetary difficulties in the National Health Service. Community organisations may be more able to work with individuals to change their behaviours and lead healthier lifestyles in a way that the NHS traditionally hasn't been. It's really a question of focus - the NHS is geared toward getting people better, while some other organsations focus on keeping people well.

Of course, working with other organisations to achieve healthier outcomes introduces new complexities - the classic problems of accountability and performance. When you hand the money over - how do you know that what someone else will do with it will help you achieve your aims (e.g. a healthier Britain)? Some of the charities receiving grants are big hitters who are probably very good at managing their performance and ensuring that donors - whether individuals or government departments - are getting results for their dosh. But how can a public agency be sure? And how can make sure that the smaller players are able to access money too when they're doing good work? This is a question that we'll be exploring more over the coming months.

This programme is set to continue - and it's part of the Department of Health's continuing comittment to supporting the third sector and public health outlined in the White Paper: Our health, our care, our say

The Department will shortly be inviting applications for funding through Section 64 for 2007-08. Information on the funding priorities for 2007-08 and deadlines for outline applications will be available from the beginning of June at http://www.dh.gov.uk/section64.

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So tell me what you want...

Topics: choice, user focus

The Audit Commission has just published a report on choice - I've read the summary, and it's definitely worth a further look. At many of the conferences I've attended over the last year, I've heard local government colleagues support the idea of choice, but state that choice necessarily means greater capacity, which necessarily means greater cost. And that, of course, means it's in contradiction to the efficiency savings we're all mandated to make.

Well, not so much... At least not according to this report which says that choice implemented well, can lead to greater efficiencies as well as better services as users choose what they really want. But done badly, well...yes - that does cost more.

Read the national report: Choosing well Analysing the costs and benefits of choice in local public services

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A winning combination

Topics: public health, local government, gardening

It's not often I get to combine my professional passion (local government and community leadership) with my personal passion (gardening). But this was just too good not to post.

Bournemouth Borough Council has won a coveted gold medal and President's Award at the Chelsea Flower Show for their cut-flower arrangement promoting better health and the 5-a-day concept of healthier eating.

The display features five giant pieces of fruit and vegetables that are madefrom cut flowers, which are around 3m (10ft) high. The cut flowers are situated within a giant willow basket that is surrounded by fruit and vegetables, which spell out the phrase '5-a-day'.

Circling the '5-a-day' feature are three sections depicting work, rest and play, which are planted in carpet bedding withpoints of the compass facing north, south, east and west. The different sections include the classic crest of Bournemouth, a typical beach scene with a giant deck chair and a hand crafted sculpture depicting a surfer riding a wave.

Chris Evans, King’s Park Nursery Manager, headed up a team from the council’s Parks and Gardens section to create the show-stopping display. Help was also received from students of Bournemouth and Poole College.

Congratulations to Bournemouth BC and Chris Evans!

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People and places

Topics: LGA, national policy, place-shaping

The Local Government Association has published Closer to people and places: a new vision for local government.

There is a strong partnership element to the proposals - including:

• enhancing councils 'place-making' role; councils forming strong partnerships
  across the public private and voluntary sector and working with local people and partners to deliver the vision for their area;
• joining together the the totality of public services in the area and re-designing services around the user.

...snip...

Perhaps the greatest potential for better public service outcomes, better public access and increased efficiency can come from local councils steering and leading in their area. We propose:

• a next generation of Local Area Agreements, as a 'contract' between the local public service delivery partners and their community, led by the council and deploying the totality of public resource for the area;
• a 'duty to co-operate' placed on all partners of the Local Area Agreement executive;
• local government and central government agreeing some thrity national outcomes that local councils take responsibility to deliver with their partners in the LAA. In return, the freedom for targets to be drawn locally by councils and their partners in the LAA, instead of the restrictive plethora of central targets and regulation.

Alongside this report, there are factsheets setting out key messages and proposals in five areas

• Local Area Agreements - contracts to deliver for local people;
• giving people power - a new relationship with local councillors and local services;
• postcode choice - high-quality services tailored to the area;
• made to measure local services - a new performance and accountability framework;
• going for growth - realising the economic potential of our towns, counties and cities.

Alongside the interim Lyons report, this provides a strong message about the role of local government together with partners.

In many ways, this isn't a new model at all, but a return to the role local government had earlier in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And it's a model that's used in many other countries - including the US (where I'm from).

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Quick hit: Partnerships for older people's health

Topics: public health, older people

The Department of Health has published a paper summarising research using pilots to assess some of the most difficult issues around caring for older people and supporting their health and independence. Looks at some innovative approaches, such as "telecare".

Partnerships for Older People Projects: Making the Shift to Prevention (link to a pdf on the DoH site)

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Perils of partnership

I've been involved in the PMMI project - focusing on performance management mostly in single organisations - for almost three years. This is project is carried out in partnership by the IDeA and the Audit Commission. This partnership has been very productive and I've really enjoyed working on it.

Of course this partnership, given the number of people involved on a day-to-day basis, is in many ways very small beer compared to a local strategic partnerships or a community safety partnership. But we have some of the same issues that every partnership has. Even though we're a small close-knit team, we still have the issues of getting two organisations with national profile to come together to achieve a single purpose.

At the beginning of our working relationship, we had the usual issues about learning each others' working style and finding agreement on procedures. Little things could take a while to agree - document control, publication approval processes, etc. It didn't hurt that I used to be employed by the Audit Commission and so had a pretty good idea of the organisational culture and dynamics. Over time these issues became not so much less important, but less apparent, and we could get down to the business at hand without much procedural discussion. Personal relationships in this partnership have been good, too. I'd say that the pattern of productivity described in this fantastic diagram in the comprehensive Suffolk Partnership Evaluation Toolkit pretty much describes how we got on...

But as the partnership winds down and we complete our final products, more people are getting involved, communications, publications, senior management, etc. all the kind of people who need to be involved in the exit strategy.

Now I can see that within the active PMMI team, we've developed our own culture - and as we interact with new people - we have to reiterate the understandings that we've reached within the parternership. We have to recommunicate how the PMMI way does support our separate corporate goals even if we're doing things slightly differently than we'd do things if this was a project run by either single organisation. No one is acting inappropriately, no one in either organisation is deliberately standing in the way - in fact the opposite, everyone is really supportive. But they're being supportive in the way that it's done in each separate organisation. And sometimes that can lead to misunderstandings. So I wonder if the diagram above needs a winding down, with dips below the line on productivity during the exit stage, too.

I'll admit this partnership working thing, it can be frustrating. But I know we've got something good here, something that neither the Audit Commission or the IDeA could have done as effectively on their own. And we're finally going to print on the 2nd editions of our summary guides to performance management - one for managers and one for councillors.

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Transforming services through partnership

The Beacons scheme highlights and shares good practice throughout local government (and increasingly) with partners.

This year one of the themes is transforming the delivery of services through partnerships. There will be a learning event to share the lessons in Manchester on 27 June. Find out more about this and the other learning exchanges or book online.

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Quick hits - dancing and crime

Topics: neighbourhoods, community safety, public health, older people

The Audit Commission has published Neighbourhood crime and anti-social behaviour: Making places safer through improved local working

This report considers how local agencies responsible for community safety can work better together and with local people to make neighbourhoods safer and improve the perception of public safety. These local agencies include the police, local government, the fire authorities and, in England, primary care trusts, or, in Wales, local health boards.

And...a partnership between nurse practioners and a national dance company has won an award for improving the health of older people in an innovative way.

The project is a weekly, relaxed session aimed at the over 50s, offering dance and movement, trips out, health information and guest speakers. Previous to this project, there had been little opportunity for older residents to socialise, and they often remained housebound.

Not only is it a fantastic way to keep fit, but it's hard to feel down when you're dancing. Maybe I should follow their lead...

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A partnership by any other name?

Topics: partnership structures, LSPs, LPSBs

Blogging has been a little light this week, I've been on the road. Yesterday I was in Leeds at a policy and performance networking event for the Yorkshire and Humberside. My slot was talking about the PMMI project and some of the products that we've developed recently, specifically public involvement in performance management and prioritisation.

Most of it seemed to go down pretty well (no rotten fruit was tossed at me) but some people thought we needed a zingier title than public engagement in PM. I definitely get their point. Any ideas?

The other speaker on the bill was Philip Hume, Head of Policy at Kirklees. He talked about their approach to restructuring their local strategic partnership (LSP) into four themed Local Public Service Boards (LSPBs) which they say has helped improve partnership governance and accountability. This also helps them bring more people and the right people to the table for each theme. For example, a voluntary sector agency might not be a big enough strategic player to sit on an area-wide partnership executive, but is exactly the right agency to sit on a public service board looking to improve outcomes for children and young people.

Kirklees is using IT supported performance monitoring system called PERFORM. All of the partners have agreed to use this system. Soon, partners will be able to input data directly into the system and pull of their own reports. Others in the room discussed some of the difficulties they were having with incompatibility of systems, that is the council had procured one software package and partners (the PCT, Police) had bought a different package. They were recommending that if you're thinking about buying a package, it's probably worth having a word with partners to see if they're interested, too.

I was also very interested to hear about their review of partnership working in general at Kirklees. One of their conclusions was that they had a lot of things that involved collaborative working or networking, or were perhaps multi-agency working groups, but which weren't partnerships, per se. It may seem a little arbitrary to say these things aren't partnerships, but having this definition means that councillors are clearer about which bits of collaborative working need to have political oversight ( the partnerships) and which don't - the networks or working groups where decisions aren't made at nearly the same level.


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England expects...

Topics: celebrity gossip, football, footballers' wives

Ok, I know that this blog is supposed to be about public sector partnerships and local government and all that...but what's the point of having a blog if you can't throw in a little England football and celebrity gossip from time to time.

But the shock selection of young Theo Walcott, Arsenal striker, to the England squad does in fact have a local government link. His young girlfriend's father is a councillor in Southampton - not only that, but he's the mayor-elect of the seaside town.

The father of Mel Slade, councillor John Slade, is to be the centre of
attention at Southampton City Council's mayor-making ceremony on Wednesday.

But the 17-year-old will not be attending the civic function at Southampton Guildhall as she is jetting off to Portugal to acccompany Walcott during a week of light training ahead of the World Cup.

Hmm... England expects every gal to do her duty...but what's the higher calling here? It seems Councillor Slade is pretty clear on the matter:

Mr Slade said: "I am disappointed but at the moment the pressure is on her. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event for me but it is also a once-in-a-lifetime event for her as well, it is a wonderful experience for her.

"Mayor-making is a relatively minor event compared to training for the World Cup. "

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Partnership evaluation toolkits

Topics: performance management, project management, partnerships

Part of my role is just to be at the end of the phone or email account, waiting for your calls and letters to roll in. Today, someone requested information about partnership evaluation toolkits.

I did a quick Google search - and looked at the resources on the collaborative PM Partner site and I've added some new things, the LSP toolkit from renewal.net and the Suffolk Partnership Evaluation toolkit to the page called Assessing your partnership

Is anyone else aware of anything that has helped them? Are you developing a tool within your partnership to help you assess whether your partnership is on track?

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Sustainable management

Topics: partnerships, performance management, sustainable development

There's a new resource on integrating sustainable development and performance management on IDeA Knowledge today. It includes references to mainstreaming and managing sustainable development within partnerships.

This paper, developed by Forum for the Future’s Local Authority Partnership Network, is aimed at performance managers and sustainable development officers working in local government. It sets out to form a basis of discussion and generate ideas on how the two areas can work together to deliver more sustainable outcomes.

Integrating Sustainable Development into Performance Management (PDF, 15 pages, 239KB)


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New on Knowledge - 8 May

Lots of good stuff about partnerships this week on IDeA Knowledge:

1. Enagaging with the Voluntary and Community Sector

As well as explaining what the VCS is, it also clarifies its relationship with local government, and expands on three key roles that it plays: building social capital, delivering services and engaging communities.

As a toolikit for both councillors and officers, it's a great start. But if you have stories to share about working successfully with the VCS, the Knowledge team (knowledge@idea.gov.uk) would be glad to hear about it (and so would I!)

2. There's now a complete list of the 66 Round Two Local Area Agreements which is part of the LAA resource on Knowledge.

3. Signposts for safeguarding children

'Signposts' – is a guide for elected members in local authorities and non-executive children’s leads in the heath service, schools and voluntary and community sectors

In support of the legislation and guidance, the IDeA and NSPCC have developed an interactive safeguarding development tool – 'Signposts' – to support elected members and non-executives, in the NHS and other parts of the children's sector, in pursuing their statutory responsibilities to ensure the safety of all children and young people in their locality.

It also includes a jargon Buster (PDF, 20 pages, 985KB) which is always useful.

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Advice for new councillors

Topics: partnerships, councillors

After the recent local elections, there are plenty of new councillors who are new to local government. Most of them will already have been deeply involved in the life of their local communities, some of them with partnerships (like Safer Neighbourhoods). To others, partnership working will be a relatively new thing. To help new councillors (and old) the IDeA has updated A Councillor's Guide 2006/07


Among other things, it covers the councillor's perspective on partnerships, community leadership and community cohesion.

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local elections - council control

If you're a little too in to watching election coverage (like I am) you'll have probably missed John Snow and his amazing swingometer during the local elections last week.

But with this nifty interactive map of council control, you can play the role yourself.

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National prosperity, local choice

Topics: partnership, policy, local government

The Lyons inquiry published interim findings today: National prosperity, local choice and civic engagement: a new partnership between central and local government for the 21st century. You can find the full text and executive summary here on the inquiry's own website.

Sir Michael Lyons was originally charged by HM Treasury to look at the way local government is financed, but the his remit has widened - looking at some of the fundamental functions of local government.

I think the interim report is quite positive about the role, importance and future of local government. From the inquiry site:

In his report Sir Michael argues for a system of local government for the 21st century that can manage increasing pressures on public expenditure, increase satisfaction and build more prosperous communities. Greater local choice, not more central control, is needed to achieve this.

But there are, of course, challenges ahead:

In addition he challenges local government to further raise its game, building on recent improvements, to tackle the challenges of promoting effective local choice and energetic 'place-shaping'. This requires stronger leadership, closer engagement with local residents, effective partnership working with other services and the business community, and a consistent commitment to efficiency and cost effectiveness.

He also raises issues about partnership - including (from the executive summary):

Local authorities already have substantial powers to undertake place-shaping, including the power of well-being. However, there are extra powers which could support effective place-shaping and convening:

• local authorities should have greater influence over policies that have an impact on local economic development, including transport and skills;
• local government's ability to influence partners, joining-up and tailoring services to local needs, could be strengthened and local government's lead role in convening partners formally recognised. A statutory duty on other local agencies to cooperate with local authorities should be introduced.
  

Within the IDeA, my policy unit colleague Julia Bennett is leading our work on the Lyons Inquiry - so stay tuned for further Lyons inquiry developments. The thinking here will impact not just councils but partners and the way people interact with local government and other public service providers.

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au revoir

After last week's local elections, there have been some ministerial reshufflings.

David Miliband, the now ex-minister for local government, has moved on to Defra and his blog has, too - it should now be at:

http://www.davidmiliband.defra.gov.uk

I hope the new minister, Ruth Kelly, picks up blogging on local government and community issues where Mr Miliband left off on the DETR, DTLR, ODPM DCLG site.

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productive partnerships - is it something in the water?

Topics: partnership development, rural, children and young people, skills and capacity

Yesterday I was in the spa town of Buxton - the sun was shining, the flowers blooming, the Peak District lambs were gambolling. However, I was in a windowless auditorium.

But it was worth it. I spent the afternoon at a learning event for the Peak DistrictPerformance Improvement Partnership (PIP).

PIP activites are centred around a programme of projects that received funding through the ODPM's Capacity Building Fund. Unusually, the Peak District National Park Authority, rather than a council, is the coordinating agency - other partners were Derbyshire County Council, Derbyshire Dales District Council, High Peak Borough Council, Staffordshire Moorlands DC and the Lake District NPA.

As partners, they used the CBF to develop approaches to building leadership and management skills and organisational learning and capacity. Their approach seemed to be focused on learning by doing - though they have supported this learning with training and formal and informal networking.

Some of their projects would be of particular interest to rural authorities, others - some of which focused on improving community engagement would be of interest to any public sector bodies. Especially interesting was some of their work engaging young people through youth forums and in schools. In response to the usual youthful cry of "there's nothing to do", young people in the area are setting up a website, with reviews of activities and a 'what's on' feature that will be available this summer. (I, too, was a teenager in a rural area. There is little to do, but you can make your own fun.)

There was also an interesting project which introduced looked after children to the park, countryside skills and rock climbing. Pictured Park Ranger Andy McGraw explains how the programme worked at yesterday's learning event.

Jim Dixon, the Chief Executive of Peak District NPA described some of the benefits as:

• share learning
• outcome based partnership
• maximising effectiveness of democracy
• the chance to innovate
• developing a learning approach
• and building the trust and confidence among partnes that they can 'deliver together' through future challenges.

Over the next few months, Programme Manager Nic Hutchins will be drawing out some of the broader lessons from their work and we hope to share that here and elsewhere. In the meantime, she contributed to the online conference on partnership governance and performance last Autumn and the conference report is on IDeA Knowledge. There is a also a publication about partnership working in the region Derbyshire: An Excellent model of partnership working - A case study (link to a pdf) on the Local Government East Midlands website.

By the way, there are PM case studies on both Derbyshire County Council and Derbyshire Dales DC as part of the Performance Management, Measurement and Information project.

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quick hit - PFI report from HM Treasury

Topics: reports, PFI, procurement, private sector

The Treasury has published a document on private finance initiatives called PFI: Strengthening long-term partnerships (link to a pdf file). It sets out government's ongoing committment to PFIs and includes a chapter on improving operational performance and flexibility in private finance initiatives.

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New on Knowledge

Topics: health, case studies, partnerships

What's new on IDeA Knowledge?

A year of healthy living - features case studies month by month focusing on healthier communities:

Inspired by the four Beacon Councils for healthy communities, the calendar also includes bright ideas gathered by the Centre for Public Scrutiny and drawn from initiatives such as Shared Priorities and Communities for Health. It shows how small changes enacted across a wide range of public services can make a big difference in health outcomes.

May's healthy living stories include several partnership successes:

Brighton and Hove's Active for Life programme:
With the clear aim of getting more people, more active, more often, Brighton and Hove City Council and Brighton and Hove City Teaching Primary Care Trust came together to create ‘Active For Life’.

Bootle L2Ozone case study (PDF, 5 pages, 43KB) (PDF, 5 pages, 116KB) The Bootle L2Ozone, a virtual health and wellbeing ‘zone’, brings together a group of voluntary, health, community and statutory service providers in Bootle. It has revolutionised the way people receive and engage in health and community services bringing together a range of services and providing the right community marketing.


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Holding each other to account

Topics: accountability, performance

I mentioned the other day that I was at an event. One of the interesting things I picked up was the idea of Kipling's friends. What are Kipling's friends? Well, they're not the juicy sultanas that make his cakes so exceedingly good. It's a line from one Rudyard Kipling's poems:

"I keep six honest serving men: They taught me all I knew: Their names are
What and Why and When and How and Where and Who”

Pete Franklin from Bristol City Council, uses Kipling's friends to help scrutiny councillors structure their questions about performance. It's simply a prompt, but a useful one - especially for new councillors in strengthening accountability within the council.

I shared this in the PMMI discussion forum and got some useful tips, here's what I came up with:

Why is performance below target?
-Are you sure?
-Is there any other reason?
Is this indicator an appropriate measure of performance?
-What else should we know?
What are the implications of not meeting this target?
-Will this affect our corporate priorities.
-Will it affect our partners?
-Is there an impact on other targets?
-Is there an impact on equalities, sustainability or efficiency?
What performance do you predict for the next month/quarter?
-How good was your forecast last time?
-Have you identified all the risks to achievement?
How will performance be improved?
-Will that fix it?
-When will it be achieved?
Who is responsible for improving performance?
-Can other services or teams contribute to improvement?
What happens if performance doesn't improve?
-Will additional funding/ resources be needed? Can you move them from elsewhere?
-How will underperformance be addressed?
What decision do you need us to take?
-What do we need to know to make a decision?
-What are the risks in the assumptions we might make?

But it got me to thinking about whether there are any similar tools for supporting accountability within partnerships and between partners. Questioning styles in partnerships will no doubt be different. Has anyone come up with something that's helpful?


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