Local Area Strategies
Local authorities have a key role as strategic leaders, bringing together local partners to focus on the needs of citizens and service users.
Many current government initiatives encourage partnership working, including ‘Strong and Prosperous Communities’, the local government white paper 2006, the Department for Children, Schools and Families’ ‘Every Child Matters’ initiatives, and the Department for Health’s ‘Our Health, Our Care, Our Say’ and ‘Putting People First’.
The co-ordination of services and wider support around the citizen has shown significant progress over recent years with many examples of strategic plans, team structures and resources being organised between local partners. The Government’s ambition to transform public services to match the needs of modern society highlights that further progress is required.
Integrated working and integrated workforce strategies offer the potential for better service outcomes, greater efficiency and improved customer satisfaction. Integrated workforce strategies are about planning and aligning the workforce across the boundaries of a partnership so that improvements in services can be achieved.
Within a range of support work for authorities in the North West, the learning from both national projects and local experience has been brought together in two recent events.
The IDeA carried out a national project ‘Strengthening Partnership Working – joining up workforce strategies’. This involved six different local partnerships and covers Children’s Services and Adult Social Care. The service areas were chosen because they are ones where there has been the most significant focus by councils and their partners on integrated working. The interim report was published in June 2008 and a national conference was hosted jointly with North West Employers in Manchester in November.
Click here for the presentations and materials from the event.
As the event was quickly oversubscribed, an additional event for North West authorities was held on 9 December 2008. This event supplemented the learning from the national project with some further examples of how North West local authorities and their partners are working together in innovative ways to improve public services and provide wider community benefits. Click the links below for the presentations from the day.
Halton BCIDeALancashire CCLiverpool CityNWIEP