Collated Notes from Individual Workshop Tables at 14 June VCS Strategy Event

Collated notes from individual workshop tables at 14 June VCS strategy event

Developing an action plan for:

·  Working together

·  Information sharing / intelligence

o  What are the barriers to working together and information sharing/intelligence?

o  What do we want to achieve by working together and sharing/information intelligence?

o  What are the practical actions we can take to make this happen?

Key action from each group:

·  Review communication channels between the statutory and voluntary sector to see what’s working.

·  Form collaborative partnerships to find the common goal.

·  Come up with a mechanism for sharing information – along the lines of Local Care Networks and VCS hubs.

·  Ensure information is high quality and timely.

·  Re-focus on long term outcomes – be clear and commit to getting away from the short term.

·  Ensure early involvement of residents and the VCS in planning of services.

Table A:

1. Barriers

·  Lack of knowledge understanding/knowledge about services, lack of trust, funding flexibility/measure outcomes effectively

·  Empowerment of residents to access vol sector services

·  Funding too short for organisations to build trust with residents and to encourage them to access them

·  New services take time to establish

·  Everyone needs to understand everyone’s constraints across the sector

·  BAME communities find it hard to know where to access healthcare

2. Achieve

·  Commissioners to communicate future plans and visions early, plan together for early engagement

·  Explore appetite for risk for statutory partners in terms of longer funding with greater flexibility

·  Tap into what community is already doing for its own purposes so don’t distort it

·  Develop social prescribing models a/c Southwark a/c different client groups

·  More focus on co-design knowing this takes more time leading to greater importance in planning

·  Achieve – share learning and promote best practice

·  Share understanding of terms eg co production and co design and then develop approach

·  Better outcomes for Southwark residents, ensuring residents know what services are available and actual access

3. Action

·  Flexible 2 year funding streams with built in testing and developing approach throughout funding period

·  Pot of funding and so what you are already doing well without restrictions (??)

·  Effective co design/ co production allowing time to do this

·  Planning and developing together earlier

Table B

1. Barriers

·  Not knowing what information/intelligence is there/Not knowing what groups/org are out there and what they are already doing – what it the potential to be realised?

·  Various directories available – how resourced ?

·  Sharing info with “competitor” orgs (competition, trust)

·  “Google” first point. Southwark council some

·  Employment/learning opps for people with LD . Brokerage most up to date broad knowledge ??

·  Time/resource needed to create/develop/maintain partnerships/relationships (particularly smaller VCS orgs)

·  Challenging to measure impact – no common way

·  Consistency of relationship – who ? move on

·  Volunteer recruit/retain – sustain. The right people, need to feel valued

·  Data sharing agreements

·  Uncertainty of outcomes/future – a sense of something achievable together

·  Common areas of interest/work/approach

·  DBS system / bureaucracy

2. Achieve

·  The true potential of working together for out residents – individuals + community

·  Share – functions, services, information, relationships, resources

·  New thinking + new way of working to achieve common goals

3. Actions

·  Share back office functions

·  MASH model

·  Central database of vol opps

·  Comm strategy to promote volunteering

·  Common goals (function) v form

·  Quality champions – voice for users eg Choice Support

·  Find the sweet spot – venn diagram overlap with CCG.VCS + LA . “working towards the collaborative advantage of bringing the partners together”

Table C

1. Barriers

·  Lack of resources

·  Need to understand the benefit of working together

·  Lack of knowledge – not knowing what’s out there

·  Lack of trust and understanding/competitiveness

·  Different organisational cultures/vision

·  Organisations having different policies/requirements wish present a barrier to working together

·  Different organisations work at different paces – stat. sector tends to be slower

·  Short-term nature of funding/projects which means people might question value of engaging with something

·  Organisations e.g CCGs changing constantly

2. Achieve

·  Greater influence – sharing data, policy, services, stronger voice

·  Better outcomes – reaching more people, sharing resources/good prac., for client group, picking up trends/development and their impact

·  Increasing profile of what is happening

·  Better working practices – shared resources/economies of scale

·  Increasing engagement and ownership of what is being delivered by vol. sector – across stat. Sector too

·  If we want to address common problems need to:

-  Identify what is the problem – what may be a problem for some, may not be for others.

-  Develop mechanisms to identify common problems.

3. Actions

·  Audit of vol.sector organisations with an idea of the resources they have access to

·  Use of community Southwark’s database of vol.orgs

·  Getting people together within specific sectors (as well as cross-sector) to share info e.g. Southwark legal Advice Network

·  Review current comm. channels between stat. sector and vol. sector – find out what’s working and isn’t – what is most appropriate means of communication

·  Incentivise smaller groups to attend meetings, etc.

Table D

1.  Barriers

·  Value of outreach

·  Some stakeholders not around the table/community voice not represented

·  Community groups will address own needs by being together

2.  Achieve

·  Families perspectives need to be mapped plus younger TRA not usual suspects

·  Wider participator “Uni” Russell Groups access for disadvantaged

·  Examples of good practice Melbourne Grove GP PPG. Good health outcome

·  No reinventing the wheel utilise past research

·  Do we know what we are trying to achieve?

·  What has happened to previous consultations on community expectations

·  Common goals

·  Truly equal partners

·  Equal financial partnerships

·  Time bound using creativity and new ways of working

3.  Action

·  Trusting the knowledge of VCS providers to understand their service users and their needs – this can provide some resident insight

·  Need clear objectives for the strategy

·  Shared common understanding or needs

·  Structured mechanism to share info

·  Value or networks – need to utilise

·  Local care networks as mechanism

·  VCS Hubs linked to GPs e.g Age Concern

·  Quality and timeless of information provided

·  Value of bringing additional support services to the places people are already meeting in/using

·  Variety of solutions.

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