Community Commissioning Workshop 1: Shaping the Framework (repeat session), Thursday 18 January, 10am – 1pm, The Reach Community Hub – Capturing Workshop discussions

The tables below capture the output from the workshop session. The text in the tables is a direct representation of what was captured on post-it notes and posters (these have not been edited).The subheadings in the tables are taken from the posters (i.e. this is how attendees structured their responses to the discussion themes).

Table 1. Best Practice Discussion
What works well:
  • £
  • Nicer grants officer
  • Not PBR
  • Money to do work we couldn’t do otherwise
  • Flexible on service design post award
  • The flexibility allows us to deliver the programme
  • Longer funding periods
  • 2.5.3 year funding cycle. Any extra period beneficial
  • Potential advantage – payment for commissioned services as UNRESTRICTED funds
  • When council officers have good understanding of the community need and groups that provide a good service
  • Non-specific sector targets
  • So that you can be honest and transparent without the concern of being ‘penalised’
  • Having a stable link worker (monitoring officers) so there is scope to develop things organically
  • How does the detail taken be used for evaluation of impact, change, and strategy?
  • Room to have discussions and flexibility re how you reach outcomes (to change output if the environment/legislation/needs require changing)
  • Outcomes /impact should not be limited to financial input (for example in complex cases the financial impact may be small but actual benefit much larger) otherwise danger of cherry picking
  • A conversational approach – a relationship with officer monitoring (their understanding of programme is fundamental)
  • Positive: monitoring should not duplicate
  • Positive: how do we use the information we collect Positive: if organisation is performing can we reduce M&E
  • Positive: more outcomes focused
What does not work well:
  • Monitoring officer not involved
  • Compliance and audit – not environmentally friendly as paper heavy
  • Too much information being asked – is it necessary to have this detail?
  • Less onerous monitoring
  • Information organisations are asked to submit should inform main commissioning priorities – evidence of impact should be assessed across the programme in order to do this.
  • Negative: onerous reporting, duplication reporting
  • Negative: resourcing heavy
  • Negative: consistency of monitoring process

Table 2. Priorities for Community Commissioning
Need and associated evidence, and target groups
Groups:
  • 65+
  • Young people
  • People with mental health
Evidence base:
  • Quantitative data from users
  • Monitoring data and statistics
  • Need to have mapping of what is already happening to avoid duplication. Has there been any mapping?
Groups:
  • New and emerging communities
  • Young people
  • NEETs
  • Isolated groups
  • Working together – less targeted – don’t think about people defined by a characteristic, age etc – think of them as people – who are you? – identify – needs – opportunity to do something different – not just characteristic of specific need
  • Move away from traditional pots/silos – this will allow more creativity (ideas: older people have lunch in schools – all have lunch together; young children going to older peoples’ homes)
Needs:
  • Lots of special services – do we need them?
  • Volunteering (less likely to be socially isolated)
  • Think more creative about age
  • Linking people with opportunities
  • Community cohesion
  • Shoreditch – hipsters and local people (friction)
  • Secular vs faith groups
  • Environmental issues – recycling
  • Lots of building work – opportunities
  • Rate of change in the borough – coping with the change
  • Better understanding of change
  • Self-help – “helping you to help yourself”
  • Dependency culture – challenge, e.g. transport issue.
  • To build resilience
  • Mobility – 25%
  • Family
  • Transient population
  • Focus on young people and their families
  • Definition of age ranges – who is old people?
  • Housing – can’t afford to stay here (e.g. key workers) – ‘squeezed middle’
  • Isolation – loneliness
Evidence:
  • A lot of needs analysis – children and family plan, health and wellbeing plan, needs assessments
  • Lots of evidence available – but not pulled together
Current needs:
  • Social/youth opportunities – somewhere they feel they belong – youth clubs
  • Prevention of poverty – might be reduction in number of people having to go to foodbank!
  • Poverty – early intervention, ID – vulnerable people e
  • Skills and employment
  • Creating services that create jobs – apprenticeship schemes
How do we know/evidence?
  • Important to get clear indicators of evidence
  • What people say will help them (co-production means that we must recognise service users views on how to best address needs)
  • Face-to-face/case studies
  • Number of people at service/referrals
Particular groups:
  • People who would be left out otherwise
  • Working with people with additional needs/vulnerable people
  • Young people
  • Most vulnerable young people
Needs?
  • Isolation
  • Child poverty
  • Transient people
  • Improvement environment e.g. air pollution
  • Identifying and nurturing talent
  • Female inequality
  • Child abuse
  • Parallel lives
  • Health – physical, mental
  • Infant mortality
  • Social mixing
  • Youth unemployment
  • Low social mobility
  • Access to local employment
Who?
  • Specific sub-groups
  • Some people need more time
  • Access/transport
  • Localities?
  • People with disabilities
  • Post 16/18
  • Targeting multiple needs
  • Young people
  • Women
  • People from ethnic minorities
Evidence?
  • Local briefings, reports, research
  • Regional and national statistics
  • Talking to people
  • Unmet demand
  • Knowing the local area – people on the ground
  • Feedback from service users
Evidence and needs:
  • Match funding – can match/added value be recognised? Can MSG2 be used as a lever?
  • Families with complex needs – especially below social services thresholds
  • Support in PRUs
  • Need for service/intervention – increase participation in sport and physical activity
  • Social justice and citizenship – understanding and assertation of rights and responsibilities
  • Art, culture and fun
  • Only 20% of young people attend a club based as their school and only 10% join a community club
  • Gentrification – effects? Having shortage – social cleansing? Moves out of London?
  • Where is the uber analysis? – the council has a lot of the data!
  • Population movement move generally – affects outcome continuity
  • Early intervention in schools re youth violence
  • County lines knowledge
  • Youth violence
  • Gang exit
  • Stats- knife crime up! Street poverty up! Poverty up!
  • Should TH council fund services for people who have left the borough?
  • Poor community club structure in TH and lack of high quality opportunities
  • Tackling social inequality

What are the changes that Community Commissioning should focus on? (outcomes)
  • Tackling poverty and social welfare
  • Emergency services
  • Health and welling of workforce
  • Social justice
  • Counselling provision
  • Social mobility
  • Increased capacity
Outcomes:
  • Understanding and accepting others in their community – through learning
  • Increased conversations between different groups – bring people together
  • Value each other – beyond too fixed labels
  • Integration (people mixing) – accepted – feels part of the community – increased opportunity
  • More people understand that making connections is good for them – learning about themselves and others – curiosity – “we have a greater curiosity about the world”
  • Breakout Jargon and explain clearly
  • Focus on benefits
  • Simple process
  • Social isolation and identity
  • Identity – everyone in TH ‘knows their place in the world’
  • Develop their portfolio and achieve aspiration
  • “Able to be themselves in the world” and understand their own value”
  • Empowered and confidence and self-worth
  • Not doing it to them…. What are we working towards?
  • Not telling them what to do… - links with Arts programme – develop confidence etc
  • Information systems need to be joined up – ‘No front door’ – system issue
  • Accessibility to help with support
  • Public health etc
  • Working with the whole community
  • Community delivering change in the borough
Outcomes:
  • Youth involved in community groups and volunteering
  • Poverty
  • Build aspirations
  • Families can live sustainably financially
  • Reduced reliance on benefits
  • Well being activities, e.g. reduced isolation
  • Offering more resources to reduce poverty – e.g. better recycled clothes
Outcomes:
  • Training workshop to improve capacity
  • Capacity building and upskilling
  • Employment and skills training programme, more apprenticeship/vocational training
  • Have prevention measures as outcomes
  • Improving health and wellbeing of workforce
  • Commissioning grants/need to be more flexible which will help with people’s situations and what it can be used for
  • Expended to include those who work in the borough as they have issues and needs (e.g. health)
  • Stigma and discrimination
  • Improving access and quality of life skills and opportunities
  • Add value funding to existing projects as funding is limited
Outcomes:
  • Decent homes for everyone
  • Citizens understand their rights and responsibilities and act on them
  • People safe from violence and prosecution
  • Everyone has enough money to live well
  • Deliver coach education programme for local residents
  • More opportunities for young people age – all ages, all locations
  • Free up local facilities for local use
  • Review PFI contract with school facilities – most schools unusable after school hours
  • Review who is using your leisure centres
  • Reduced poverty
  • Reduction in repeat victimisation
  • Employment gained, wages improved
  • Gang exit
  • Reduced offending and reoffending
  • Increase in volunteering
  • Local people get skills and qualifications
  • Young people more informed re knife crime etc
  • Reduction in knife carrying
  • School attendance improved – positive PRU exits increase
  • People are able to prosper in TH – not needing to leave the borough
Change?
  • Increased cohesion/integration
  • People can participate at the level they want
  • Don’t ignore interface between community commissioned and core commissioned
  • Maintaining core activity
  • Increased range of options
  • Engaging people to realise their potential
  • Innovation shouldn’t be prime driver of funding

Table 3. Where do we need to build capacity to deliver Community Commissioning
  • Help with bid writing e.g. 1-2-1 help
  • Training on how to measure outcomes and what are they
  • Time built in for officers to make project visits, general point of contact
  • Series of workshop – application process, tendering
  • Partnership working – facilitated
  • THCVS sharing resources e.g. admin help, advice
  • Monitoring support – personalised to type of project
  • Skills audit
  • Accountability – i.e. safeguarding
  • Evaluation mechanism and report writing
  • Nurturing smaller organisations to grow
  • Bid writing
  • Offer to be use to use different council venues to deliver service as space limited
  • Opportunities for training and have rounds of training
  • Develop partnership capacity to enable capacity development through funding
  • Capacity building fund with flexible criteria
  • IT and social media training and capacity development
  • Pre-application stage
  • Flexible approach – can we delivery on a very specific element of the council strategy?
  • No cap on level of funding to encourage innovation/partnership working
  • Stick to simple clear processes, in plain English using easily accessible information
  • Design a model for lead/sub arrangements – agreed management.
  • Need a framework/parameters for match/horse trading
  • Allow to sub-contract elements?
  • What about competition? Cheapest best?
  • Fund central costs
  • Be transparent as soon as possible about whether price competition will be a factor – and what part it will play
  • 2 stage/information bidding process so good/bad idea weeded out
  • Address: cap on turnover, budget envelopes, ‘local’ organisations given priority
  • Helping grow umbrella groups
  • Understanding process/documentation/portal
  • Skills for managing application processes
  • Infrastructure support for smaller organisations
  • Coping with a in arrears regime – cash flow
  • Transparency in awarding contracts
  • ‘set-up’ costs
  • Extending capacity by levering in funding streams
  • A helpdesk if things go wrong (council?: CVS?)
  • Consortia/sub-contracting needs managing
  • Who are the main bidder? Facilitating partnerships
  • Timelines/resourcing partnership bids
  • Clarity of process (including criteria weighting)
Council/internal
  • Torturous procurement process – capacity to allow procurement presence – adding on the ground – advising role
  • Legal
  • Delays
  • Capacity issue around contract monitoring
  • Who is going to pay for this monitoring?
  • Presentation as part of the procurement process – help voluntary sector be able to pitch their ideas
Voluntary sector:
  • Understand the pressures that the council are under
  • Constructive and open process – leading to an innovative approach
  • Understanding of outcomes (i.e. different between outputs)
  • How to own applications – not consultants writing them!
  • Need to ensure they know what community commissioning is
  • *Smaller organisations to understand actual funding availability
  • Links to sustainability – maybe community commissioning is more difficult
  • Get members involved and educate them – take them on a journey
  • Focus beyond their word
  • How to evidence need
  • How to respond to a need
  • Clarity of language!
  • How do we measure outcomes?
  • Outcomes based frameworks