Agenda item

Chris Woodhouse, Strategic Partnerships Manager to present information on community and person-centred approaches. Presentation attached.

Chris Woodhouse, Strategic Partnerships Manager provided an update on Community and Person-Centred Approaches to the Board.

The approach is to have a focus around people and communities, in a way that links into the Let’s Do It Strategy and Neighbourhood Model.

Chris Woodhouse explained the principles and behaviours of the approach. The purpose is to look at how services engage with people and to deliver better outcomes in a way that is more effective and efficient.

The approach brings together the way that public services are organised and the way that services engage with communities, looking at people in their entirety of lives by overlapping services and coordinating support around individuals.

The Community Hubs can better link public services to communities and individuals but also recognise an individual may not always require support from a statutory service and can help support them in other ways. The insights generated from data from local communities can be used to inform services.

The LETS principles were explained, these bring together the different approaches to best understand the communities and neighbourhood.

Chris Woodhouse gave an overview of the Public Service Reform Steering Group. The purpose of the group is to ensure the co-ordination of public services, and co-ordinating the person and community centred approaches. The group discusses different opportunities and look at what is working well in a particular neighbourhood, with the benefits to grow the work across the borough and with wider regional colleagues.

• Councillor Simpson questioned what strength-based work has been done with the voluntary sector organisations.

Chris Woodhouse gave examples of work that has been done that involved community groups from across the borough. He explained that public service colleagues look at which voluntary services they work with, and which services need to be included. There is a section built into the service level agreement with the voluntary community faith alliance around health and care to have the conversations around LETS principles. At public service leadership meetings these discussions have taken place.

• Ruth Passman questioned how the requirement with the Primary Care Networks, to work through an inclusion health strategy, would link with the neighbourhood work.

Chris Woodhouse explained that the work would be carried out with services and communities across neighbourhoods focusing on addressing the root cause of inequalities and how to work collectively with public services, voluntary services and communities.

Ian Mello explained routes that demonstrate working with the voluntary sector include work that the Bury Inclusion Working Group is doing in understanding and listening to communities, and the elective mainstream work which has worked with the voluntary sector. Ian Mello feels that public services are working well across the system and are now seeing voluntary sector partners as equals. Ian Mello would like to see a map of where the work that is being done links together.

Chis Woodhouse discussed the work that the Internal Inclusion Working Group had done around community engagement and suggested that Team Bury and partnership meetings could broaden the scope of the group.

• Ruth Passman asked for further information about the Inclusion Working Group.

Chris Woodhouse agreed to discuss the Inclusion Working Group with Ruth Passman outside of this meeting.

It was agreed:

1.         Chris Woodhouse to meet with Ruth Passman to discuss the Inclusion Working Group.

2.         To receive further updates as required on work that the Inclusion Working Group are doing.