Public services news round-up: June 2018

This month we’ve got new reports on commissioning and partnership working, along with more in the series of Health and Wellbeing Alliance webinars and fantastic free conference on social care, brought to you by the LGA and the Public Services Transformation Academy.

Local infrastructure challenging the commissioning status quo

Newcastle CVS have published a thought piece about public sector contracts and the potential negative impacts for some voluntary sector organisations that prioritise contracts as part of their income generation strategy, with the intention of prompting discussion and debate. On a similar note, the CEO of Support Staffordshire has blogged about the process that many frontline charities have found themselves in, whereby the services they have developed and always provided have started to by competitively commissioned. But help is at hand, in the form of an ESRC-funded guide from Durham University for public sector organisations on how to work effectively with the voluntary sector.

Building relationships with health bodies

Building Health Partnerships: Self Care is a programme that ran in eight STPs over 12 months from July 2017, with the aim of building relationships between STPs, citizens and the voluntary sector and facilitates joint action that improves health and care priorities. IVAR have launched a report demonstrating the programme’s impact and progress towards achieving systemic change between the voluntary sector and public health bodies over the last year.

In related news, the Institute for Fiscal studies have released an analysis of the NHS’s ‘70^th Birthday Present’ (the announced £20bn funding package), and a tool that lets you work out where you’d make the money need up from, in the context of the government’s unwillingness to state where the funding will come from.

Events

• Webinar: Social Prescribing update, 11 July, 10.00–11.00 – hear more from the NHS England team who work on social prescribing, the developments in the programme over the recent year and hear about the aspirations for the future.  Register your interest and access details to log on by e-mailing voluntarypartnerships@nhs.net with ‘social prescribing webinar’ in the subject header.
• Webinar: How can the voluntary sector help reduce NHS winter pressures? 19 July, 12.00–13.00 – Join the Health and Wellbeing Alliance and NHS England to hear about some fantastic work by the British Red Cross, Citizens Advice and Race Equality Foundation that has helped to reduce winter pressures and resulted in better standards of living, fewer avoidable winter deaths and made savings for health and care services. Participants will be introduced to toolkits, case studies and resources which offer useful insights on effective ways of working. Register for the webinar.
• FREE LGA/PSTA Social Care Conference, 3 October – the conference will bring together health and social care commissioners and providers from across the public, private and voluntary sectors to have rich conversations about working better together in these challenging times. The day will include a panel of health and social care commissioners and providers sharing their thoughts on how to tackle the challenges, and case studies on a health and care partnership for transformation, on local area co-ordination, asset-based social care, harnessing communities and co-production, amongst other themes. Book your place.