Retransforming Rehabilitation
The government has announced that the troubled Transforming Rehabilitation contracts will be ended two years early in 2020, to allow for their replacement by a new contracting system that hopes to address the many problems encountered by service users and providers under the current approach. The work of Clinks and others across the justice sector have no doubt played an important role in consistently highlighting and evidencing the extent of these problems, and it will be important to ensure the voluntary sector is engaged in the design process to avoid them being repeated. Russell Webster has a concise summary of the issues facing those redesigning the system.
Meanwhile, in the social care world, the Local Government Association have preempted the long delayed green paper by publishing their own.
Competitive behaviours
A Better Way (hosted by Civil Exchange) have released a fascinating set of essays and case studies about how communities and the voluntary sector could work better. One of particular salience to those with an interest in public services will be Shelter CEO Polly Neate’s piece looking at how large and small charities must avoid damaging their beneficiaries or causes in their approaches to bidding for public service delivery – you can catch a summary on Civil Society.
Now the SIBs don’t work
The Policy Innovation Research Unit at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine has released a report looking at the effectiveness of social impact bond models in health and social care, concluding that they did not demonstrate better outcomes for service users. You can read Karl’s Twitter thread for a summary of the report’s main findings.
NHS Health and Care Innovation Expo 2018
This year’s NHS Expo 2018 will run for two days on 5 and 6 September 2018 at Manchester Central, and is the biggest NHS-led event in the calendar. It’s a great way of keeping up with the rapidly changing world of health transformation, and charities are able to get a reduced delegate rate.
In related news, there’s an upcoming NHS webinar on securing senior buy-in for volunteering programmes in health contexts, and how to overcome risk and strategic challenges – you can register here – and NHSE is also running a consultation on Evidence Based Interventions that may be of interest to charities working in the social prescribing sphere.
Michael was our senior policy officer until January 2019, covering issues around charity tax and finance (including social investment) and the impact of the economy on the sector. 
