Public services round-up: August 2018

Welcome back from the summer holiday period – and straight to your favourite dose of public services news.

Civil society strategy

The recently published civil society strategy had a lot to say on public services issues, which Rebecca covered in her blog. Our head of policy Elizabeth’s take on the whole document is that this may be a plan, but doesn’t quite amount to a strategy. Readers of this round-up may also be interested in our funding and infrastructure summaries. You can also find out about what the Strategy had to say on campaigning, regulation, impact and digital.

In related news, keep an eye out over the next week for the launch of the government’s consultation on the next Open Government National Action Plan. This will detail the government’s proposed commitments to open government over the next two years.

NHS news

There’s a great deal of movement in the health world at the moment.

• The NHS is in the process of consulting on its ten-year Long Term Plan. We’d encourage our members to feed in directly, or get in touch with us or another member of the Health and Wellbeing Alliance, by 30 September. Alternatively, you can attend one of the regional events we’re running with NHS England and local partners:
  • 12th September, 1:30-4pm, Manchester
  • 17th September, 10-1pm, Bradford – Email soo@cabad.org.uk with name, organisation, district you work in, dietary and/or access needs.
  • 20th September, 11-1pm, Peterborough – Email christina.alexander@pcvs.org.uk
  • 21st September, 10-1pm, Brighton
• Homeless Link and the Win/Win Alliance are leading a PHE project on inclusive workplaces for everyone. The project will produce resources to help employers embed good practice approaches. They’re looking for success stories of national and local employment support initiatives, and for employers to join an initiative to embed good practices. More information is available here, or you can contact Philipa Bragman of CHANGE by 19 October.
• NHS England will be awarding grants of up to £2,500 to a number of projects that showcase good practice around patient and citizen involvement in healthcare. The deadline for applying is 20 September.
• We’ll be attending the NHS Health and Care Innovation Expo in Manchester this week as members of the health and Wellbeing Alliance. I’ll be tweeting updates as we go. If you’re at the Expo and fancy a chat about anything Alliance/public services/NCVO policy related drop me a direct message or an email.

European Social Fund – what next?

The co-convened NCVO/ERSA European Social Fund working group is gathering evidence to inform our cross-sector response to the forthcoming UK Shared Prosperity Fund consultation. We are looking for case studies (of projects and individuals), data and research that highlights, in particular, how ESF projects positively impact:

• health and wellbeing
• the economic agenda, eg by reducing strain on Jobcentre Plus and other services
• those furthest from employment opportunities, furthering the equalities agenda.

We are also looking for case studies, data and research from ESF projects and beyond that provide positive demonstrations of:

• multi-agency and/or multi-sector partnerships – identifying need, programme design and delivery
• programmes that effectively foster innovation
• an ideal mix of long-term and short-term funding.

If you’d like to feed in, please drop a line to my colleague James by COP 10 October.

Enabling Social Action – get your local authority involved

The two year Enabling Social Action (ESA) programme is a partnership between DCMS and the universities of Sheffield and Hull. It aims to support local authority commissioners to co-design, co-produce and co-deliver services with local people, service users, and civil society organisations, and to embed social action in their routine working.

As part of the programme, four ESA partnerships will be supported over a 12-month period from January 2019–January 2020. The partnerships will help local authorities and their partners to:

• understand and improve co-production
• look at the potential to grow and sustain a social action initiative
• design a suite of evidence to show the impact of the initiative.

If you think your area would benefit from the programme, have a read of the application details. Consider speaking with your local authority about involvement – the deadline is 12 October 2018.