Redesigning the Essex public sector

While many people’s attention has been focused on George Osborne’s Budget this week, we’ve been busy ensuring that the Whole Essex Community Budget programme continues to move forward at pace. Last week I said I was hoping to share with you details of the potential projects that partners think a Community Budget could help deliver.

There are a wide range of ambitious projects here that will be honed over the coming weeks into tighter, more focused projects capable of proving the Community Budget concept as a mechanism for wider, system-level, public sector reform.

Those that finally develop into full business cases must be capable of delivering savings whilst improving the experience for our citizens, service users, patients and residents. Not everything on this list will make it to that stage, but for now we will be investigating the following key areas of activity:

Partners involved in the Health and Wellbeing workstream have scoped projects that would:

• support people to live in their community - delivering a personalised and sustainable approach that can reduce system costs
• establish an integrated customer pathway for people with dementia - support more individuals with dementia to live within their communities, with access to the right services when needed.
• establish an all-age disability pathway – develop an all age approach to the commissioning of services for disabled residents that promotes employment, independence and early intervention.
• expand the Right to Control offer for disabled people - integrating support for disabled people, encouraging an approach that promotes personalisation and social inclusion.
• develop the concept of ‘homes for life’ – helping residents remain part of their community, thereby improving individuals’ quality of life, whilst  reducing demands on health and social care services and shifting spend to activities that reduce future costs.

Partners involved in the Economic Opportunity workstream are currently assessing projects that would:

• create an Essex skills system – helping individuals prepare for and access work opportunities through seamless end to end education and skills provision.
• define an infrastructure strategy – help businesses to grow and create jobs for local people by creating the conditions to attract investment, unlock growth, sustain economic growth and offer a predictable infrastructure support to the County’s economic success.
• develop an integrated Essex transport system –helping communities access jobs and public services and supporting businesses by ensuring a predictable, reliable transport system in Essex.

Partners involved in the Community Safety workstream have proposed projects that would:

• reduce reoffending – strengthening support of offender management services, reducing reoffending in the county’s most prolific wards , and tackling ‘revolving door’ offenders whilst considering new ways to fund offender management services.
• reduce anti-social behaviour – bringing together councils, landlords and police to develop a common response to dealing with anti-social behaviour. 
• reduce domestic abuse - assessing the effectiveness of the current system and developing an integrated inter-agency approach
• reduce acquisitive crime –expanding this police-led activity into a wider community-focused intervention programme.

Finally, Partners involved in the Families with Complex Needs workstream are looking at three projects that would:

• develop Family Budgets - enabling families to commission services to their specific needs through the use of a family budgets  
• create an integrated resource allocation system – with a focus will on actions rather than processes
• improve assessment and referral – making the process simplified, accessible and integrated and better able to help families plan for themselves, with support when required

On top of this we are identifying the interdependencies, cross-cutting issues and commonalities between projects across the workstream themes, both ensuring a consistent approach and understanding the implications for ‘system enablers’ such as financial modelling and cost-benefit analysis, data sharing, workforce issues and asset management. These are vital if we are to maximise the benefits and sustainability of the programme beyond the October deadline.

As I’m sure you can appreciate, a lot of work has already been undertaken by our local partners and colleagues from Whitehall, and there is a lot more to do. If you feel able to support this work in any way, the programme team would love to hear from you. Please contact us at info@essexpartnership.org.