Community Budgets

Greater Manchester is one of 16 national pilots for a community budget.  A community budget is a mechanism to help public sector partners (local and national) to invest in an agreed set of outcomes. The initial focus for Government is around the theme of complex families (or rather families with complex needs).

 

This link takes you to the Communities and Local Government press release:

 

http://www.communities.gov.uk/news/corporate/1748111

 

This is an exciting opportunity for Greater Manchester to build on the work already started through the City Region pilots

 

Community budgets are critical to delivering the twin objectives of the Greater Manchester Strategy: driving economic growth and improving productivity of the labour market.

We want community budgets to act as an enabler to:

  • Develop joint investment models, founded on robust evidence, to help us to deliver innovative public sector reform and reduce community, family and individual dependency on public services
  • Utilise the investment model to promote service redesign which is focused on reducing community, family and individual demand and dependency on high cost public service interventions.
  • Provide an enabling framework for partners across a district or group of districts to come together as a partnership to deploy their resources to address a particular issue and share the benefits
  • Provide evidence for our submission before CSR  - to build confidence in GM's investment model of public sector savings
  • Inform our negotiations with central government to give greater flexibilities and enabling infrastructure
  • Help partners deliver better outcomes for lower costs

 The overall approach has been agreed and three projects (Transforming Justice, Salford and Manchester both of which are complex family projects) went live in April with a number of additional pipeline projects due to come on line over the coming months.

 The types of projects are wide ranging concentrating on finding new innovative ways of supporting some of the most vulnerable families and individuals across the Greater Manchester conurbation:

  •  Salford – pilot builds on the development of the Salford Life Chances pilot with a joint area management team, family intervention plus model and dedicated resources from key public services to target cohort.  Through integrated delivery on the ground using a single assessment framework and a joint action plan a comprehensive, effective and efficient package of support will then be put in place for chaotic families or those about to become chaotic.
  • Manchester – also builds on the Manchester Better Life Chances pilot delivering interventions for a families (including all adult households) across a spectrum of complexity – including FIP, Families First, a new Assertive Outreach approach and specific programmes such as parenting courses, debt advice, drug treatment.
  • GM Wide Transforming Justice - The Transforming Justice Programme is designed to deliver interventions and services at critical points of transition to deliver better outcomes.  It has been recognised that there are a number of contacts with the CJS where if different decisions were taken the outcomes could be both more effective in terms of reducing long-term offending patterns and more efficient (between youth and adult services, the point of arrest, the point of sentence and the point of release)
  • Tameside – have two initaitives focusing on addressing long term worklessness with specific focus on mental health and families who have failed to engage previously through targeted and tailored support through neighbourhood based employment and skills services
  • Trafford – is focusing on integrated family resource planning, family group conferencing and personalisation with a unique focus on social capital and role of the local community in delivery
  • Stockport – is developing its ‘Act Family’ multi agency ring fenced team delivering targeted case management support providing intensive work with families in crisis and preventative work to help families on the brink of being in crisis
  • Oldham – initiative focuses on school readiness to provide support that will enable children to be ‘ready to learn’.  This project builds on the ‘seven key engagement points’ being tested through the Oldham Early Years Pilot but investigating how this can be extended to develop a more holistic package that considers all the factors in a child’s early life chances.
  • Wigan – initiative adapts delivery methods from the Wigan 0-19 Pathway and Better Life Chances pilot, including differentiated and targeted support for identified children and families at key transition points, life course approach to health prevention and improvement and the test of LDIG/LIFE & Participle model of family intervention.