Staffordshire Strategic Partnership

Current challenge:

To address inequalities among children across Staffordshire with reference to specific children’s health and well-being issues as these were exceeding those found in other comparative areas. A multi-agency, multi-partnership approach was proposed to address this and to focus not just on ‘health’ issues, but on the wider determinants of children’s well-being, including aspirations and educational attainment…

Working with Sheila, as part of the Staffordshire Child Well-being Steering Group, and being able to use her expertise has proved invaluable, especially in terms of being able to critically evaluate our journey so far’.

Many thanks,

Tracy Redpath, MBA, MCMI, Policy and Partnerships Manager, Stafford Borough Council

Sheila has provided much needed support, advice and guidance for our two year Staffordshire Children’s Health and Wellbeing Project which has been piloted in three localities. Sheila has brought a wide range of experience to the project which has helped us to focus on not only on addressing current issues, but also on identifying and sharing the learning from this work and identifying what we need to do to ensure sustainability for the future.

Sheila has worked well with those involved in the project because she shows she is clearly interested, is willing to listen and is able to empathise with those experiencing difficulties whilst at the same time helping to identify ways forward. Sheila has been able to identify key issues, helping us to focus on what is really important. We have found Sheila to be an invaluable support and we feel that she has provided a firm foundation upon which we can make progress.

Christina Webb, Staffordshire Strategic Partnership October 2011

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (the ten local authorities in the Greater Manchester area)

Current challenge:

The challenge presented was to integrate their work on the environment by creating pilot projects which would take a different approach in a number of areas and provide evidence which would help to identify the best ways in which to proceed. Additionally the authority wished to work with DEFRA following the publication of their white paper on the natural environment.

Sheila has worked well with those involved in the project because she shows she is clearly interested, is willing to listen and is able to empathise with those experiencing difficulties whilst at the same time helping to identify ways forward. Sheila has been able to identify key issues, helping us to focus on what is really important. We have found Sheila to be an invaluable support and we feel that she has provided a firm foundation upon which we can make progress.

Christina Webb, Staffordshire Strategic Partnership October 2011

In November 2009 we were commissioned to carry out a strategic review for a large multi agency multi sector partnership. The first phase was the problem identification phase including review, analysis, and recommendation of options. The Partnership was the West Cumbria Strategic Partnership, a Partnership which comprised both Allerdale and Copeland Local Strategic Partnerships and was administered from a Policy Unit based at Allerdale District Council. Simply, this had become much more of an observatory/policy‐making body than an appropriate strategic partnership. It functioned extremely well as a policy body but was not enabling Copeland to work at a local level with its local communities.

In January 2009 we were commissioned by the North East Improvement Partnership to undertake a project which sought to identify those aspects of culture and behaviour which would lead to partnership improvement and was an attempt to look beyond ways of identifying improvements, which so often concentrated on target driven technical issues to do with factual analysis of data and ignored completely the behaviour, relationships, values and culture which lay at the heart of partnership.

Sunderland Partnership volunteered to pilot the North East Standard for Excellence. The pilot was carried out from January to March 2010. This was very difficult to steer as the key members of this partnership had at the same time decided that they were going to climb Kilimanjaro in order to raise money for charity, and so preparations and indeed training for this trip was a major preoccupying feature which made it very difficult to get the commitment to, and attention which the pilot required.

A Fire & Rescue Service asked for help to cascade mentoring throughout the organisation and introduce a performance review process into the organisation. A key issue was to create a sense or organisational wholeness which presented a challenge as the service consisted of both whole time firefighters and retained (or part time) firefighters. For obvious reasons opportunities for on the job practice, training and development were more restricted for retained firefighters than for whole time.

The effect of this was to create a particular leadership challenge to the organisation and it was for this reason that they brought in our company.

Gateshead Council wished to tackle their major challenging agenda – transformation of their whole organisation in order to accelerate the pace of change, deal with a harsh financial climate, clarify their priorities and motivate and enthuse their staff.

Intervention

Gateshead called in Strategic Solutions Ltd to provide an innovative creative event for 200 of their most senior managers to help them work faster, smarter and become leaner. Strategic Solutions Ltd suggested using music and particularly jazz as a metaphor for organisational change. In a jazz ensemble every player is a soloist as well as part of the ensemble and the music is picked up by individual soloists and jammed. This is expected and encouraged by all members of the group and allows a different way of working together.

Local Strategic Partnerships are a multiple agency body that work at a strategic level to harness support for partnership work. They bring together different parts of the public, private, community and voluntary sectors in order to achieve social and economic regeneration of a given area, providing local solutions to national issues.