Oxfordshire Partnership newsletter

Welcome to the Spring 2011 Oxfordshire Partnership newsletter. This year starts as the previous one finished, with much activity taking place in partnership working in the county.

Refresh of Oxfordshire 2030

The context for partnership working and the landscape around it has rapidly changed over the last couple of months. Alongside substantial cuts in public spending we have been responding to the localism bill, big society, significant health and policing reforms and the introduction of local enterprise partnerships.

There has also been a complete scaling back of the inspection framework with the abolition of the Comprehensive Area Assessment, the end to Public Service Agreements and Local Area Agreements.

The focus for thematic partnerships has changed dramatically in a short space of time and the majority of partnerships are currently reviewing their focus in terms of what needs to be done to both improve outcomes and reduce costs. As part of this the Oxfordshire 2030 delivery plan needs to be revised in order to reflect the new partnership arrangements and the financial climate we are all operating within.

In order to develop shared priorities for a new medium term plan for 2011-14, thematic partnerships are each being asked to identify their key priorities for this period.

The focus for 2011-14 priorities is on the following areas, which have been endorsed by key partners:

• Housing and infrastructure
• Breaking the cycle of deprivation
• Economy (skills / educational attainment / NEETS / infrastructure)
• Health and social care (the preventative / public health agenda – delayed transfer, getting people back into their homes)
• Public service cost reduction (asset management)
• Community safety
• Big Society

The Partnership and Policy teams will be providing support to thematic partnerships over the next few months. Work will continue from now until July to ensure the new priorities and performance targets for each partnership are finalised ready for discussion when the Oxfordshire Partnership meet on 13 July.

What is happening with the Health and Wellbeing Board

As part of the government's Liberating the NHS vision, the health sector is changing radically. Consortia of GPs are being given control of over 80% of the NHS budget. Health and Wellbeing Boards are being set up to ensure effective integration and cooperation within these new arrangements. Oxfordshire County Council has a statutory duty to ensure its Health and Wellbeing Board unites the GP Commissioning Consortium with the local authority and public health. They will need to work effectively together to agree a set of high-level priorities, develop a shared strategy and deliver real outcomes.

The Board will have to produce a Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy (JHWS) and a Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA), to which local commissioning will have to show due regard. In addition to driving investment in cross-cutting services and ensuring joined-up commissioning, the Board will enhance the democratic legitimacy of NHS commissioning by involving local councillors. It will give GPs a commensurate say in how council activities contribute to shared objectives around health. And it will give the user voice an input into strategic decision-making, via the involvement of HealthWatch – a new organisation that will become part of the Care Quality Commission (and take over from Local Involvement Networks (LINks).

Proposals are currently being considered for the structure and membership of Oxfordshire's new Health and Wellbeing Board, which for the first time will cover adults and children. As such the Board will be the only structure with responsibility for the health and well being of the whole population in a defined geographical area.

Big Society - The vision from Oxfordshire County Council

The county council vision for the Big Society is to create an environment where it is easier for our communities to do things for themselves about issues that matter to them.

Our Big Society website sets out the principles that are behind our vision and how we are going to make it happen. It also gives information about those areas where there are opportunities to involve communities, such as youth services, community transport, and libraries, through the Big Society Fund.

The county council has set up a £600,000 fund to which communities can make bids for start-up funding for service provision they may wish to undertake in their local area. This can include but does not have to be restricted to taking on responsibility for libraries and youth facilities that the county council regrettably has to propose to cease funding as a result of severe cuts in grant funding.

The fund is for:

• one off funding to deliver local services in the community
• new projects not existing projects or activities
• projects that meet a recognised community need
• and we will be looking for a sustainable business case.

It is available in 2011-12 and there will be several waves for applications to enable communities the time they need to develop their ideas.

Information about the fund including guidance for those interested in applying is available at www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/bigsocietyfund. For more information contact bigsocietyfund@oxfordshire.gov.uk.

High speed broadband in Oxfordshire

Work is continuing on developing Oxonline - A Digital Strategy for Oxfordshire. The key focus for this is the importance of setting out the opportunities that the provision of super-fast broadband provides for businesses and residents and more generally in terms of access to services. The Digital strategy sets the context within which a detailed bid for funding for achieving our ambition for super-fast broadband infrastructure in rural areas needs to sit. The Executive Board of the Oxfordshire City-Region Enterprise Partnership is championing the work on the strategy and bid and it is ensuring that we are able to capture the benefits to business of super-fast broadband, particularly for Small and Medium sized Enterprises and the rural community.

The Government agency leading on this - Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) - has now issued guidance on its funding regime. It is now expected that BDUK will operate a rolling programme of bidding rounds, however our ambition remains to submit an early expression of interest followed shortly thereafter by a proposal for funding. Our ambition remains to move forward with implementation of our strategy from 2012.

Partners pledge to promote and develop apprenticeships

Several partners have worked together to draft an Apprenticeship Pledge that employers across the county will be encouraged to sign up to. The purpose of the pledge is to increase the number of apprenticeships within Oxfordshire by showing there is joint commitment to strengthening and building apprenticeship opportunities. Partners involved in designing the pledge were Oxford City Council, Oxford Brookes University, University of Oxford and Oxfordshire County Council.

The pledge was developed by partners in order to show leadership not only within the public sector but across the wider business community.

Employers across the county are asked to support the pledge for the following reasons.

• Loyal and skilled workforce.
• Offering entry-level apprenticeship opportunities enables a more diverse range of individuals from our community to join the workforce, particularly young people.
• Government support for apprenticeships remains very strong, with investment increasing to £250 million over the period from 2010 to 2013. Apprenticeships are 'at the heart' of the new strategy to build Skills for Sustainable Growth (Department for Business Innovation and Skills, 2010)

There are a number of large organisations within Oxfordshire who already have sound experience of employing and supporting apprentices as part of their workforce. These partners are invited to sign up to the pledge immediately, and may contact Rose Rolle-Rowan for more information on 01865 797 462 or rose.rolle-rowan@oxfordshire.gov.uk.

Other partners, who need more information about employing apprentices, are encouraged to contact Cheryl McDermott, Employer Services Manager, at the National Apprenticeship Service on 0118 908 2165 or cheryl.mcdermott@apprenticeships.gov.uk.

The Armed Forces Covenant

Oxfordshire County Council is proud to be one of five areas in the UK selected by the Ministry of Defence to pilot the Armed Forces Community Covenant. They would like our hard work with our military partners to be recognised and used as best practice by other areas where there is much less engagement with the military.

The Community Covenant is one of a set of recommendations in the Task Force Report on the Military Covenant released by Government late last year. Based on a US idea, it aims to encourage charities, local authorities, businesses, communities and individuals to work together with the military to offer support that is appropriate to service personnel, service families and children, reservists and veterans in their area.

In Oxfordshire we have a well-established Military / Civilian Partnership with terms of reference, a separate health liaison group and our work looking at children of service personnel has been praised by Ofsted. The council has also provided financial support to the military, which has been spent on a range of improvement projects on the bases in Oxfordshire and this year will be spent on a project to improve skills and employment prospects for personnel leaving the forces.

We hope that by working with partners we can provide support and services for the Armed Forces family across the county. We'd welcome any suggestions that Oxfordshire Partnership members may have about targeted support or special offers that could be available for serving personnel, their families and dependents and veterans.

You can find out more about Oxfordshire County Council's work with the military at our website.

Twenty community and voluntary sector groups to benefit from grants

Last year, the Oxfordshire Stronger Communities Alliance (OSCA) launched an exciting grant programme for the county’s community and voluntary sector. The aim of this £220,000 grant programme is to support local projects that will enable, provide new solutions to ongoing problems, reduce inequalities and break the cycle of deprivation.

The Fund closed to applications in January and 145 eligible applications were submitted, with £1.959 million requested, meaning that the Fund was nearly nine times subscribed. Twenty groups from around Oxfordshire were successful in their applications and have been awarded grants by OSCA.

For further information contact Kate Hill (kate.hill@ocva.org.uk).

£371,000 Lottery boost to get more women in Oxfordshire playing sport

Thousands of women in Oxfordshire will benefit from a new project to get them playing sport thanks to a £371,000 National Lottery award from Sport England.

Oxfordshire Active Women is one of 20 projects to secure funding from Sport England's £10 million Active Women fund. This bid was supported by LAA partnership funding. The targeted investment will help get more women from disadvantaged communities - and those caring for children - playing sport as part of the drive to deliver a mass participation legacy from London 2012.

Oxfordshire Active Women will be led and coordinated by the Oxfordshire Sports Partnership working with local authorities, leisure providers and national governing bodies of sport. It will get 6,000 women across Oxford City, South and West Oxfordshire, Vale of White Horse and Cherwell taking part in athletics, badminton, tennis, netball, football and / or gymnastics.

Local Information System goes live!

The Oxfordshire Data Observatory's Local Information System (LIS) is now available.

The LIS uses the latest available technology and is a single point of access for key local datasets for the county (eg the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment and commissioned demographic datasets). It is also a tool for accessing nationally available data.

Information is pre-packaged by themes and for different areas in profiles, providing quick access to data in a highly visual way to make it easy to understand trends and local variations. Data is available as colour coded maps, in graphs, charts and tables, with a function to export material to Word documents or presentations to bring reports alive. This significantly reduces and improves user time in locating, interpreting and presenting local datasets.

Although the system is primarily aimed at helping practitioners / analysts access and understand data more efficiently, the system is designed so it can be used by anyone and most data will be available to the general public.

For more information please contact ben.smith@oxfordshire.gov.uk.

Safe and confident communities

There has been a local engagement project running in Oxfordshire over the last 12 months using tools such as customer insight data, community feedback, and digital engagement such as Facebook and Twitter, along with traditional engagement methods such as neighbourhood police (Have your say) meetings to effectively and efficiently communicate with local communities at street level. The project ensures residents are provided with information about what is important to them in the most effective manner. Giving our local communities this information helps enable them to play a bigger part in our society.

The project takes engagement away from expensive PR and media campaigns towards two way local engagement. Officers are being equipped with tools and information to enable them to cost effectively engage and communicate with local communities.

A Home Office commissioned evaluation of the project considers it is well thought out and potentially an example of innovative practice. The project speaks to several key aspects of the emerging policy agenda, including:

• Local community engagement and empowerment
• Trust and confidence in the police
• Crime reduction
• Cost-effectiveness

The framework is being implemented across Oxfordshire and there are already case studies showing the benefits.

If you have any questions please contact Dan Bowden on 07779 586328.

Contact us

We hope the newsletter continues to meet your expectations. Comments and suggestions on the newsletter and ideas for future features are always welcome. Drop us a line at oxfordshire.partnership@oxfordshire.gov.uk.

To unsubscribe to this newsletter email oxfordshire.partnership@oxfordshire.gov.uk.