Partners IN Salford


 

e-Bulletin, July 2009

E-bulletin

July 2009

Welcome to our summer partnership e-bulletin. Sorry there hasn’t been an e-bulletin for a while but they will now be produced every quarter again.  Please forward this to colleagues and members of your team or discuss any of the items at your team meetings.

Find out more about Partners IN Salford here:

Contact us:

Partners IN Salford
2nd Floor, Unity House
Salford Civic Centre
Chorley Road
Swinton
Salford M27 5FJ

0161 793 3421
partnersinsalford@salford.gov.uk

The recession

There is a special recession section on the council’s website, offering help and advice to those affected.

Help regarding the effects of the recession

As well as Salford’s response to helping people and businesses during the recession, there is now Real Help Now  - a national source of help, advice and support. Further information and a booklet are available on their website. A regional edition of the booklet, containing information on local contact points and initiatives is also being produced and will be madeavailable soon.

Salford Strategic Partnership Board

The Board meeting scheduled for Tuesday 21 July 2009 has been postponed and will be held later in the year. Work in relation to the recession (which was to be the main focus of this meeting) will continue to be taken forward by officers in conjunction with key partners.

Major partnership developments

Sustainable Community Strategy (SCS)

The new Sustainable Community Strategy was signed off by the council on Wednesday 20 May 2009. This was previously discussed by the Salford Strategic Partnership Executive. Arrangements for the launch of the SCS are currently underway and details will be published shortly.  

Updates to the Salford Agreement

The Salford Agreement has now been updated and signed off by the Secretary of State.

Follow this link to view the final Salford Agreement refresh document and the breakdown of refresh activity for each indicator.

If you have any questions regarding the Salford Agreement please contact Roz Catlow on 0161 793 3173.

Joint Strategic Commissioning Framework

At the March SSP Executive, the Joint Strategic Commissioning Framework was approved. This details how two or more commissioning agents should work together to coordinate their commissioning and improve outcomes. This is particularly important where individual or community needs are complex and an integrated response is required, taking joint responsibility for the translation of strategy into action. The framework is based on a continuous cycle with four phases: analysing, planning, doing and reviewing, each as important as the other. How we will implement the framework is currently being developed and it is hoped that a delivery mechanism will be in place by Christmas 2009.

More information is available under our Salford Agreement section.

Working neighbourhoods teams

Working neighbourhood teams is the partnership’s whole systems approach to tackling issues of worklessness at a local level. The intention is for key service providers such as housing, health, employability, children's service and neighbourhood management to share their knowledge on each area. The aim will be to deliver these services to residents in a more joined up and customer focused way.

There is plenty of material on the working neighbourhood teams' section.

Currently there are three locally based teams:

If you’d like to find out more, please contact Chris Marsh or Matthew Ainsworth.

Healthy weight strategy 2009-12

The healthy weight strategy was launched on Tuesday 19 May 2009 at the Innovation Forum, Salford. The event was chaired by Dr. Julie Higgins.

It included a stimulating key note address from Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy, entitled ‘Health and behaviour in the era of ecological public health’. His presentation will be of interest to everyone. Please read it along with the healthy weight strategy and launch presentations on the Partners IN Salford website.

For further information contact Alistair Fisher, Health and Well Being Manager on 0161 793 2267.

Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA)

From April 2009, the Comprehensive Area Assessment is the new framework for assessing local public services in England.

This will provide the first independent assessment of the prospects for local areas and the quality of life for people living there.

For the first time, public services will be held collectively accountable for their ability to provide better services. This means that Comprehensive Area Assessment will look across councils, health bodies, police forces, fire and rescue services and others responsible for local public services.

Comprehensive Area Assessment will look at what matters locally. It may cover issues like improving access to healthcare, increasing the availability of affordable housing, reducing the fear of crime, improving educational attainment or reducing the area's carbon footprint. The issues addressed in each area will reflect local priorities for improving people's quality of life.

Comprehensive Area Assessment will have two main elements:-

The Audit Commission will report their final judgment about Salford in November 2009. Their initial findings were reported at the partnership executive meeting in May.  

For more information, visit the Audit Commission web pages.

Our recent meetings

As usual, papers and minutes from the partnership can be found here.

Salford Strategic Partnership meetings update

Please use the links for agendas and papers relating to the following partnership meetings:

Salford Strategic Partnership board meeting – 11 February 2009

Agenda items:

Salford Strategic Partnership executive meeting – 25 March 2009

Agenda items:

Salford Strategic Partnership executive meeting – 22 May 2009

Agenda items:

All the up-and-coming meetings and events being held across the partnership can be found here.

Partners IN Salford website

The Partners IN Salford website is regularly updated and has a new Partner Support section which provides common resources in one place that can help to support partnership working.

New partnership members

Professor James Powell from the University of Salford has now left Partnership and a new representative from the University of Salford will be confirmed shortly.  Greg Burke is the new representative from Government Office North West instead of Gail Porter.  

National Probation Service, Salford have been invited to become members of the Salford Strategic Partnership Board in line with the Duty to Cooperate and Angie Buckley will attend future Partnership meetings.  This duty was introduced as part of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, where a number of partner authorities were identified to provide direct cooperation with the local authority for the delivery of services through the Local Strategic Partnership.

A list is available showing the current members of the partnership.

Other Salford developments of interest

Future Search event

In July 2008, the Salford Strategic Partnership held a 3-day Future Search event with partners from across the city.  Future Search is the name of a particular way of running a conference. It was devised by Sandra Janoff and Marvin Weisbord and has been used successfully all over the world.

The aim of Future Search is to bring together people from all walks of life to find ways of solving a difficult problem. Nothing like this has ever been done in the city.

Please use the following link to view the Future Search report, work book, summary DVD and further information regarding Future Search.

Cliodhna Mulhern has had an interview published about Salford’s Future Search in the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) Europe newsletter.

Black and Minority Ethnic directories

Partners IN Salford has commissioned profiles of the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities in Salford as part of the Ethnicity Monitoring Framework project.

The ethnic diversity of Salford has changed significantly in recent years. Not only has there been a rapid growth of the BME population as a whole, but a much greater diversity of communities exists now than ever before.

Please use the following links to view further information and profiles of the BME communities in Salford, plus profiles of other diverse communities in the city.

Salford Equalities Network

Workers from a wide range of organisations in Salford have recently joined up to form a Salford Equalities Network. The network is aimed at practitioners working in equality and diversity and community cohesion in the city. The network will provide a forum to enable agencies to successfully promote and support shared learning and best practice and identify opportunities for joint working especially in areas such as consultation and engagement and improved intelligence on communities.

Demonstrating better partnership working in this sector is a key objective of the Comprehensive Area Assessment as well as new Equality Framework for Local Government. Each meeting is hosted by a different partner and takes place every two months. The second meeting occurred in July 2009, and 16 workers from voluntary, private and public sector attended.

For more information on the Salford Equalities Network contact Phil Martin from Salford City Council's Equalities and Cohesion team on 0161 793 3619.

Tackling illegal money lending

Lending money without a consumer credit licence is a criminal offence. Loan sharks prey on some of the most vulnerable people in society. It is estimated that nationally 165,000 households use them, repaying approximately £120m per annum. The overall cost to our local communities is much greater, as illegal money lending generates a range of other criminal activities. It also reduces the life chances of those using them – less money for essential needs; food; children; debts to priorities such as rent, council tax, fuel etc.

People use illegal money lenders because they are refused credit elsewhere or assume they will. As the recession continues, being given credit is becoming increasingly difficult. That’s why it’s important that communities know where they can get affordable loans rather than turning to loan sharks.

To combat illegal money lending, a postcard has been produced which has been sent out with people’s council tax bills. The postcard publicises the work of the illegal money lending team which runs a 24 hour confidential helpline for people to ring with information about a loan shark.

For more information about illegal money lending, please contact Anne Beattie on 0161 778 0508.

The Migration Impacts Fund

A successful partnership bid to the Migration Impacts Fund means that Salford will be able to deliver a £259,000 programme of work to respond to migration-related pressures on services in the city. The bid for central government funding was developed in partnership with key partners in the city, and received support from the Salford Strategic Partnership. Salford has been awarded £159,135 for the first year of the project and has provisionally been granted £100,627 in year two.

The Salford Migrants’ Project will deliver a programme of cross-cutting and interlinked activities to build more responsive services and create integrated migrant communities that are able to access services. This will include projects such as English language classes, work placements for refugees and migrant workers, community research projects and information for new arrivals on how to access services properly. A further strand will be intensive community integration projects at a very local level which will work with both new and emerging communities and longer-standing residents to build positive relationships within neighbourhoods.

For further information regarding the Migration Impacts Fund please contact Shaun Clydesdale on 0161 793 3178.

Reducing illicit smoking

A special programme has been launched aimed at reducing the supply and demand for illicit tobacco (smuggled, bootlegged or counterfeit).

According to statistics, one in six cigarettes is illicit. Illicit tobacco makes it easy for children and young people to purchase it and encourages adults to continue smoking. It’s also linked to organised crime.

For more information on the illicit tobacco programme, visit www.illicittobacconorth.org.

Recently published guidance

Working better together? Managing local strategic partnerships

In 2007 a peer review performed by IDeA/SOLACE highlighted the need to simplify current structural complexities, address gaps and ensure structures respond to the Sustainable Community Strategy and Local Area Agreement. We are now in the middle of reviewing how Partners IN Salford can be improved and it is hoped that fit for purpose functions and structures will be in place by the end of the year.

The Audit Commission released the 'Working Better Together? Managing Local Strategic Partnerships' report in April 2009 which provides guidance on how Local Strategic Partnerships can be organised. We are using this guidance to help us review Partners IN Salford.

Please use the following link to view the briefing report from the (LGIU and STEER) of the 'Working Better Together? Managing Local Strategic Partnerships'

If you would like further information on how this governance review is progressing or would like to participate then please contact Jon Stephenson on 0161 793 2929.

Website launched to promote community cohesion best practice

The Young Foundation and the Homes and Communities Agency have launched a new website – futurecommunities.net - aimed at everyone involved in building the successful sustainable communities of the future.

Future Communities focuses on community participation and place management. It explores how new developments can become socially, economically and environmentally sustainable, building in resident involvement and engagement from the start.

Please use the link to the Homes and Communities Agency website for further information.

And finally…

Sheila Murtagh (Salford Partnership Manager) will be leaving in September on a year long secondment to IDeA. We wish Sheila well in her new role and look forward to seeing her return.

Thanks for reading!

If there’s anything you’d like including in the next e-bulletin, please e-mail ideas, information and short articles to: partnersinsalford@salford.gov.uk

Partners IN Salford, Second Floor, Unity House, Salford Civic Centre, Chorley Road, Swinton, M27 5FJ   Telephone 0161 793 2929    partnersinsalford@salford.gov.uk    Privacy policy