e-Bulletin, September 2006
Welcome...
| Partners IN Salford e-Bulletin |
Contents
- New telephone numbers
- LSP Business
- News from our themes
- Salford news
- National news
- What's new on our website?
New telephone numbers for LSP management & administration team
The LSP management and administration team's telephone numbers will soon change....we'll let you know as soon as they do!
LSP Business
At this meeting the LSP Board discussed the review of the partnership, Salford's Local Area Agreement and the annual performance review. Cllr John Merry was elected as the new chair of the Board, with Professor Eileen Fairhurst the vice chair.
Read the full minutes and a bitesize summary here
This group met on 22 June and 9 August with the main topics for discussion at both meetings being the annual performance review and the review of the partnership.
Read the minutes from 22 June here. The August minutes will be posted on our site soon.
We are on target to submit our first draft of the full agreement to Government Office for the North West by the end of September. The draft will be discussed at our LSP Board meeting on 28th September prior to submission.
Partners IN Salford Agreement Steering Group and the City Council's Cabinet Agreement Working Group held a very fruitful joint meeting on 5 September. As a result, the draft agreement now focuses on five objectives for the city.
- Improve the economic prosperity of Salford residents through educational attainment, skills, employment, and enterprise.
- Improving health outcomes
- Improving community safety
- Improving community engagement
- Improving environmental sustainability and quality
These reflect the strategic imperatives in Making the vision real, and the recent trends highlighted by this year's annual review. In this way we are tailoring the draft Agreement to Salford's aspirations.
For more information, please contact us on 0161 603 6800 or by e-mailing partnersinsalford@salford.gov.uk. You can also visit our Salford Agreement webpages
You can also read about progress in the economic development block below.
The partnership has now received confirmation of our traffic light rating from Government Office. We have been assessed as an amber/red LSP, which is a drop from last year's amber/green rating. Government Office recognised that we have good processes in place in many areas and that there are significant challenges in Salford. This year, LSPs were assessed against stricter criteria. However, our progress in closing the gap in two floor target areas, health and worklessness, has not been fast enough. They also commented on the slow pace of change with regard to the review of the LSP.
This rating means that we need to show Government Office that we are making progress and have written an approved Improvement Plan by November.
This review of well under way, led by a steering group with members from across the LSP. Activities to date have included an overview of community involvement mechanisms, consolidation of community involvement targets, agreement on common terms and definitions and a review of good practice elsewhere. Work has also begun on a Community Involvement strategy for the whole city. It is envisaged that the community will be directly involved in the development of the strategy which should be ready for endorsement by the LSP in January 2007.
For more information, contact Jon Stephenson
The three tools for the Salford Ethnicity Monitoring Framework (Tool One - the organisational maturity model; Tool 2 - the Ethnicity Monitoring Model; Tool 3 - a Local Ethnicity Directory; See page 2 of July's Bulletin for more about each tool) are nearing completion and have already received praise from the Department for Communities and Local Government. The next phase will be to embed these tools within the working practices of LSP partners. This work will be undertaken by a soon-to-be-appointed EMF project worker who will be located within the LSP Management & Admin team.
For more information, contact Jon Stephenson
The Salford Involvement Network will be holding a meeting on Thursday 28th September from 1.30pm - 3.30pm at the Salford Opportunities Centre. The network provides an opportunity for people from a wide range of fields who work with communities to meet regularly, learn from each other and coordinate future community involvement work.
The meeting will focus on setting terms of reference for the network and devising an action plan for training, networking and lunchtime learning events for 2006-07.
For more information, contact Claire Wollington
News from our themes
Ready!At the start of September, Salford's Skills for Life development team launched the Ready! hotline. A first for the city, this dedicated helpline is for adults who wish to improve their basic skills. By calling the single number, adults wanting to enhance their knowledge of English and maths will be put in touch with an appropriate college adult learning service or work-based training programme.
The Ready! information number is 0161 909 6540
Anne Beattie, Skills for Life coordinator said: "This kind of customer service is all geared towards making learning more accessible for people who live or work in the city. People may want to brush up on their skills for many reasons and making this one call will show them where to go for FREE English and maths courses.
For more information about Skills for Life, call the team on 0161 745 7844 or visit their website at www.skillsforlifeinsalford.co.uk
Salford is part of a consortium that has been granted Cities Strategies pathfinder status and is one of thirteen towns and cities from across the country chosen to pilot a new approach to providing services as part of the welfare state. Salford's plans include pooling and aligning resources and expertise to tackle specific problems that stop people from getting into work.
While Greater Manchester is producing thousands of new jobs per year these jobs are largely out of reach of workless communities. Despite rapid growth of the economy and Gross Value Added output growth exceeding the UK and North West averages, the employment rate in Greater Manchester has stagnated and pockets of severe worklessness have remained the same over the last five years.
Although the consortium will operate across Greater Manchester it will target those areas with the highest concentrations of worklessness, and focus primarily on those areas with employment rates furthest from the 80% target. Analysis shows that of the 58 wards with the worst levels of worklessness, Salford has 10 wards which will be the focus of Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, Local Area Agreement and Cities Strategy activities in the next three years. These are: Walkden North, Weaste and Seedley, Barton, Winton, Blackfriars, Pendleton, Ordsall, Langworthy, Little Hulton and Broughton.
There will be more about our cities strategy in next month's Bulletin.
The Enterprise & Economic Development Block has been developed by key partners of the Economic Development, Learning & Skills Partnership (Strategic Delivery Partnership of the LSP). An LAA working group has been set up, comprising of members from SCC, Greater Manchester Learning & Skills Council, Jobcentre Plus, Manchester Enterprises, MIDAS & Salford Money Line, which has led on work including identifying indicators and setting of targets for the block in consultation with the wider Partnership.
Specific work has also been undertaken in relation to employability with the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion as part of work undertaken for the City Strategy initiative. Salford held a meeting on 9th June which was facilitated by Dave Simmonds, Director Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion, to review intelligence, agree focus and priorities and define targets to help define Salford’s input into the City Strategy bid as well as the Local Area Agreement and Economic Development Strategy. A further meeting took place on 24th August.
The Enterprise & Economic Development Block working group met on 30th August in order to set targets and baselines for indicators in the framework.
Stepping stones is an NRF-funded project aimed at helping people off Incapacity Benefit and into work. Read the flyer for the launch event
The report of the third annual Salford Housing Strategy conference is available to download at www.salford.gov.uk/housingstrategy
A team of police and probation officers and youth offending team members working on Operation STOP (Salford Targeted Offender Project) have initiated 550 arrests, leading to sentences that total 98 years in custody and 54 years of community-based sentences for Salford's most prolific and priority offenders. The eight-strong team was set up in 2004 to target the active minority of criminals who perpetrate the majority of crime. A particular success of the project has been the Pre-Arrest and Drug Referral Scheme, funded by Salford Drugs And Alcohol Team, aimed at prolific offenders who commit crimes to fund their drug habit.
Salford news
Salford is celebrating yet another big improvement in GCSE results with 52% of pupils gaining at least 5 A*-C grades. This is an increase of six percentage points on 2005's impressive results which saw the city hit the headlines as having some of the most improved key stage 4 results in the country. Read the full press release here
River Valley Credit Union has been working in Salford for 17 years, providing local communities with a safe place to save and low cost loans. Until recently, River Valley could only lend to credit union members who had saved with them for at least three months and could only lend twice their savings.
That has now changed, and River Valley can offer 'community loans' to anyone who lives or works in Salford with no savings requirement. This new development aims to increase the availability of affordable credit to people on low incomes in areas of high financial exclusion.
Fore more information contact Peter or Ann on 0161 832 1998 or download this flyer.
Salford is a step closer to creating its own self-supporting community for the homeless with the help of international charity Emmaus. President of Emmaus Terry Waite CBE hosted an event at Buile Hill Park to raise awareness of the charity's intention to work with partners to set up a community in the city.
Emmaus communities become self sufficient and self funding, with the residents, who live and work together refurbishing and selling donated goods to support themselves and generate funds to assist others who are worse off. Read the full press release here or visit the Emmaus website
Download NDC Briefing Bulletin
Salford Royal Hospitals NHS Trust has successfully achieved Foundation Trust status. As Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust the organisation will now have greater freedom to find new ways of meeting patients’ needs.
Foundation Trusts are unique organisations that remain fully part of the NHS and are required to meet NHS standards but have the freedom to run their own affairs and get local people involved in the way the hospital works.
Read the full press release here
http://www.publicnet.co.uk/publicnet/fe060908.htm
Salford and Manchester are joining forces to put forward a £25 million bid to Government's Local Enterprise Growth Initiative (LEGI) to transform deprived areas through encouraging and supporting enterprise. Read the full press release here
visit their website
National news
Renewal Academy offers a unique training experience developing your skills for delivering successful renewal and regeneration. Renewal Academy provides practical, up-to-date, learning events. Download the flyer
Visit the academy's website: www.renewalacademy.org.uk
download
read the paper here www.publicnet.co.uk/publicnet/fe060630
download
download
What's new on our website?
We try to make the website as comprehensive and as up-to-date as possible. If you would like us to add a document or link please e-mail us
- The August LAA update
- The LAA powerpoint presentation made to the Cabinet Working Group
- The Salford Annual Baseline Review (SABRe) - a comprehensive statistical baseline for 'where we are now' in the city
- Salford's Local Public Service Agreement
- local examples of community involvement - now updated
- Fill in our Training Needs Analysis for for involvement practitioners
- Top tips on how to engage older people
- Engaging Children & Young People page now has a useful links section
- The latest news page has been updated with events & articles
0161-603 6800 
