Working Neighbourhood Teams FAQs
We know that worklessness is often concentrated amongst disadvantaged groups in local communities and that those out of work often face multiple barriers to employment. In short, worklessness makes it difficult for individuals, families and communities to flourish. In Salford there are 41 super output areas (ie. communities of about 1500 people) with over a quarter of people of working age on out of work benefits (including Job Seekers Allowance, Incapacity Benefit and Lone Parent’s Benefit). The economic downturn has made this situation worse.
We also know that people who are not in work are most effectively supported if the services they need are offered as an integrated package in a way that makes sense to the user – rather than the organisations that provide them. Additionally, for people who are some way off being ready to go back to work, it is important that the support they receive is tailored to their particular circumstances. Working Neighbourhood Teams (WNTs) are Salford’s ‘whole system’ response to this challenge.
People who don’t work (and their families) often face complex interlinked issues (sometimes rooted in deprivation) which impact on their ability to find jobs. Many different agencies offer services and support to people who are out of work and their families. Some, like Job Centre Plus and Salford’s Skills and Work service, are primarily focused on helping people find work. There are a wide range of others that offer key areas of support that unemployed individuals and their families might need. These potentially include health professionals, community and youth workers, community sector organisations, housing providers, and children’s centres to name a few. Working Neighbourhood Teams will work with the core skills and work services alongside other agencies to improve people’s chances of finding work and staying in a job. This will facilitate more effective outreach and engagement with workless people. Barriers they face will be dealt with in an integrated way, with a clear aim of improving employability and supporting people into sustainable employment. It is a whole systems response to tackling the problem.
Working Neighbourhood Teams will
- bring together all the organisations within a locality who support unemployed people and their families, and make sure that these services work closely and intelligently to deliver the services that meet people’s needs;
- have a detailed understanding of what services people within a neighbourhood need to support them into work and help them stay there and, if there are gaps in provision try to ensure that this local knowledge is used to commission appropriate services;
- be accountable for and respond to the neighbourhood’s performance against a range of indicators;
- challenge ineffective services;
- inform and shape the working of the front line operational teams.
Working Neighbourhood Teams are more a way of working than a defined group of people. Any worker (paid or unpaid) who helps residents access the services they need contributes to Working Neighbourhood Teams’ overall goal. Obviously there are some public service providers who have enormous resources that they can use to assist residents – it is crucial to have their commitment. Additionally, at neighbourhood level there are often local organisations (community, third sector or private) which deliver services tailored to local need and whose in-depth knowledge and understanding shed light on the issues at neighbourhood level.
Working Neighbourhood Teams comprise three groups of staff working together with a common purpose. These groups are:
i) The WNT Management Group comprises those with authority and expertise to shape services in a neighbourhood. The group’s core membership include the area coordinator, the Skills and work coordinator, the neighbourhood manager, and managers from the following services: children’s centre or children’s locality, health improvement, registered social landlords, Connexions. Depending on the neighbourhood, the group’s membership might also include community anchor organisations, elected members, local employers, Salford City College schools, community and voluntary sector providers. This group will meet regularly and will
- inform, guide and, if necessary, commission ‘front line’ public service delivery;
- be accountable for the performance of the area as measured by an agreed ‘basket of indicators’.
ii) The Front Line Operational Team comprises front line workers from services currently existing in each locality. They include, for example, housing officers, teachers, police, health trainers, community and voluntary sector providers etc. Front line staff will meet regularly to share service knowledge, network and deepen their understanding of the local services available in their area of the city. Front line staff from each of the participating members will be required to:
- signpost to other organisations based on priority need;
- input basic information onto the Customer Relationship Management Service to track customer journeys.
iii) The Outreach Staff (‘Personal Shoppers’) will provide a mentoring service to guide citizens in priority groups through the range of services available in their area. Outreach staff will receive referrals from any of the designated Front Line teams. They will:
- manage referrals;
- contact residents who may be potential customers;
- create a tailored pathways through the local services in partnership with their customers;
- monitor people’s progress along the pathway.
Working Neighbourhood Teams will develop a new approach to improving skills and tackling worklessness: an approach that will coordinate the role of many public services, alongside services offered by the community and voluntary sector. Working Neighbourhood Teams treats worklessness as an issue that holds back Salford’s social and physical regeneration.
Working Neighbourhood Teams’ aims to:
- inform and shape the working of the front line operational teams;
- assemble a joint public service management team, with clear leadership, in target areas, focused on enabling people to develop skills and enter the labour market;
- develop an integrated range of services (menu of options) that can address all of an individual’s needs (not just the skills and work element);
- develop strong links with local communities and voluntary organisations to improve understanding and reach into neighbourhoods;
- design bespoke marketing, communications and engagement activity that is focused on aspirations and which challenges the status quo of high levels of worklessness and low skills;
- develop and use tools in order to enable an integrated and customer centred approach (including common assessment frameworks, information sharing arrangements, and ICT) ;
- develop new ways of working across front line teams;
- agree a shared ‘basket of indicators’ that will measure the team’s performance at small area level;
- create central support systems (including partnership commissioning, human resource management, ICT support, change management and Business Process Re-engineering) to support neighbourhood working;
- develop accountability links to the highest level of public services, with regular results and progress reporting;
- Develop strong connectivity with wider area regeneration programmes, bringing the ‘people’ and ‘places’ aspects of regeneration together into one cohesive effort.
From April 2009 there will be three WNTs - covering Eccles, the East Salford New Deal for Communities Area, and Ordsall and Langworthy - the city’s neighbourhoods with highest numbers of people who are not in work. From September 2009 this development they will be joined by East Salford and Little Hulton and Walkden.
Working Neighbourhood Teams are critical to the work of all public services in Salford. We want to ensure that the economic renaissance of the city benefits all of its residents, and, critically, avoids the further polarisation of marginalised groups and between the city’s neighbourhoods. It is also important because the areas where concentrations of worklessness occur also present all public services with their greatest challenges, with attendant costs to the public purse. The current economic downturn presents further challenges to tackling the worklessness agenda. If we do nothing there will be further polarisation between areas and people within Salford who do not benefit from (or contribute to) the economic renaissance of the city. Already some areas have nearly half of their working age population are out of work, the downturn might prompt a situation where almost no one works in some the city’s most deprived localities.
Ultimately, we will know we have succeeded when we are seeing tangible reductions in the numbers of people who are on out of work benefits in the target areas. Indicators of this might include increased levels of skills, increased levels of economic activity, reduced benefit claimant counts, reduced levels of children living in poverty, improvements in health and improvements across a (to be determined) basket of local indicators.
To deliver this we will see public services transform from the existing compartmentalised approach we now often have to ‘one team’. This genuinely integrated approach to delivery is based on of a single view of the customer and effective joint case management. We will also see existing community engagement arrangements and the role of community organisations much more clearly mobilised behind an objective of dealing with deprivation and supporting people to work and out of income poverty.
Working Neighbourhood Teams involve most people-facing public services that support people (in its widest sense) in the journey towards economic activity. There is also a role for place-based public services, whose aim is to deliver neighbourhoods that are beautiful, clean and crime-free. Working Neighbourhood Teams expect to work alongside regeneration programmes for example, in Pendleton we will expect to present the Working Neighbourhood Team as the community regeneration element of the area’s wider PFI (Private Finance Initiative) regeneration programme.
We have so far set out an initial view of the key areas of cost which are:-
- The costs of the existing service base, (bending this into the model)
- Enhanced coordination arrangements (skills and work and wider system)
- Enhanced casework support (e.g. Health trainers, mentoring)
- Gap filling the ‘High Street’ of services where necessary
- Flexible fund to remove barriers
- Communications and engagement campaign ( on aspirations)
- Intelligence support (data, analysis.)
- Change management support
The key assumptions about resources at this stage are that:-
- The principle focus will be on the bending of mainstream resources into the model
- The use of the Joint Commissioning Fund that has been created through the Area Based Grants review;
- Potential contributions from partners locally and city regionally, reflecting the gains to delivery the model offers across the board.
The availability of resources is a constraint at present.
- The scale of the Joint Commissioning Fund available;
- A common constraint with models of this type is resistance to change throughout organisations and genuine constraints on new development caused by intensity of current workloads;
- Availability of key officer time for development is a possible constraint;
- The under development of partnership commissioning arrangements is a likely constraint to integration of services on the ground;
- Local perceptions of measures such as this can present a barrier to entry – positioning, and using a range of hooks for engagement will be key;
All public services in Salford have a stake in this development as it will impact on the achievement of their outcomes in the target areas, which are usually where their services experience their greatest challenge. Local communities will also have a major stake and local community organisations will be key stakeholders in the process.
At this stage the critical success factors are seen as:-
- High level political and executive support and accountability to this level and to ward members;
- A strong ‘all service’ joint Area Management Team with clear leadership and joint targets to meet;
- Clear links to strong and responsive central joint commissioning;
- A ‘single view of the customer’ by all services;
- Joined up case work for families and individuals;
- A ‘Department Store’ of different services to tackle barriers;
- Clear customer pathways with support and mentoring (‘personal shoppers’) for those who need it;
- Flexible resources
- A key role for communities and 3rd sector groups;
- Strong and constant communications and engagement designed to share information two ways and also to influence intended behaviours and norms and values about skills and work and wider well being;
Further information and background reading can be found on the Working Neighbourhood Teams resources page.
For more information please contact:
Alison Moore, Administrative Assistant
Employability Team
Salford City Council
Tel: 0161 793 2509
Email: amoore@salford.gov.uk
0161 793 2929