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Health and Social Care Policy Trends in 2015/16 in Manchester

18 Dec 2015 - 15:01 by Nigel Rose

This blog is a summary of some of the key trends that Macc’s Policy and Influence team have spotted during the last year that we think will impact on Manchester’s Voluntary Sector over the next year. It is not comprehensive by any means and we apologise for all the really important and vital stuff that we’ve missed out.

We’ve not included the most obvious trend which is that there will be less money, a lot less money, as we haven’t got anything new or different to say about it.

The Resisistable Rise of Community Development

After many years in the political doldrums it seems that community work practice might be on the rise again. As public authorities seek to do more with less they look to people to help themselves. Community work skills are seen as a way of getting people to do that. Signs include training courses, increases in number of workers described as community workers (e.g. by housing associations), lots of interest in the Wigan Deal and references to assets in MCC documentation. How long will it be before someone realises that good community development is about community empowerment, not about getting people to do what a public authority wants them to do - which means more people making demands about what they believe their communities should be getting. Then the poor old community development workers will be blamed for failing to “control” their communities and that will be the end of that.

Integration and Differentiation

Maths is hard and a lot of people never really get integration, the assembly of lots of very small things into one. In this case we’re bringing together all the various health and social care services into one seamless, co-ordinated whole. There’s been a lot of talk, a lot of bits of paper, a lot of meetings, really, a lot of meetings, vast amounts of paper, oodles of talk. We’ve been at the meetings, we’ve read the bits of paper! Not much has actually happened!

However, it may be the tipping point has been reached. One Team, a patch-based approach to delivering health and social care has been agreed. Central Manchester is working towards an actual reorganisation of Urgent Care. Everyone knows something has to happen, soon, very soon… preferably before the train crashes.

When in the course of human events

We’ve not actually declared independence yet but there are signs that we, the broad and disparate voluntary and community sector, are chafing at the ties that bind us, ready to tip the tea in the dock, put bugle to mouth. There are the development of strategic groups, collaborations, and the campaigning around the cuts. We’d like to think we had something to with it: a confident and appropriately bolshie voluntary sector is how things should be. Realistically, the dwindling importance of the public sector as a funder has probably played a big role in the changing dynamic. He that payeth the piper…….

How can one measure the milk of human kindness?

The answer of course is through cost benefit analysis using appropriate evidence gathered in randomised control trials ………… or is it? The social value movement is gathering momentum. There’s a social value policy for the Greater Manchester Combined Authorities and a Greater Manchester Social Value Network. Lots of organisations are talking about social value and how they can maximise theirs. It’s a reaction to the short-termism and inefficiency of “driving down costs” but will it get sufficient traction? It’s a rather more complex idea than cost-cutting.

Co-Co Production

Mentioned everywhere but it’s not happening, well only in rather small pockets. There are lots of things that are calling themselves co-production but they aren’t. In the main this is for one simple and straightforward reason, they don’t involve people who use services. What we are seeing is co-design with the voluntary sector, which is good, it’s just not the same as co-production. Public bodies know they need the voluntary sector and so they are making more attempts to include us, though often it‘s a bit ham-fisted.

Grrrrreater Manchester

It’s such an obvious trend it’s hardly worth mentioning. Devo-Manc is everywhere and is going to solve practically everything in some rather undefined way. It’s a good thing, probably, but we’re not sure about having a mayor, even Tony Lloyd, who we quite like. Now we need to get ourselves organised at a Greater Manchester level and talk to people about how we can bring about the radical change that we couldn’t quite achieve at a local level. Maybe Manchester LA could just take over all the other local authorities….

Loadsamoney

What’s better than a “new” idea? A “new” idea with money attached. If you want to get heard then put some money on the table as Manchester public bodies are desperate for some. There have been 3 examples that we know about where non-Manchester organisations have offered money in return for longer-term take-up of services by a public body but there are probably others. 2 were successful. To our minds this rather ignores all the “new” ideas and money that existing groups in Manchester already put into their projects and services without a guarantee of future funding.

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