Principles met

  • We will develop systems that enable citizens to be equal partners in designing and commissioning public services and in determining the use of public resources.
  • We will embrace innovation in how we work with local communities to drive positive change.
  • We will capture and ‘expand’ the experience and learning from individual projects and approaches in order to encourage broader application of co-operative principles within individual member Councils and across the Network.
  • We will support the development of a framework and criteria for social value, giving substance to the concept and supporting Councils with the tools to ensure better local social and economic outcomes.
  • In exploring new ways of meeting the priority needs of our communities we will encourage models, such as co-operatives and mutuals, which give greater influence and voice to staff and users. in designing and commissioning public services and in determining the use of public resources.
  • As a membership organisation, we will make this statement of our principles operational by: • Co-operation among members: Our members work together to help each other implement our values, sharing experiences and learning. • Openness of membership: Full, Associate and Affiliate Membership is open to any qualifying Council, organisation or individual who shares our values and is committed to putting them into action. • Co-production of the Network’s work: Members help shape the Network’s work programme and the content of events and written products. • Action-focused: The network is a vehicle for helping councils translate co-operative values and principles into policy and practice. •Membership-based: The network is majority funded by modest membership subscriptions from its member Councils, Associates and Affiliates. •Non-party-political: Members share the belief that working co-operatively within and across communities holds the key to tackling today’s challenges.

The story of the complex needs alliance begins in 2012 when Plymouth participated in the bidding process for the BIG Lottery Making Every Adult Matter fund. As part of that process we carried out a huge consultation with services and the people that use them. As a result, commissioners, services, and the people using those services concluded that parts of the system were highly dysfunctional. Targets were disparate and set-up perverse incentives, there was little or no synergy between commissioning strategies, competition militated against co-operation to the detriment of people using services and thresholds and boundaries had little utility other than as a means of excluding people from services. We were unsuccessful with the lottery bid but felt the issues were so important that we would continue the work with a view to transformational change towards a whole system approach with the needs of the end user at the centre of the process.

Story of Change

When the 2012 lottery bid was unsuccessful, the core leadership team of the bid continued to meet weekly for 18 months to try to progress some of the learning garnered during the bid and to maintain momentum. In early 2014, it became clear that continuing austerity meant complex needs services – drugs, alcohol, homelessness, and mental health were unsustainable in their then-current form. The director of the Integrated Commissioning Team, therefore, invited the leadership team and the public health person facilitating the team to work with two commissioners to explore more systemic approaches to complex needs with a view to a radical re-design.

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