Services2gether
From Norfolk RCC
|
Services2Gether is an initiative being piloted as part of the County Council's Access4Life project which aims to improve access to services in rural communities.
Services2Gether was a six month feasibility project running from October 2007 to April 2008 to understand the practicalities and viability of multi-provider outreach and mobile service delivery, both from the perspective of providers and whether it addresses community need.
The project was carried out in the Access4Life project area between Blakeney and Briston in North Norfolk. Prior research indicated that access to key services by means other than private transport is particularly difficult in this area and public consultation suggested there was support for improved outreach facilities.
Integrated outreach provision in theory provides a number of perceived benefits. This includes lower costs through improved efficiency and reduced duplication, improved uptake of opportunities by reduced potential for stigmatisation and increase in cross referrals. It also has the potential, through community consultation, to better reflect the community's access needs. The Services2Gether project aimed to establish whether the predicted benefits are actually achievable.
The Services2Gether project followed a four stage process of delivery:
- Engagement with service providers to gain an overview of their outreach delivery requirements and capacity
- Consultation with the community to identify specific outreach needs
- Coordination of six one off trial events within the project area for testing various methods of delivery
- Drawing conclusions from the previous three stages to develop a view as to whether delivering multi-provider outreach services is viable delivery model and if it is provide an action plan for future delivery
Service Providers
A range of service providers were involved in this project. This included the County Council's Planning & Transportation Department, Library Services, Adult Education and Trading Standards, Norfolk Rural Community Council, Norfolk Voluntary Services, CAB, Norfolk Primary Care Trust, North Norfolk Skills Partnership, First Focus and a number of other smaller providers.
Whilst all service providers expressed a desire to ensure their services reached smaller communities there are a number of issues to outreach provision:
- It is not unusual for outreach services to be delivered through specific short-term funding streams
- Providers had differing planning and funding mechanisms, meaning that a uniform approach in the first instance to establishing this as a delivery model would not be possible
- There are issues around the governance of certain types of outreach provision in terms of how follow up work is handled, for example in relation to healthcare
- Whilst existing resources could be used to support the delivery of this pilot project, there would be a need to consider resources availability for wider roll out
Overall, there were no major problems associated with the suggestion of joint outreach activities from any of the service providers involved. However, factors such as sufficient space, time and type of environment were considered important.
Community Consultation
The level of community engagement varied across the project area. A number of communities, including Langham, where there are well established community activities such as coffee mornings were very supportive and encouraging of the project. Other communities, where there is less activity, were less so. This is a common theme replicated across the county. Often activity is lowest in more deprived areas necessitating significant ground work in order to establish meaningful community engagement.
Consultation with the community took the form of a number of workshops and prioritisation exercises as well as informal interviews. Interestingly there was little variation between communities in terms of preferences for the type of outreach service provision. The following priority areas were identified:
- Police presence
- General advice services
- Basic food shopping
- Activities that had a strong social focus
- Basic healthcare such as blood pressure tests
Trial Service Events
In total six trial events were carried out in order to test the feasibility of different delivery methods. These included integrated provision from one mobile vehicle, static provision from a community building and differing delivery time periods and mixes of service provider.
Conclusions from project
It is possible to draw a number of conclusions from the Services2Gether project:
- Integrated service delivery gives the real potential for minimising individual organisation costs of outreach work
- An integrated programme provides a ready made delivery network for the targeting of information into smaller communities that are often difficult to penetrate
- As well as improving access to services this type of delivery model provides a key social cohesion function within rural communities, helping to facilitate community activity and informal support networks
- To achieve sustainability, delivery needs to focus on larger villages and key service centres
- The effectiveness of outreach provision is highly dependent on the specifics of how it is delivered
Future Delivery
Providing services in rural areas is an ongoing challenge given the sparseness of population and the corresponding relative expense of delivery. Findings from this project indicate that integrated outreach delivery could provide a viable service delivery model to help overcome these challenges.
It is recommended that a partnership group be established to plan and deliver a roll out program. In the first instance it is proposed that this targets specific areas of identify deprivation.
Over the longer term, should roll out prove successful, there is potential to mainstream integrated delivery. This is unlikely to be possible over the short term, thus initial roll out will be dependent on the availability of grant funding.
Full Report
A copy of the full report is available to download by clicking here
