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We are told it is good to talk and when it is adult social care reform under discussion, it must be. A pioneering discussion forum at Lambeth LBC is an initiative which ticks a number of government boxes in one go. Four years ago, the south London council set up its health and social care voluntary and community sector forum and since then, its membership has tripled to 198 voluntary and community sector organisations, whose staff come along both to network and be in the front row when the council unveils its plans for service commissioning. Such a forum fits in happily with the Government's seminal adult social care document, Putting People First, which urged all councils to set up ‘forums, networks and task groups' to get frontline and council staff talking about how failing services could be bettered – the report admits that the community care legislation of 1990 led to a system which ‘often fails to respond to peoples' needs.' Lambeth's forum puts it ahead of the game, according to the divisional director for strategy and commissioning in adult and community services, Helen Charlesworth-May. ‘The forum came out of a recognition that the people who provide services are often the people who come up with the best ideas about how services should be run,' she says. ‘Before, we ran our own services and owned our own care homes so we didn't need to talk to other organisations about how we were working. The voluntary sector has a close relationship to the communities it works in and we can only benefit from tapping into that,' says Ms Charlesworth-May. She added: ‘The forum is not about saving money. It is about relationships based on shared values. In setting up the forum we have given ourselves an advantage.' Lambeth's forum is open to members of any voluntary or community sector organisation that has an interest in health and social care in Lambeth. Members turn up every three months to share ideas and information. It costs £1,500 a year to run and the only large expense is the staffing element – Lambeth's partnerships manager Elaine Aherne spends half of her time on running the forum. One of the forum's co-chairs, David Strong, is the director of the Lambeth Disability Advice Service. He said: ‘Lambeth's voluntary organisations have a wealth of knowledge about providing services to our communities and the forum enables us to learn from each other, engage with major issues on the health and social care agenda and work constructively with colleagues from the statutory sector to address the opportunities and challenges involved in partnership working.' The forum presents an all-round good news story. The council wanted a space in which to inform front-line organisations in Lambeth about their plans for service commissioning, and local voluntary and community organisations wanted the chance to network and to be involved at an early stage in the development and implementation of new policies and service changes coming out of the council. As the cost of care services rises, and the numbers of people needing it rises, more councils may look into setting up such a forum, not least to win the hearts and minds of the people who run their services. Helen Charlesworth-May advises councils to remember the following in order to set up a successful forum: provide a dedicated staff member to co-ordinate it ensure a strong voluntary and community sector rep resentation and involvement - at all stages of making the arrangements and setting the agendas make attending worth their while - ask organisations and individuals who attend for input on what they like and don't like, and what they want to get out of the forum get formal and informal feedback on a constant basis clearly outline from the start what the forum can and can't do for its members the forum shouldn't exist in isolation - link it in with governance structures so that the members have a voice where decisions are being made (eg, in Lambeth the forum joint chairs sit on the borough's health and social care partnership board) plan ahead to develop the forum and ensure it tackles key current and future issues set up an online forum for organisations that aren't always able to get to meetings develop a working group who meet in advance of each meeting to agree the agenda and programme.

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WHITEHALL

It's good to talk

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