Last month, the first-ever IDeA peer review of the management of a whole local area, including health, police, and the voluntary and business sectors, took place in Warwickshire, a Total Place pilot. Here, the peer review's lead chief executive, Chris Williams, describes the process, while Warwickshire CC chief executive, Jim Graham, gives his side of the experience.
No matter how good the organisational arrangements, systems or processes within and between organisations, partnership working depends on the relationships between organisations and individuals.
This is the finding of the first-ever IDeA peer review of a whole system involving county and district councils, health, police, voluntary organisations and the business community in Warwickshire.
Arguably, with the advent of Total Place-type initiatives, reviews of this sort are going to become more commonplace and more important in trying to judge the quality of partnership arrangements. As a sector, public services are keen to work together to develop a ‘challenge and support' approach to drive up service performance and avoid government intervention.
The IDeA was asked by Warwickshire's public services board to undertake a review of partnership working within the county area, and between the county and surrounding areas, in order to gain an external view of its progress against its own internal improvement plan.
The peer review is designed to help assess current achievements and capacity to change. It is not an inspection, but rather offers a supportive approach undertaken by friends – albeit critical friends. It aims to help identify current strengths as much as what needs to improve.
For this peer review, the IDeA assembled a formidable team, including two council leaders – one unitary and one district/county; two chief executives – one county and one district; two from health – one chair of a PCT and one chief executive of a PCT; a chief superintendent from the police; and a review manager from the IDeA.
Using peers from outside the region added value, as it is easier to be more objective when the team sees the area from an outsider's perspective. It also helps in giving clear feedback, especially if the messages are uncomfortable.
The team was on site for one week, during which its members conducted interviews, discussions and workshops with councillors, officers and partners from six councils, health, and police, the voluntary sector as well as other stakeholders. They also carried out focus groups with participating managers from across all partners and thematic groups.
They undertook observations of local community forums, and held informal discussions with local residents to ascertain their view on how joined up public services were, and how well they met residents' aspirations.
This review required a different mindset, because we were not reviewing a single council, but exploring working arrangements across a whole area.
A number of dimensions had to be taken into account, including the range of organisations delivering locally, but reporting to different government departments – often with conflicting priorities.
This, in turn, impacts on how agencies work together.
The key recommendations for the Warwickshire partnership fell into four broad headings:
Leadership, including the need to focus on a few key priorities and drive those forward hard, to work together to develop a strong collaborative leadership style and, most importantly, invest in leadership development across the partnerships, particularly at senior level
Working at local and sub-regional levels. We found some good examples of partnership working at an operational level, but also discovered that this went on despite formal partnership structures, and often partners deliberately went outside those formal partnership structures to get things done. While it is tempting for organisations to get involved in wider sub-regional groupings, this is likely to be at the expense of local initiatives unless strong local partnerships are developed first.
