The East Midlands is the fourth largest and third most rural region in England. The region is characterised by extreme pockets of poverty and deprivation amidst growth, affluence and prosperity. The East Midlands performs less well than the UK average on productivity and faces a particular challenge in raising skill levels so as to enhance economic performance. There is a regional drive to improve opportunities for disadvantaged groups addressing barriers to labour market participation and improving skills and enterprise chances. (See www.emda.org.uk/res) Rising levels of unemployment across the region due to the recession will likely lead to increased levels of poverty across the East Midlands further entrenching disparities and inequalities between various interest groups.
Likely implications for your organisation
The East Midlands is characterized by disparities between urban and rural areas, affluent communities and pockets of high deprivation. Is your organisation prepared to address the challenges of unemployment, inequality and poverty?
Employment is a key driver for prosperity and poverty alleviation. As more people lose their means of livelihood through unemployment there is likely to be an increase in demand for voluntary and public sector services. Failure by the public sector to cope with demand for their services and resources might necessitate increased demand for voluntary sector involvement in service provision and providing a safety net.
The way forward
There is potential for more people falling on the poverty line due to the economic downturn. One East Midlands encourages the voluntary sector to proactively engage with issues and formulate policy proposals with solution to issues. Political parties are already campaigning and debating on these issues running down to the election. This is an opportunity for the sector to lobby and influence policy. It is likely that there will be more policies and agendas to meet the increasing problems and demands.
The One East Midlands Social Inclusion Policy Forum provides an opportunity for decision makers and people experiencing exclusion to share information and experience and develop new and more effective responses to social exclusion in the region. Participation in this forum can enable organisations to:
cope with increasing demand for voluntary sector services as safety net.
work together in order to devise means for dealing with new demands for people out of employment and facing poverty.
devise means for enabling people participation in resolving their problems.
One example of work taking place in the East Midlands is the Lincolnshire Co-operative Development Agency which worked on a pilot which identified a number of trends happening locally.
The Lincolnshire Co-operative Development Agency provides strategic intervention, tailored advice and development support to community and voluntary groups. LCDA have undertaken various work on the Personalisation of Health & Social Care.
Background of Adult Social Care in Lincolnshire
Adult Social Care in Lincolnshire has been divided into 3 areas:
Prevention – universal services
Re-ablement – up to 6 weeks
Maintenance – longer term support
Maintenance is being developed into a personalised service. Once a person has been indentified as needing long term support they are assessed using the Resource Allocation System (RAS) following which the points score is translated into a budget. A support plan is put into place to meet that individual’s needs. Purchasing services can be provided directly by Local Authority; commissioned by the LA or by direct payments (from the service user to the service provider).
In Lincolnshire there are 20,000 in long term social care and of those 15,000 are elderly. A significant proportion of those in long term care have complex, multiple needs and individuals may find it difficult to understand the choices and make the right decision in order to buy in the services they need. Good quality, objective advice is needed and this pilot is developing Independent Living Advisors. Such advisors should to be independent of Social Services and Social Care providers.
There are several key points that have come out of the pilot:
Delivering services on a large scale does not work;
there needs to be diversification on a small scale and at a local level;
Personalisation is an opportunity for innovation and to improve efficiency;
Social Care service providers often do not have robust business models in place and there is the added difficulty of not knowing the emerging market environment;
More elderly people are staying longer in their own homes and there is likely to be a greater need for personal assistants.
Moving forward
Individual Budgets Network Lincolnshire
The Individual Budgets Network Lincolnshire (www.ibnl.org.uk) is made up of organisations in the public, voluntary, community and private sector who have an interest in health and social care. In response to the governments Putting People First Agenda, the network is looking at ways in which the services and support they provide can be more tailored towards the individual. The Network is developing a database of support service providers.
When considering future challenges it is easy to focus on the looming financial constraints facing the sector. However, the bigger challenge for us isn’t how do we plug the funding gaps but how do we get smarter about delivering our influencing roles in the future.
The key to this has to be collaboration. Taking the future of regional planning as an example there is enormous opportunity and potential benefit for communities across England in the drawing together of geographical and economic planning with social and environmental considerations. However, to get it right there is an equal need to ensure that the voice of the ‘social purpose’ sector is embedded in the design and delivery of this ‘brave new world’ approach.
If we can stop thinking in silos of VCS, social enterprise, regeneration etc and start thinking about people, places and dynamics then collectively the ‘third sector’ in its widest definition can have an enormous impact. However, it’s the definition of Third Sector that throws us most. As a VCS network we work closely with other networks such as Social Enterprise to gain co-ordination of views but if we are talking about where people live and work we then have to include the perspectives of housing, culture and leisure, trade unions and many others to get a balanced and sustainable perspective of the future.
In the East Midlands we are exploring what it means to be ‘third sector’ at regional level and how collaborating might ensure a powerful voice to offer more consistent challenge to the public sector. Clearly, with the growing role of Local Authorities, there is need for similar coordination of views at local level too.
However, organising ourselves to enable this is our problem to solve and the clock is ticking. We can blame no-one else if we one day raise our eyes from the task of plotting our future course to see that the boat has already sailed away without us.
Henry
Inequality between local areas
Poverty and Inequality - East Midlands
The East Midlands is the fourth largest and third most rural region in England. The region is characterised by extreme pockets of poverty and deprivation amidst growth, affluence and prosperity. The East Midlands performs less well than the UK average on productivity and faces a particular challenge in raising skill levels so as to enhance economic performance. There is a regional drive to improve opportunities for disadvantaged groups addressing barriers to labour market participation and improving skills and enterprise chances. (See www.emda.org.uk/res) Rising levels of unemployment across the region due to the recession will likely lead to increased levels of poverty across the East Midlands further entrenching disparities and inequalities between various interest groups.
Likely implications for your organisation The East Midlands is characterized by disparities between urban and rural areas, affluent communities and pockets of high deprivation. Is your organisation prepared to address the challenges of unemployment, inequality and poverty?
Employment is a key driver for prosperity and poverty alleviation. As more people lose their means of livelihood through unemployment there is likely to be an increase in demand for voluntary and public sector services. Failure by the public sector to cope with demand for their services and resources might necessitate increased demand for voluntary sector involvement in service provision and providing a safety net.
The way forward There is potential for more people falling on the poverty line due to the economic downturn. One East Midlands encourages the voluntary sector to proactively engage with issues and formulate policy proposals with solution to issues. Political parties are already campaigning and debating on these issues running down to the election. This is an opportunity for the sector to lobby and influence policy. It is likely that there will be more policies and agendas to meet the increasing problems and demands.
The One East Midlands Social Inclusion Policy Forum provides an opportunity for decision makers and people experiencing exclusion to share information and experience and develop new and more effective responses to social exclusion in the region. Participation in this forum can enable organisations to:
For more information about the forum see www.oneeastmidlands.org.uk/socialinclusion. For its program and events please contact laurie@cefet.org.uk
Hannah
Personalisation of services
One example of work taking place in the East Midlands is the Lincolnshire Co-operative Development Agency which worked on a pilot which identified a number of trends happening locally.
The Lincolnshire Co-operative Development Agency provides strategic intervention, tailored advice and development support to community and voluntary groups. LCDA have undertaken various work on the Personalisation of Health & Social Care.
Background of Adult Social Care in Lincolnshire
Adult Social Care in Lincolnshire has been divided into 3 areas:
Maintenance is being developed into a personalised service. Once a person has been indentified as needing long term support they are assessed using the Resource Allocation System (RAS) following which the points score is translated into a budget. A support plan is put into place to meet that individual’s needs. Purchasing services can be provided directly by Local Authority; commissioned by the LA or by direct payments (from the service user to the service provider).
In Lincolnshire there are 20,000 in long term social care and of those 15,000 are elderly. A significant proportion of those in long term care have complex, multiple needs and individuals may find it difficult to understand the choices and make the right decision in order to buy in the services they need. Good quality, objective advice is needed and this pilot is developing Independent Living Advisors. Such advisors should to be independent of Social Services and Social Care providers.
There are several key points that have come out of the pilot:
Moving forward
Individual Budgets Network Lincolnshire The Individual Budgets Network Lincolnshire (www.ibnl.org.uk) is made up of organisations in the public, voluntary, community and private sector who have an interest in health and social care. In response to the governments Putting People First Agenda, the network is looking at ways in which the services and support they provide can be more tailored towards the individual. The Network is developing a database of support service providers.
Rachel
Working Together as the Third Sector
When considering future challenges it is easy to focus on the looming financial constraints facing the sector. However, the bigger challenge for us isn’t how do we plug the funding gaps but how do we get smarter about delivering our influencing roles in the future.
The key to this has to be collaboration. Taking the future of regional planning as an example there is enormous opportunity and potential benefit for communities across England in the drawing together of geographical and economic planning with social and environmental considerations. However, to get it right there is an equal need to ensure that the voice of the ‘social purpose’ sector is embedded in the design and delivery of this ‘brave new world’ approach.
If we can stop thinking in silos of VCS, social enterprise, regeneration etc and start thinking about people, places and dynamics then collectively the ‘third sector’ in its widest definition can have an enormous impact. However, it’s the definition of Third Sector that throws us most. As a VCS network we work closely with other networks such as Social Enterprise to gain co-ordination of views but if we are talking about where people live and work we then have to include the perspectives of housing, culture and leisure, trade unions and many others to get a balanced and sustainable perspective of the future.
In the East Midlands we are exploring what it means to be ‘third sector’ at regional level and how collaborating might ensure a powerful voice to offer more consistent challenge to the public sector. Clearly, with the growing role of Local Authorities, there is need for similar coordination of views at local level too.
However, organising ourselves to enable this is our problem to solve and the clock is ticking. We can blame no-one else if we one day raise our eyes from the task of plotting our future course to see that the boat has already sailed away without us.