Purpose of the project
The role of the Care Services Improvement Partnership is to support:
- The improvement of services to achieve better outcomes.
- People to live more independently by promoting more choice,control and equality.
- Community-based action to improve health and well-being.
- System reform – the way in which health and social care fit together to achieve a more joined up experience for people.
In order to fulfil its role CSIP required its eight Regional Development Centres to build strong relationships with its key stakeholders – including Directors of Adult Social Services,Government Offices,Regional Centres of Excellence,Commission for Social Care Inspection,Skills for Care.
Social Care Strategies was commissioned to:
- Review the fitness for purpose of the Regional Development Centres to deliver CSIP’s social care programme.
- Identify Directors of Adult Social Services’ perceptions of the role of CSIP in general and the RDCs in particular.
- Propose actions to strengthen the identity,capacity and capability of the organisation to deliver the social care programme.
- Identify stakeholders’ perceptions of priorities for CSIP involvement in local service improvement.
- Propose practical steps to develop continuing relationships and communications between the RDCs and local councils with social services responsibilities.
- Devise protocols to govern national and regional relationships between CSIP and its key partners in service improvement – CSCI,IDeA and Skills for Care.
Key issues
The project identified and advised on a number of issues essential to the development of the organisation’s role and effectiveness:
- Organisation development: CSIP needed to focus on the development of its own organisation before it could fully realise its potential to support others to improve.
- Identity and reputation: CSIP’s identity in the eyes of its stakeholders was weak – it was seen as a range of separate ‘brands’ rather than a single organisation with a common purpose.
- Whole systems: even the top people in social care and health organisations were confused about which government agency is responsible for what – if these agencies are to support the development of whole systems working,it is reasonable to expect that they will themselves work together in a co-ordinated way.
- CSIP’s unique contribution: RDCs needed to distinguish themselves from other improvement and development agencies by identifying and promoting their unique contribution to the whole system.
- Skills and resources to deliver: having identified and agreed its purpose,CSIP needed to ensure that its RDCs had the skills and resources to meet its customers’ expectations.
Project outcomes
Social Care Strategies Ltd’s intervention contributed to a number of outcomes,which have enhanced CSIP ’s organisational capability:
- Significantly improved understanding among Directors of Adult Social Services of the role and contribution of CSIP in general and the RDCs in particular.
- RDCs’ understanding of local adult social care priorities and cross-cutting regional themes.
- A stronger,more purposeful relationship with the Association of Directors of Social Services.
- More focused and co-ordinated relationships between CSIP and other national agencies concerned with improving public services – CSCI,IDeA,Social Care Institute for Excellence.,Skills for Care.
- Clarification of CSIP’s own priorities for internal organisation development.