Agenda item

The Executive Member for Adult Social Care and Public Health submitted a report for Executive consideration. The purpose of the report was to set out how we work together collectively to improve the health and wellbeing of local communities. It highlighted the different experiences of health and illness across South Tees and the key challenges that were faced.

The Report used the experience and learning from the You’ve Got This (YGT) programme which was a Sport England funded Place Partnership that had challenged traditional ways of working over the last six years. The programme took a place-based systems approach driven by insight and learning, collaboration and distributed leadership, framed within the context of physical activity.

There were several learning points detailed at paragraph 3.1 in the report which aimed to extract the learning of value to a much broader context than the work to create and support “Active Lives as a Way of Life”. Those learning points included:

a)    Leadership was often considered in a hierarchical sense, with the value and importance of leadership perceived to increase moving up the hierarchy. The You’ve Got This Programme had demonstrated that different types of leadership existed throughout organisations and in communities and influencing leadership much more broadly was necessary to achieve change within and across organisations.

b)    Traditional partnership models of delivery that focused on compliance and accountability could often exclude creativity and discovery as well as building shared ownership. These models could drive a transactional approach and miss the opportunity to develop relationships within and between people in organisations that could also influence behaviours beyond the immediate work. This in turn could open new and different areas to progress the aspirations of the partnership. Engagement of the leadership of the “horizontals” was important.

c)    To achieve system-change the Council needed to pay attention to organisational policies, processes and structures and how they promoted or acted against achieving desired outcomes. For example, competitive procurement processes were often a barrier to collaboration, pitting potential partners against each other, rather than encouraging them to combine their strengths. Deeper consideration of those policies, processes and organisational structures and their impact on achieving system change is necessary to fully realise the benefits of partnership working.

OPTIONS

There were no other options put forward as part of the report.

AGREED that Executive:

1.    NOTES and consider the learning detailed in the report as a set of principles to inform the development of transformation programmes and shape the development of a future-ready organisation.

2.    NOTES and consider the learning detailed in the report to support understanding of how the Council could work more effectively together across agencies and communities to achieve the improvements in wellbeing articulated in the Mission-led Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

REASONS

The learning identified in the Report will contribute to the development of transformation programmes and shape the development of a future-ready organisation.

Learning from the You Got This programme, which had been developed over six years, challenging traditional ways of working, taking a place-based systems approach driven by insight and learning, collaboration and distributed leadership will support delivery of the Middlesbrough Council Plan 2024-2027.