Total Place Staffordshire
Total Place is a new initiative that looks at how a 'whole area' approach to public services can lead to better services at less cost. It seeks to identify and avoid overlap and duplication between organisations - delivering a step change in both service improvement and efficiency at the local level.
The impact of the economic downturn means all of the public sector needs to find radical new solutions to not only deliver better value for money, but also better local services more tailored to local needs.
With this in mind, The Total Place approach has been developed over twelve months through the work of 63 local authorities, 34 Primary Care Trusts, 12 fire authorities, 13 police authorities, and a wide range of third sector organisations and service delivery bodies in conjunction with HM Treasury. The 13 identified pilot sites served a combined population of more than 11 million people. More than 70 other local areas have been engaged in similar work.
The new ways of working are to be replicated by the implementation of the Staffordshire model incorporating Staffordshire Cares that will ensure:
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strategic planning starts from the citizen viewpoint to break down the organisational and service silos which cause confusion to citizens, create wasteful burdens of data collection and management on the frontline and which contribute to poor alignment of services; and
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strong local, collective and focused leadership which supports joined up working and shared solutions to problems with citizens at the heart of service design
The aims of Total Place include:
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making changes to services that can improve the lives of local residents and deliver better value
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delivering early savings to validate the work
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developing a body of knowledge and learning about how more effective cross-agency working can deliver the above.
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the weaving together of three complementary strands of work: 'counting', 'culture' and 'customer needs'
The counting process maps money flowing through the place (from central and local bodies) and makes links between services, to identify where public money can be spent more effectively. This forms part of Lord Michael Bichard's work on the Operational Efficiency Programme, which is looking at where efficiency savings can be made in the public sector.
The culture process looks at the way existing cultures (the way we do things at the moment) actually help or hinder the process. Together, these strands aim to identify potential efficiencies and help people and organisations work together to achieve them.
The customer needs process helps to better understand customer need and identify opportunities for collaboration between agencies on service redesign and use of resources. It will also capture and share wider learning about customer insight from other sectors and places helping to realise the potential benefits of customer insight work, particularly the opportunities to join up and exploit data about shared customers in themed work.
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