What is Total Place?
Total Place was one key announcement resulting from Sir Michael Bichard’s Operational Efficiency Programme work on local incentives and empowerment, which seeks to reduce costs and introduce new ways of working through collaboration and local leadership, within the context of constrained resources and public expectations of higher quality services.
Total Place is a ‘whole area’ approach to public services
Total Place weaves together two complimentary approaches to public service transformation:-
- A ‘counting’ process that will map money flowing through Bradford (from central and local bodies) with the aim of better understanding the relationship between centrally and locally directed resources and between resources directed by different parts of the public sector, and the impact that both of these have on outcomes
- A ‘culture’ process that looks at the ‘way we do things around here’ in terms of working between and across local and central partners and the extent to which that helps or hinders improved outcomes.
Bradford is one of the 13 Total Place pilots announced as part of the Budget Report in April 2009.
Each pilot has its own focus, a theme which supports local priorities. Bradford District’s overall theme is supporting people back to independence, with the aim of integrating services around the individual.
Our Total Place project will ask fundamental questions about how public spending in Bradford fits with the priorities of the Bradford District Partnership, and how services can be improved to drive improved outcomes and greater efficiency.
Bradford’s Total Place Project
Bradford District Partnership (BDP) own the Total Place project and have worked together to identify an overall theme of providing a ‘gateway to integrated services’. The BDP has agreed to develop our methodology by focusing on three key themes:
- Children leaving a care environment
- Older people leaving hospital/care environments
- Offenders leaving prison
By focusing on these three themes we believe we can both improve the experience of the service users, and have a significant positive impact on the wider Bradford District community.
Our Approach
Under the governance of a Steering Group made up of the nominees of Bradford District Partnership, we have established a small project team, led by Tony Reeves and Becky Hellard from City of Bradford MDC, with three theme leaders taken from the senior management of the relevant BDP partners supported by experienced resources from the Leadership Centre.
Each of the theme leaders will engage service providers/commissioners, service users and other key stakeholders throughout the process to develop an understanding of
- What we do now and how well it works?
- What is the service users experience of what we do now?
- What do we do well that we should be sharing?
- What are the barriers and issues that prevent us doing well in some areas?
- How can we remove those barriers and issues and deliver a much more effective and efficient service to the users?
- How can we make the most of the total public sector spend in these areas?
To this end we will be running a series of workshops, interviews and conversations with a wide range of Bradford citizens during the rest of 2009.
Total Place Timescales
The national Total Place programme is due to report in March 2010, when the outcomes from each pilot will be fed into the Budget Report for that year.
We will clearly be working towards the timescales laid down by Government. However, Bradford District Partnership see our pilot as creating the template for how we will work together going forward over the next months and years..
Downloads and resources
For the Total Place Steering Group members, click here.
To see the governance structure for Bradford’s Total Place pilot, click here.
For a full information pack on Bradford District’s pilot, click here.
For the CLG/HMT Total Place Pilot introductory letter with information sheet, click here.
To view HM Treasury’s Operational Efficiency Programme report, please follow this link Operational Efficiency Programme - HM Treasury
For the Total Place website, click http://www.local.gov.uk/totalplace
Contacts
For more information about the Total Place pilot in Bradford District, Becky Hellard, Strategic Director for Corporate Services at City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council (becky.hellard@bradford.gov.uk) or Mike Parry, project manager (mike@bqc-network.com)
