ELITE Paper Solutions: Building bridges between the public sector and social enterprise

ELITE Paper Solutions is a social enterprise based in Merthyr Tydfil, specialising in document management storage and data shredding.  

As illustrated by its acronym – Equality Linked Into Training and Employment – ELITE aims to provide a fully inclusive workplace to support those traditionally furthest from the labour market, for example due to disability, health conditions or long-term unemployment, to gain skills and jobs. 

ELITE received a Challenge Fund grant to further develop its model to a point where it could deliver larger-scale contracts, which would in turn support more jobs, skills and volunteering opportunities. Part of this included influencing public sector stakeholders to change their procurement practices to allow them to place more contracts with social enterprises. 

The grant was invested in capital and revenue items to grow the team and build organisational capacity. This included an Employment Advisor to work with referral agencies and other support bodies to help individuals access and progress through ELITE’s training and work opportunities. 

These investments not only helped ELITE win 3 large public sector contracts but enabled it to respond quickly to the changing needs of its customers brought about by the Covid pandemic, increasing its revenue by £90,000 compared with the previous year. 

For example, one contract due to start on the cusp of lockdown increased its receptacles order by one third due to a pivot in ways of working which produced far more paper waste than first planned for. With its additional capacity ELITE was able to supply the extra collection bins required. 

At the other end of the spectrum, the move for many organisations away from the office environment, has led to a surge in demand for physical information to be made available online. The rapid rise in uptake of its confidential scanning services has allowed ELITE to hire nine new members of staff to assist its scanning section. 

ELITE is also proud to have increased other contracts, including for the NHS, in response to increased demand for the archive storage service that it provides, to safely store important records. 

Alongside its increasing commercial success, the grant has enabled ELITE to further develop its core activity of supporting those traditionally excluded from skills and work opportunities. Since 2015, the social enterprise section of the Charity, has worked with over 250 people, with a disability or disadvantage and believes that there is a job for everyone, regardless of their support need. 

As an example, ELITE CEO Andrea Wayman says, “Our scanning section is a fantastic place for people who are high functioning on the autistic spectrum, due to the need for attention to detail, supporting them to develop their social skills, which may have been a barrier to employment in the past. Their development has created a tremendous team.” 

In this regard, the Challenge Fund project also serves as a demonstrator of the role that social enterprises can play in the foundational economy. Andrea believes that the ELITE model can be adopted by any workplace, including larger SMEs and the Public Sector, to enable more diverse workforces, aid local economies and increase understanding of the contributions that can be made by people who are often overlooked.  

To support Challenge Fund grantees, Welsh Government also operates a community of practice to bring projects together to share learning and challenges. Andrea believes this has been a  

huge benefit for relationship building that has led to multiple new referrals as well as a new client. This has also been an opportunity for ELITE to speak as ‘the voice of social purchasing’ and positively inform and influence those who sit on the purchasing side of procurement. 

Speaking about the Community of Practice, Andrea shares, “I didn’t realise the bonus that the communities of practice would bring to us. I just thought it was something that had been thought about afterwards, whereas it’s been as important to us as having the grant itself.” 

As ELITE looks forward, its goals are to continue growing and promoting its model. This includes gaining more opportunities within the public sector – and paving the way for other social enterprises to follow suit. 

ELITE Paper Solutions: Building bridges between the public sector and social enterprise Read More »

Blaenau Gwent Climate Assembly

In March 2021, it will bring together 50 people from the Blaenau Gwent area to address the question:

What should we do in Blaenau Gwent to tackle the climate crisis in a way that is fair and improves living standards for everyone?

The participants will hear evidence, discuss the issues, and produce recommendations for what local public service organisations, communities and individuals can do to address the climate crisis. The recommendations made will be considered by organisations including Blaenau Gwent Council and will help to shape the climate plans of local housing associations.

The Climate Assembly will explore the overarching question through learning about, and discussion of related sub-themes including housing, nature / green space and transport.

Lead Experts will present information on climate change and the sub-themes to provide context for the discussions.

The Assembly is being organised by four housing associations in Blaenau Gwent in collaboration with Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council, Electoral Reform Society, Cynnal Cymru.

A Steering Group has been established to oversee the organisation and format of the Assembly.

Find out more >>

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Practice Solutions: A holistic approach to community resilience in Rhondda Cynon Taf

Practice Solutions is a training and consultancy organisation, providing flexible, out-of-the-box support for companies within the social care, health, voluntary and private sectors. Its aim is to help organisations to nurture well-being in their workforces and communities through implementing meaningful and sustainable change.  

Having worked with many social care businesses since 1999, Practice Solutions recognised that smaller providers often struggled with ‘back office’ functions including finance, HR, marketing or tendering. In turn this reduced their ability to secure the larger-scale contracts they needed to grow. 

This led to the idea of a localised support network for these businesses that could increase their capacity to deliver services and to win larger scale bids through providing shared ‘back-office’ functions as well as advice, support and relationship-brokering, particularly with the public sector. 

This was felt to be particularly important for those working in social care, with SMEs and micro-firms already under growing pressure and a national campaign to recruit 20,000 more carers in Wales by 2030. 

If successful, the model could then be rolled out to all those other foundational businesses that supported these, and other, service providers.  

In 2019, the Practice Solutions team received a Welsh Government Foundational Economy Challenge Fund grant to test the appetite for such a model with businesses in Rhondda Cynon Taf.     

Initially focused around social care providers, the Connect4SuccessRCT project aimed to deliver a systems-wide approach to ensure that the rising care needs of the future could be met by boosting both the local care sector, and the wider foundational economy. 

The project would provide ‘back office’ support to local care sector SME’s including staff recruitment and retention advice, training to those working with vulnerable people, finance and marketing assistance and advice on tendering.  

It would also work to connect local firms with public bodies to try to ensure that more public sector contracts were awarded locally, instead of to large corporate providers.  This would include breaking down barriers to successful tendering and raising the profile of local providers to public sector audiences. 

Although the project started well with successful outreach to all parties, the impact of COVID-19 inevitably limited the ability of social care providers and public bodies to engage with it. 

In response, the project increased its focus on other foundational economy businesses that, by contributing to local community resilience, also support health and social care agendas and the community at large.  

A key tool was the Connect4SuccessRCT website that aims to allow local providers to market their services and also potentially to collaborate in order to secure and deliver large-scale public sector contracts that would otherwise be out of reach. 

To date, 54 local organisations have signed up including a radio station, cleaners, training organisations, builders, manufacturers and distributers of PPE. 

Although the pandemic caused the project’s primary audience to change, Connect4SuccessRCT has not lost sight of its original aims to support the health and care sectors nor its holistic outlook. 

 Dafydd Thomas, the project lead at Practice Solutions, explains: 

 “The model works on the basis of providing co-benefits to all parties.  Businesses are not only given support on how to tender, marketing tips, and other business advice when they join Connect4SuccessRCT but we’ll also be providing training so that their employees will be able to recognise when someone might be vulnerable, or at risk. This helps add to that business’ social impact and will ultimately help public services to intervene before the issues becomes more serious and costly.” 

This additional ‘early-warning system’ by local firms that have daily contact with large numbers of the county’s residents can not only help reduce preventable hospitalisations and suffering but it also enables the responsibility of care to be shared and grown throughout the community. 

Practice Solutions is also still working to bridge the gap between the public sector and service providers to enable greater collaboration and more public funds to be channeled through the local economy. 

Staff have been liaising with procurement officers and local authorities to understand all the elements that businesses need to successfully secure contracts. This includes updated policies, certifications and information on upcoming work and means that businesses will be more prepared to go out and get contracts even when the initial Connect4Success pilot comes to an end in March 2021. 

This work has also captured some valuable insights into how the process of tendering can be made more accessible, particularly for those who have less experience or who may not be as digitally apt.  

Practice Solutions has been able to feed back this experience to Sell2Wales, Business Wales, Rhondda Cynon Taf Country Borough Council, and other local public services to help them understand the barriers that local suppliers face.   

Dafydd Thomas went on to say 

“One of the many things that the pandemic has taught us is that local services are only as good as their supply chain – think of the different challenges with supplying PPE. We want to see more local businesses supplying more services to the local public sector – providing more local jobs for people closer to home and ensuring that more public money is kept circulating at a local level.” 

The team is also building a directory of all businesses in Rhondda Cynon Taf which in time, will help the public sector procurement teams to search for specific skillsets and approach businesses that meet contract requirements.  

Although Practice Solutions believes that the pilot has proven successful, it has not been without challenges. Connections with partners were hard to forge during the peak months of the pandemic and in one case it had taken more than 9 months to just get a meeting with one of the target public bodies. Dafydd explains that “partners were simply not in a place where they could engage” despite the additional resource that projects like Connect4SuccessRCT can offer.  

Similarly, economic pressures meant that the long-term holistic outlook of the project did not appeal to some of the target SMEs and micro-firms, with businesses being much more interested in ‘help me get something now’ than what may be available in ‘some golden future.’” 

Despite these challenges, the project has proven flexible and responsive to local needs. Long-term, the organisation would like to adapt this model to become a formal membership co-operative and invite the community to be involved. In addition to the original aims of closer collaboration with the public sector, it would also connect local people with local, reputable businesses in property maintenance, transport or general support services. 

As well as helping boost the local economy, it is thought that this could particularly help the most vulnerable people in the community to live independently for longer, increasing individual well-being as well as further reducing the pressure on local health and social care providers. 

Practice Solutions: A holistic approach to community resilience in Rhondda Cynon Taf Read More »

Simply Do Ideas: Helping Wales lead the way in public sector innovation

Simply Do Ideas is an SME based in south Wales. Its purpose is to enable large organisations to crowdsource ideas to solve strategic organisational challenges. A key tool is its award-winning digital platform, an end-to-end innovation workflow which makes the process of managing innovation quicker, easier and more effective. It does this by enabling organisations to shape and share live, media-rich briefs in a secure portal designed to capture focused solutions from employees or external suppliers. This is known as challenge-led innovation. 

>> How Simply Do Works << 

The company recognized that the time, cost and risk typically associated with innovation are the three key barriers for most public sector organisations when developing creative and innovative solutions to their problems. Confident that their model could help, the company put forward a proposal to test their approach in the context of the social and economic challenges facing public bodies and communities in the South Wales Valleys. 

A Challenge Fund grant was awarded to build upon their earlier work in policing, advanced manufacturing and financial services to connect foundational economy challenges with crowd-sourced entrepreneurial solutions from two key stakeholder groups; the first, local colleges and universities and the second, local SMEs. 

The project was delivered in two distinct phases: 

Phase one aimed to address a shared problem between industry, education providers and their students. Time poor, risk averse employers need new ideas to survive and thrive, whilst students need access to ‘real-world’ experiences to be ready for the world of work. In the middle, further and higher education providers are tasked with heavy employability targets and stretching curriculum outcomes. 

During this phase, students from 8 colleges and universities in and around the south Wales Valleys were presented with live briefs and supported to generate innovative solutions to key marketplace challenges. The briefs came from organisations across foundational economy sectors, including those in hospitality, transport, housing and construction. 

More than 400 students engaged in these challenges, enabling the client organisations to capture early-stage ideas that could then be tested in the marketplace. At the same time, the students gained essential experience of working on a real-time business brief, something not otherwise easily accessible to them. 

As Simply Do Ideas moved into phase two of the pilot, the company turned its focus to supplier-led innovation, which encourages organisations to work with the expertise in their supplier network in order to bring new and existing products and services to market faster. In Wales the supplier network is predominantly SMEs and the company was confident that its expertise could be harnessed to help bridge the gap to the public sector. 

Choosing to focus on the healthcare sector, the company partnered with Life Sciences Hub Wales, which aims to help make Wales the place of choice for health, care and wellbeing innovation. 

Whilst working together, the need for PPE rocketed due to the coronavirus pandemic and demand on manufacturers reaching an all-time high. A rigorous procurement process put extra pressure on the Life Sciences Hub team, who were manually sifting and sorting through an unprecedented number of product and service offers from industry in order to procure the necessary supplies. 

This was the perfect opportunity for Simply Do to deploy its digital product, allowing it to co-create a customised workflow that, through automation, significantly increased the speed by which diverse providers and products could be sourced, qualified and purchased whilst maintaining a robust procurement process. 

Not only did this solve a huge time barrier for Life Sciences Hub in sourcing appropriate products but it saved time for potential suppliers who could communicate their offer more quickly and easily via the purpose-built innovation portal. Moreover, innovative new suppliers, products and services were surfaced through this streamlined, challenge-led process that may otherwise not have been. 

The output was impressive, with more than £6million of PPE products procured by the NHS from suppliers engaged on Simply Do, resulting in an approximate GVA to the Welsh economy of £34 million. NHS Shared Services also became a net-contributor of PPE to the broader, UK-Wide effort to secure PPE during the pandemic. 

In total, the Challenge Fund has enabled Simply Do Ideas to engage with more than 1,600 SMEs generating almost 1,800 ideas in response to 13 externally-sourced challenges relevant to suppliers and commissioners in the foundational economy. The organisation’s Senior Business Manager, Joseph Murphy, believes that this demonstrates that challenge-led innovation has a real contribution to make in terms of progressing the way that procurement is done in Wales. 

 “There’s an opportunity here for Wales to be a global leader. Turning our size to our advantage, we can use our close proximity to one-another, our resources and public policy to ensure that we are at the cutting-edge when it comes to solving some of the biggest challenges of our time,”

Having concluded its Challenge Fund project with resounding evidence that this model works within the public – as well as private – sector space, Simply Do Ideas is looking ahead towards a new investment stage. Its aim is to continue working creatively, between and across sectors, to further cascade the benefits of challenge-led innovation. 

Simply Do Ideas: Helping Wales lead the way in public sector innovation Read More »

Doing the little things in Cardiff on St. David’s Day

This St David’s Day, we are asking organisations across Cardiff to think about the little things they can do to ensure a fair day’s pay for their workers, whether it’s understanding how to become an accredited Living Wage employer, or reaching out to other organisations to encourage them to consider the real Living Wage, or helping us share the positive messages about the difference that paying the real Living Wage can make.

Cardiff Council is currently the only accredited real Living Wage local authority in Wales. The Council and partners are championing Cardiff as a Living Wage city which is having positive impact on the city and its employees. As of 1 February 2021, 45% of Wales’ total accredited employers were based in Cardiff and Cardiff employers had contributed to 69% of total uplifts in pay. Recent research by Cardiff University has shown that real Living Wage accreditation by 124 Cardiff employers has resulted in 7,735 workers receiving a pay rise which has added over £32m to the local economy in just over 8 years.

To hear more about the benefits of the real Living Wage from employers and employees in Cardiff please watch this video.

Leader of Cardiff Council, Cllr Huw Thomas, said:

“The seemingly small things really can make a big difference, and I know the significant impact paying the real Living Wage has had in the lives of our own staff. We’re pleased to be supporting organisations across the city to enable them to do the same for their own employees, and this St David’s Day I would encourage any Cardiff business interested in paying the real Living Wage to get in touch to find out more.”

Cardiff Council understand the wider benefits that the real Living Wage can bring to individuals and employers, as well as to the City; and they have made a commitment to reimbursing accreditation fees for SME employers based in Cardiff through their accreditation support scheme. For more information about the real Living Wage in Cardiff please visit the website.

Cardiff Council also encourages local employers to provide a Payroll Savings and Loans Scheme to their staff, enabling their employees to save directly from their salaries and if needed, access affordable credit from an ethical provider. More information can be found on this on the Cardiff & Vale Credit Union’s website.

Cynnal Cymru is the accrediting body for the real Living Wage in Wales and are here to help you through the accreditation process. Get in touch, join the movement, do the little things.

We wish you all a happy St David’s Day. Diolch yn fawr!

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Vale of Glamorgan Council: Changing public procurement

With the help of Welsh Government’s Foundational Economy Challenge Fund, Vale of Glamorgan Council is changing how they procure to benefit the foundational economy.

Procurement is where an organisation acquires goods, services or works from an external source. Often it uses competitive bidding. Very simply it is the shopping an organisation does to deliver its aims and objectives.

The Council is the biggest spender in the Vale, spending £186 million per annum. Council staff believe they have a responsibility with that spend to ensure they deliver the best value to the area including skills, health, well-being, environmental benefits and employment.

When the Welsh Government’s Foundational Economy Challenge Fund was launched, the Council saw an opportunity to strengthen their procurement practices to help meet these aims, including better support for SMEs (small and medium size enterprises) which are recognised as the ‘lifeblood of the area’.

Funding was awarded for a project that aimed to grow local SMEs and to increase the number of these delivering Council contracts. Maddy Sims, who leads the Council’s foundational economy work, realised that this would also require changing unhelpful perceptions that the Council’s procurement was a closed rather than open process.

Recognising that dialogue was crucial, the project focused on listening to local businesses, the use of data and trying to ‘humanise’ the process of bidding for Council contracts so that more SMEs could benefit.

SMEs often don’t have guaranteed income at the end of the month. Because of this, Maddy explains, it’s important to remove barriers to the bidding process as businesses cannot afford to be constantly bidding for contracts that do not materialise.

Through the Council’s conversations with local SMEs they found that many faced frustrating – though easily rectifiable – issues that prevented them from winning Council contracts. Many had not heard of Sell2Wales (an initiative from the Welsh Government helping SMEs work successfully with the public sector) whilst others had various small but disheartening problems – such as not having codes set up correctly.

Central to resolving these issues has been a proactive approach to building relationships with local business and asking ‘what can we do to help you work with us?’ rather than just assuming that SMEs would approach the Council for information or advice.

The Fund has allowed the Council to engage with more than 1,000 businesses since June 2020 through events with Business Wales, Sell2Wales and others to help understand and resolve tendering problems.

The Council’s new conversational approach also works to take away the ‘waste of time factor’ and the overwhelming feeling many SMEs currently face when tendering. Maddy explains that these factors not only lead to some SMEs not bidding, but also rushing bids, making them less likely to succeed.

To help encourage and reassure local SMEs therefore, the Council are making case study films featuring some of the local businesses they’ve worked with, including a story of one who, after gaining confidence in tendering through providing vending machines to the Council, went on to win a multi-million pound contract with the NHS. 

An animation to make procurement look simpler and more exciting has also been commissioned and the Council has also increased the number of mailshots sent to businesses to grow awareness of the contracts available.

As a result of these efforts, 100 new local businesses have registered with Sell2Wales and the Council has taken other steps to make its contracts more accessible to SMEs – such as breaking up a large-scale contract into smaller ones that SMEs are more able to tender for.

Conversations with local businesses not only identified barriers to tendering and winning contracts but also allowed the Council to better understand the local supply chain and gaps in the market. This understanding is vital for the Council to support the local area with its procurement, for example potentially through a supply chain policy or proactive procurement to help stimulate activity in a supply chain void.

The project has also helped catalyse other new ways of working. The Council’s procurement is not centralised, and the procurement is devolved to different directorates. Currently, there is no centralised reporting about how much is spent locally which makes it difficult to measure the full impact of Council procurement on SMEs or the local foundational economy in general. The challenge here is the lack of data. The Challenge Fund project has highlighted this gap, which the Council recognises as a positive first step in overcoming and rectifying it.

An important learning point Maddy would like to convey to others doing similar work is simply to “put yourself in their (SMEs) shoes and consider what they’re going through”. She explains “it’s a lot of listening, talking and then finding out if you can change your processes to bring mutual benefit. Anybody looking to do this kind of project, talk to as many people as possible.”

Procurement is the main part of the Council’s spend and Maddy feels that the Challenge Fund project has really opened up the potential power of that spend to benefit the foundational economy. It has given the Council new insights into where they will go next, reshaping their procurement service, standardising it and measuring the locality of their spend in a more precise way.

Ultimately, the Council wants to support SMEs to deliver skills, jobs – and often many other benefits linked to a strong foundational economy. It also wants to give commissioners more confidence and awareness to spend with locality and value in mind.

This case study was compiled by Cynnal Cymru – Sustain Wales as part of supporting a community of practice of Challenge Fund projects sharing learning and collaboration.

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Project Sylfaen

In 2019, Cynnal Cymru, in partnership with Wales Co-operative Centre, won funding from the Co-op Foundation to take six community-led environmental organisations in Wales on a development journey. The aim was to deliver a bespoke programme of capacity-building support to help enhance the engagement, governance, business planning, income generation and other skills needed to sustain a successful community venture.

The six organisations that joined the programme were:

Each received a root and branch review of their skills and development needs. These identified common challenges around things like governance structures and resisting mission-drift amid pressure to generate income.

These insights were used to create a tailored 12 month programme of development support, complemented by virtual gatherings to share learning and experience. Sessions ranged from covering the basics – Financial Planning and Record-keeping – to the exploratory and aspirational – Rethinking Income Streams and Enterprising Leadership. Other topics included marketing, safeguarding, strengths mapping and business planning.

In order to maximise the benefits of the programme, each of the six ‘core beneficiaries’ were invited to bring along there other local community environmental partners to training and networking sessions. As a result, 15 other organisations were able to share in these capacity-building sessions with 102 training places being taken up by 40 staff members, councillors, project volunteers and trustees.

Although almost all of the programme had been expected to be face-to-face pre-Covid, inevitably the majority of the training, peer-learning and networking activities moved online. Some project visits and Open Days – the most eagerly-anticipated aspects of the Sylfaen programme – did take place however towards the end of the project.

Whilst feedback about the whole programme has been positive, The response to these visits has been the most inspirational, highlighting the importance of connecting environmental visionaries with others striving for similar aims and experiencing similar barriers.

“Thank you, Cynnal Cymru. I think it is a truly worthwhile project and one that I feel needs to continue.”

Robbie Bowman, Coed Dylan

For these organisations, Sylfaen provided not only “..a renewed faith in humanity” (Melissa Dhillon, Llyn Parc Mawr Community Woodland) but “.. a sense that we are part of a larger group” which makes “travelling this, sometimes lonely, road a nicer experience.” (Robbie Bowman, Coed Dylan)

This joining-up of minds and actions is something that Cynnal Cymru routinely enables – whether it’s through our awards, newsletters, summits or networking events. This is because, as neatly summed up by another participant, “There are many people doing amazing things, often in isolation.”

Breaking new ground, undertaking pioneering projects, or even struggling to maintain tried and tested methods in the face of austerity can be daunting. Bringing people together, not only to share ideas but to remind them that they are not alone, generates a tremendous energy and refreshes the determination to continue. Cynnal Cymru has been delighted to be a part of the Sylfaen programme because, as another participant shares, it is initiatives like this that boost not only individual projects but progress towards sustainability at a national scale.

“One of the best aspects of the Sylfaen project is finding out about other projects across Wales that are contributing to sustainable development and meeting the people who are behind them.

If there is to be a greater movement across Wales towards sustainability, it is important that initiatives like Sylfaen continue to facilitate this bringing together of people … to work collaboratively towards a sustainable future.”

Mara Morris, Denmark Farm

You can read more reflections about the Sylfaen project in the Resources section below.

Project Sylfaen Read More »

A Guide to the Well-being of Future Generations Act

It will make the public bodies listed in the Act think more about the long-term, work better with people and communities and each other, look to prevent problems and take a more joined-up approach.

Cynnal Cymru – Sustain Wales is the leading organisation for sustainable development in Wales. Our mission is to make Wales the first Sustainable Nation. Cynnal Cymru’s overall focus is on developing and promoting a sustainable, resource-efficient and low-carbon society through engagement with enterprises, the third sector and communities. We connect local and national organisations together from across Wales to help each other develop more sustainable solutions and deliver on the Well-being of Future Generations Act. This will help us to create a Wales that we all want to live in, now and in the future.

To make sure we are all working towards the same vision, the Act puts in place seven well-being goals.

Sustainable Development Principle and Ways of Working

The Act puts in place a ‘sustainable development principle’ which tells organisations how to go about meeting their duty under the Act.

There are five things that public bodies need to think about to show that they have applied the sustainable development principle. Following these ways of working will help us work together better, avoid repeating past mistakes and tackle some of the long-term challenges we are facing.


Why do we need this law?

Wales faces a number of challenges now and in the future, such as climate change, poverty, health inequalities and jobs and growth. To tackle these we need to work together. To give our children and grandchildren a good quality of life we need to think about how the decisions we make now will impact them. This law will make sure that our public sector does this.

More information

For a summary of the Act see a copy of the booklet ‘The Essentials’.

You can find out more about the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act on the the Welsh Government website.

A Guide to the Well-being of Future Generations Act Read More »

Community Care Collaborative: Transforming Primary Care in Wrexham

The Community Care Collaborative (CCC) is a Community Interest Company that provides an innovative and integrated approach to healthcare in Wales.

Founded by Dr. Karen Sankey in 2018, CCC developed a very clear vision for primary care after realising that the current model was failing at several levels.

Through research and testing, it found that patients often visit a doctor with an issue that has a social or mental health basis, which it believes GPs are not equipped to deal with in the best way.

Added to this, it’s thought that the volume of patients that a GP is expected to see in a day on top of other duties such as medicines, makes it impossible to provide an adequate service to every single person.

The solution is a model which delivers “an alternative model of health, social care and wellbeing in which GPs (doctors) are able to focus on providing medical care, and where, through working collaboratively at a community level with other agencies and patients themselves, the social and emotional needs of patients are given equal priority to their medical needs”, as its mission statement shares.

“The Challenge Fund seemed to me to be very much about trying to do things differently and about taking a chance to really give something a go to find out whether it works or not.”

Before receiving a Challenge Fund grant, CCC had already secured contracts to trial this model at three GP practices in Wrexham and had been granted permission to take over its first practice in September 2019 with the second and third following in January and April 2020.

However, the Challenge Fund grant has been essential in enabling CCC to develop its ideas further and successfully set up and recruit in a vast number of different areas of health and social care over the last 12 months.

Alison Hill of Capacity Lab, who assisted in bringing the model to life said that, “The Challenge Fund seemed to me to be very much about trying to do things differently and about taking a chance to really give something a go to find out whether it works or not.”

Firstly, CCC recruited a permanent emotional wellbeing team which is present at all three practices and aims to provide a first point of contact for patients that are in need of wellbeing support directly after booking an appointment.

What commonly happens in these cases is patients are referred on to other mental health organisations and can bounce back, so a key focus of this team is to reduce onward referrals by providing services in-house such as support groups, medication reviews, memory assessments and psychotherapy.

The organisation has seen that utilising this model alone has seen onward referrals reduce by over 57% compared with the previous evaluation period (Apr-Sept 2019).

Not only does this mean that patients are being provided a more appropriate and immediate response, but the cost savings to other health and social care services are likely to be significant. A social impact evaluation of CCC’s Emotional Well-Being Team found that it had delivered social value worth more than £1million in its first 12 months to November 2020, representing a social return on investment of 6.42:1.

More important to those involved is that 33% of people supported within this model (who were asked for feedback), said that without support they may have taken their own lives, further demonstrating the positive impact that the model is having.

To support the referral process, CCC recognise that as first responders to calls, front desk staff play a vital role in the patient process so it invested in training to develop them into ‘Care Navigators’. People within this role now have the knowledge to respond to individual patient needs and signpost them towards the relevant team, rather than automatically referring them to a GP.

Due to the high level of demand during Covid-19 and the huge upheaval of a system that has been in place for years, the booking system is an area that CCC is still working to make as effective as possible through continuous testing and experimentation.

Alison says, “We tried eConsult (Lite), which didn’t work out so we changed it and adapted it…it’s improving, but that is something that we haven’t got right yet and we still need to work very much on.”

Despite the obstacles faced by the pandemic, CCC is really proud of its progress this year, although there are some areas where work still need to be done, especially in recruiting full time salaried GPs.

Although CCC has been able to employ some part time doctors, Alison explains that a huge obstacle primary care is currently facing is that many GPs are working as temporary doctors known as locums, which she says, “In terms of finances, it’s going to destroy primary care.”

As they move towards the goal of recruiting more full time GPs in 2021, the team is confident that this integrated model will prove attractive to GPs, as it gives them more opportunity to concentrate solely on medical needs and to patients as they will be able to access a much wider range of inhouse support.

As CCC looks towards the future, it will be concentrating its efforts on recruiting full time salaried GPs, and building partnerships from within the Welsh Government’s FECF Community of Practice, as well as other organisations that can help to replicate this model across Wales.

Community Care Collaborative: Transforming Primary Care in Wrexham Read More »

Blaenau Gwent To Hold First Climate Assembly in Wales

The Blaenau Gwent Climate Assembly will be held online during two weekends in March, bringing residents together from across the borough to address the question: “What should we do in Blaenau Gwent to tackle the climate crisis in a way that is fair and improves living standards for everyone?”

10,000 households in Blaenau Gwent have received written invitations to register their interest in participating. From those who apply to be involved, 50 people will then be randomly selected to take part and will learn about climate issues facing their community, discussing the themes of housing, nature and transport before proposing and debating potential solutions. 

The Assembly is being organised by housing associations United Welsh, Linc Cymru, Melin Homes and Tai Calon in partnership with sustainable development charity Cynnal Cymru, Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council and ERS Cymru.

Steve Cranston, Foundational Economy Lead for housing association United Welsh said: 

“Climate change is an emergency that impacts us all, from the homes we live in through to the food we eat with our families.

“A climate assembly is a fantastic opportunity to capture the views of local people representing the wider population about what needs to happen, helping decision makers across the Welsh public sector to shape their approach.

We all have a part to play in tackling climate change. As a partnership, we are looking forward to coming together with people in Blaenau Gwent to learn, challenge and inspire action.”

The Assembly will see leading experts present information on climate change and the sub-themes to the 50 participants to provide context to inform the discussions.

Jess Blair, Director of ERS Cymru said: 

“Through this climate assembly, Blaenau Gwent is leading the way in Wales on a new model of democracy, which gives local people a greater say in issues that affect them. Assemblies like this have been used across the UK, including with the Citizens Assembly of Scotland, UK Climate Assembly as well as elsewhere around the globe.

“The Assembly will give a representative sample of people in the community a chance to discuss, deliberate and produce recommendations that will be heard by decision makers across local government, local registered social landlords and Welsh Government. 

“Elsewhere models like this have been proven to build trust, give people a greater say in local decisions and give decision makers an insight into the trade-offs people would make around climate change. This is a really exciting development and we can’t wait to see it in action.”

Sarah Hopkins, Director of Cynnal Cymru-Sustain Wales said: 

“Local Authorities across Wales are declaring climate emergencies and recognising that urgent action is needed at local level to reduce carbon emissions. The transition to net zero will mean changes to people’s lives so it’s vital that citizens understand and participate in this journey. 

“We are delighted to be involved with organising the Blaenau Gwent Climate Assembly. The recommendations decided upon will help to inform the collaborative approach to decarbonisation from Housing Associations, Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council and other key organisations in the region. We hope that other regions in Wales will also adopt similar processes to inform decarbonisation action plans.”

The Assembly has received funding from Welsh Government through a consortium managed by energy service provider Sero, where 68 partners in Wales were awarded more than £7m to decarbonise 1,370 homes and create tools to roll out large scale decarbonisation of homes across Wales as part of the ‘Optimised Retrofit’ programme.

The recommendations from the Assembly will be shared with all consortium partners and Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council to help inform effective citizen engagement for climate change in future.

Michelle Morris, Managing Director, Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council said: 

“Climate change is a global issue and it’s absolutely vital that we act now to protect our environment for the well-being of future generations and I am sure that the Climate Assembly will help us all focus on this.  As a Council, we recognise the importance of the challenges and we recently approved a new Decarbonisation Plan.

“We’re already taking a number of actions to reduce our carbon impact such as improving the energy efficiency of our schools; our public buildings and our street-lighting and also reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill. This Plan will see us take a more strategic approach towards achieving carbon neutrality and will help us to prioritise work in a number of key areas of our operations which, with some changes, can make a significant contribution towards our carbon neutral aim.”

To find out more about the Blaenau Gwent Climate Assembly, visit: 

www.cynnalcymru.com/blaenau-gwent-climate-assembly/ 

Blaenau Gwent To Hold First Climate Assembly in Wales Read More »

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