The Improvement Service (IS) is to begin the national roll-out of a project to help improve Community Planning Partnerships' (CPPs) planning and performance following a successful pilot with five CPPs.
Since January 2011, the IS has been working with CPPs in Clackmannanshire, Falkirk, South Lanarkshire, West Dunbartonshire and West Lothian to pilot the use of the Public Service Improvement Framework (PSIF) to improve their planning and performance and ensure intended outcomes are achieved. Due to finish in June 2011, the information and support provided will be evaluated and refined before being offered to all Scottish CPPs over the following 12 months.
The pilot project followed a survey of CPPs' capacity building needs in January 2010. A major challenge encountered by CPPs is in fully embedding an outcomes focus in their governance, planning, performance management and resource management. The survey responses showed a desire for support at a national level to enhance their ability to review, design and improve their operations locally, to tackle this challenge.
The Public Service Improvement Framework is a self-assessment framework which encourages organisations to conduct a comprehensive review of their own activities and results. Designed to meet the specific needs of public sector organisations, it is currently used by 33 councils and other public and third sector organisations.
PSIF will support CPPs by:
- rigorously reviewing existing processes around service design and delivery
- refocusing on the intended outcomes
- working to improve the experience of customers and service users.
Using a reliable self-assessment methodology will ensure CPP officers are able to continue the improvement cycle after the initial assessment.
The project has two phases:
- Partnership Health Check – an exercise to help CPPs map the challenges they face in driving an outcomes focused approach forward. A questionnaire is sent to all members of a partnership seeking their views on the range of factors that underpin outcome-focused working. A detailed analysis of the responses is prepared and a feedback session facilitated by the IS to explore the results and agree the areas where priority actions will be necessary.
- PSIF Assessment for CPPs – the implementation of PSIF at board or thematic level. PSIF offers a robust, structured, tested and systematic approach to change and improvement planning. By using the framework to define their challenges more fully, partnerships are able to determine the precise and detailed nature of the change required and put in place robust and structured improvement actions to make it happen.
The anticipated benefits of this project include:
- improved partnership working by strengthening the governance, scrutiny and accountability of CPPs
- better designed CPPs to reflect performance required in progressing their outcomes
- better understanding by partners of the challenges that they face in driving outcomes forward and in organising their change and improvement activities in a more methodical and robust manner
- improved prioritisation within a CPP between and within outcomes
- development of more outcome focused approaches to business planning and performance management and measurement within CPPs
- better focused and targeted improvement activities by adopting a 'partnership' approach to resource management, improvement planning and delivery
- improved collaboration within and across partnerships in building capacity and sharing knowledge, learning and expertise with one another in support of improvement against outcomes
- more informed planning of service performance and improvement over time.
After the pilot project is completed in June 2011, a full report outlining the lessons learned from the process, the changes required to the materials following the input of all pilot partner CPPs, and what further practical support and guidance will be offered to CPPs to ensure the realisation of their improvement plans, will be published. A further update will be provided at this time to outline the implementation plan until April 2012.
More information
For more information on the project, contact Jane O'Donnell or Sarah Gadsden at the Improvement Service.
