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Healthy Communities Together Partnerships

Successful partnerships

The 5 successful partnerships received up to £450,000 of funding. As well as ongoing learning and development support from The King’s Fund, over a further 3 years.

Each partnership is aiming to transform the way communities, voluntary and community sector organisations, NHS organisations and local authorities work together in their area.

Coventry

At the community level, Coventry aims to build capacity for community led initiatives and engaging individual community members at a hyperlocal level.

At the system level, Coventry then aims to feed back the learning from these conversations and reflections on collaboration back to the wider system.

Coventry have focussed on building capacity for localised community-led initiatives, such as a community-run men’s mental health group.

Providing dedicated community forums (“Big Conversations”) for system stakeholders to discuss topics collaboratively.

Croydon

Building on the One Croydon Alliance, Croydon aims to move resource, power and money to the voluntary sector, by creating a voice for VCSE sector within statutory governance.

They have implemented 3 workstreams:

  • empowerment and engagement aims to shift power to local communities by embedding a locality model for service delivery
  • the VCSE leadership board aims to create a stronger voice for the voluntary sector within statutory governance
  • funding and commissioning is trialling a local commissioning model which moves towards outcomes-based commissioning to shift resources to the voluntary sector

Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire are testing the hypothesis that relationships are key to effective system wide collaboration which better addresses local community needs.

They are taking a relational approach, with an explicit focus on reflection rather than on delivery. This involves questioning the current system-wide processes, approaches and norms.

They have begun a ‘Collaboratory’ which aims to provide space for external stakeholders to engage with and reflect on questions of collaboration, partnership and system change.

Leeds

Leeds aims to achieve improved outcomes for marginalised communities, with a particular focus on trans people; asylum seekers and refugees; gypsy and traveller communities; and sex workers. They are testing whether relational approaches mitigate power imbalances, and if commissioning from the margins will ultimately improve health outcomes for the wider population.

Leeds have conducted a series of deep dive adaptive action workshops with stakeholders from wider system and experts by experience into topics such as primary care, urgent care and mental health. From this they have implemented 5 experiments which aim to improve access to and experience of primary care.

Plymouth

Plymouth aims to provide alternative ways of bringing community voices and insight into services and commissioning services. They are specifically focussing on tackling social isolation and loneliness.

Partners have implemented a ‘community research’ programme. They train members of the community to carry out ‘conversations’, and plan to use their findings as a new type of evidence to impact system-wide decision making.

Watch videos about the partnerships on the King's Fund website.