EquIP is providing an opportunity to work more collaboratively, avoiding duplication in work areas and activities, and is a conduit for shared learning and opportunities to champion equality, community development and engagement within the city for example the 2017/18 priorities for the partnership including sharing learning and approaches to increasing workforce equality and exploring joint initiatives.
Brighton & Hove City Council’s Communities & Third Sector Development Policy established a clear framework for coordinated third sector commissioning, enabling the local authority and its partners to collaborate more and pool budgets. A key platform for the council and CCG’s recent Communities and Third Sector Commission which saw pooling of budgets from across the council and from the CCG and a single process for the commissioning of a wide range of outcomes including:
The policy, also, emphasises the importance of and connections between community development, community engagement and the role of the third sector, underpinned by the promotion of equality and community cohesion
Brighton & Hove Clinical Commissioning Group’s (CCG) Patient and Public Participation Strategy outlines plans to ensure that the views of those using local health services, and their carers, are at the centre of all commissioning activity. The strategy includes ways to ensure that individuals are involved in decisions about their own care.
The CCG increasingly works in partnership with the local authority and third sector to maximise opportunities for participation and development activity and minimise duplication of engagement, working with all communities to ensure feedback brings about change in local health services. This has is achieved through joint commissioning of engagement by the CCG and BHCC.
Caring Together plans seek to strengthen the role of the third sector in providing preventative, community based services. There is investment in infrastructure support to develop capacity of organisations to deliver health outcomes for local people. Patient Participation Groups are developing their voice and connections with the third sector. Social prescribing services are increasing patient referrals into the third sector.
Healthwatch Brighton and Hove, an independent, third sector organisation, supports local children, young people, adults, and communities to influence the design, delivery and improvement of their local health and social care services. It allows people to make informed choices about their health and wellbeing, assisting them when they have concerns or complaints about these services.
Council working with wide range of community members has established and will continue to facilitate One Voice Partnership which is focused on empowering communities by ensuring positive media messages on local BME communities, developing community resilience against extremism, ensuring joint working to support cohesion and integration and facilitating these communities to come together to celebrate shared values around promoting inclusion, pluralism and partnership working. The partnership has overseen a programme of wide ranging activities from media training for community spokespeople to WebGuardian training for Muslim women.
The council is also building a strategic relationship with the Sussex Community Foundation to maximise the impact of bequests and endowments bequeathed to the city and encourage philanthropic action in the city through the establishment of the Brighton and Hove Community Legacy Fund.