Manchester Alliance for Community Care

NHS Constitution
The Government has published a proposed constitution for the National Health Service. This is intended as a statement of the values of the NHS and people's rights to free services. The consultation runs until 17th October 2008. If you have views to you wish to feed in, you can send them directly to the Department of Health via the consultation details on their website or contact MACC and we will include your comments in our response.

Manchester Health Priorities Survey
As part of it's Talking Health programme, Manchester Primary Care Trust is seeking people's views on its priorities for improving health in the city. The huge health inequalities between Manchester and the rest of the country are well known - and those between different parts of the city itself. The PCT has set ten major priorities and is asking for ideas and views about what should be done on each of them. They have emphasised that it does not mean stopping funding for any existing services or other areas of work but simply highlights what we believe will make the most difference to local people’s health. To feed in your views, click on the link to the online survey below.

Third Sector Survey
The Office of the Third Sector is carrying out a Third Sector Flexibility Survey addressed to third sector organisations that are currently delivering public services or have been involved in their delivery in the last 12 months. The survey is a follow up to the Cabinet Office publication “Excellence and Fairness: Achieving world class public services”. Through it the Office for the Third Sector aims to improve its understanding of what supports and drives innovation in Third Sector public service delivery. If your organisation is currently involved or has been involved in public service delivery in the last 12 months, please take the time to complete the survey and return it by 8 September 2008. Click here to complete the survey. Please return this survey even if it is incomplete. All answers are valuable.

Manchester Infrastructure Support Survey
Manchester City Council has launched a consultation survey on the support services currently available for voluntary and community sector organisations. These are currently being provided by Novas Scarman Trust The information provided will identify how the current service is being used and gaps in provision - which will shape the tender for the new contrct for this work. MACC strongly encourages all local voluntary sector organisations to take part in this survey: there is a clear need to develop the range of support available to the sector and this is the big opportunity to communicate that message to the people who commission the service. Follow the link below to take part. The deadline is 30th September 2008.
A hard copy of the questionnaire can be downloaded from the City Council website or is available from: The Third Sector Team, Corporate Performance Group, Manchester City Council, PO Box 532, Manchester M60 2LA tel: 0161 234 3141.

Urgent Care in Central Manchester
Manchester Primary Care Trust, working with Central Manchester Practice Based Commissioning Group and Manchester City Council, is developing a full specification for urgent care services in Central Manchester. They are asking providers including the voluntary and community sector to contribute to the "design stage" - this will ultimately shape the service specification. If you're interested in contributing to this, you should contact the Greater Manchester Commissioning Business Service (link below) by 20th August 2008.

Towards a strategy to support volunteering in health and social care
"Consultation Workshops” at the Gujarat Centre (GHS Enterprise Ltd), Preston on the 8th September 2008. The Department of Health recognises that volunteering plays a huge potential role in the context of more flexible, responsive and patient-focused health and social care services. This consultation exercise is designed to discuss and debate the five key elements of the “Towards a strategy to support volunteering in health and social care document”

Support for individual volunteers
Effective management within organisations
Commissioning environment and infrastructure
Promoting partnership
Leadership

This is one of nine regional workshops being held across England by the Department of Health in conjunction with CSIP NW. The consultation will end on 30th September 2008. To access the consultation on line click on the link below. If you are able to attend please complete the attached booking form and returning to philip.jones@csip.org.uk Alternatively, you can fax the form to 0161 351 4936.

Introduction to Advocacy
Action for Advocacy are holding a training day on advocacy in Manchester on 21st of August. It will focus on defining what advocacy is, different models of advocacy and what constitutes effective practice. The day is aimed at:

people who are newly working or volunteering in advocacy
people who are interested in working in the advocacy sector either on a voluntary or paid basis and want to find out more about what it is
people who work in advocacy services who want to gain a common understanding of what ‘advocacy’ means to everyone in the organisation.

Cost: £75 for the voluntary sector, £105 for the statutory sector, which includes lunch and refreshments. Please book online by clicking on the link or via Action for Advocacy's website:

Consultation on registration of health and adult social care providers
The Department of Health is seeking views on the future of regulation of health and adult social care. It considers which health and adult social care services should require registration with the Care Quality Commission and what the requirements for registration should be. It also asks at what point providers of regulated services should be required to have a registered manager and how primary care services should be included in the new system.

Consultation on GP services in Manchester
Manchester Primary Care Trust is planning to open a new GP-led Health Centre in the City Centre and seeking comments and views on the new service. The link below is for the PCT's online survey of people's views (5 questions) and contains some information about the new service.

Paper copies of the questions are available by emailing talkinghealth@manchester.nhs.uk or telephone 0161 217 4311 / 0161 945 3178. You can also send comments and views to the PCT through their freepost address: Talking Health, FREEPOST RRSS-EKKJ-RRKY, Baguley Clinic, M23 1NA

Is your Organisation Commission-ready?
The way in which local authorities commission children’s services is changing. VCS Engage are running free training courses which will enable you to enter the new commissioning process with confidence, equipped with the tools to understand what commissioners want and how you can deliver. The training will:

Examine the differences between grant funding and commissioning
Identify the key skills, characteristics and standards that VCS organisations need to demonstrate
Provide the tools to effectively evidence them
Provide a checklist for writing a successful tender

This day provides the opportunity for VCS organisations to attend fit-for-purpose training that is uniquely tailored to meet the specific needs of the sector.

The training is designed for strategic managers and infrastructure support organisations and is suitable for organisations of all sizes, working within all sectors of the children, young people and families VCS.

Warrington on 11th December 2007
Manchester 6th February 2008
Leeds 12th February 2008
Liverpool 19th February 2008

For more information and to book a place go the VCS Engage Website.

Statement from Mind in Manchester
As you may have heard, Mind in Manchester is in imminent danger of closing all its services. Below is a statement from Justin Larner, the manager of the organisation:

"In recent years we've developed recovery-focused mentoring and social inclusion mental health services that have been so successful that they are currently over subscribed and we have waiting lists over a year long. More than 75% of all the people that we work are sent to us by statutory health and social care bodies. Many of our clients have some of the most complex and longstanding difficulties in a population that is recognised as having high levels of deprivation and poor mental health (including suicide).

Without significant support from the statutory authorities Mind in Manchester's mentoring and social inclusion services will close before the end of May 2007. We need your help to stop this from happening. Please visit our website www.mind-in-manchester.org.uk/funding/index.php for more information and how you can help."

VCS Involvment on Manchester Youth Matters Board
Download an update on Youth Matters and voluntary sector participation on Manchester's Youth Matters Board here.

Integrated Commissioning adn District Collaboration Project - Briefing Note

Services to children across Manchester will be delivered in a more cohesive and efficient way through the forging of effective partnerships under the integrated commissioning and district collaboration project.

Introduced as a result of the Children Act 2004, integrated commissioning and district collaboration will require all agencies to work together and adopt a common approach to deliver co-ordinated services which place the needs of children and young people at the centre.

Commissioning in this context is not just about procurement and purchasing but about specifying requirements to meet the specific needs of children and young people, securing those services and evaluating their effectiveness.

It will look specifically at the five outcomes of staying safe, being healthy, enjoying and achieving, contributing positively and achieving economic well-being.

The result will be improvements in early intervention and prevention, more effective multi-disciplinary working, the removal of duplication of services and increase efficiency as well as accountability.

Pilots have already taken place in three of the six Manchester districts using Children’s Fund monies to commission Family and Parenting Support services. In North East Manchester, the Commissioning Panel decided they wanted to commission family and parenting support through services which worked with groups of schools, where there was an identified need. This would mean that services would intervene early, be preventative and work with schools in an integrated way to identify where support is most needed. The experience from these pilots is being used to help develop integrated commissioning across all six districts.

Key milestones over the coming months will be determining the Commissioning Statement for the City, together with ensuring that the district panels are in place by April 2007, and the appointment of project workers to support these panels. Once established, the district panels, with senior representation from partner agencies, will begin to analyse the needs of children and young people in their area in order that they can begin to assess which services require commissioning.

Integrated Commissioning adn District Collaboration Project - Briefing Note

It will look specifically at the five outcomes of staying safe, being healthy, enjoying and achieving, contributing positively and achieving economic well-being.

Manchester multi-agency Children's Services Update (Dec 06)

The aim of this bulletin is to keep professionals working with children, young people and families up to date with developments in current initiatives/projects across all agencies. You can find out more information about projects and initiatives <here>

Issue 1 - December 2006

NHS survey on GP Services

The NHS is currently conducting its biggest-ever survey: five million patients countrywide are to be asked for their experiences and views of booking an appointment with a GP.

The survey questionnaire, which will go out in mid-January 2007, includes questions on flexible booking, telephone access, opening hours and satisfaction levels. An average GP practice with a list of 6,000 patients will have the chance to earn over £8,000 in incentives if they are responsive to patients' views on access.

Posters and leaflets informing NHS patients and staff about the new survey will be placed in GP surgeries from next week. Taking part in the survey is completely voluntary for patients. Patients will be selected from among those who have had an appointment between 16 July and 15 October 2006.

Patients will be able to fill out the survey in their own home and post it back for analysis. Helplines will be available for people who need help completing the survey, including people with visual impairments or who don’t have English as a first language. The survey is also available in 10 other community languages, Urdu, Punjabi, Polish, Bengali, Arabic, French, Gujarati, Turkish, Somali and Portuguese.

Every Disabled Child Matters - petition
EDCM is a campaign by four leading organisations working with disabled children and their families – Contact a Family, Council for Disabled Children, Mencap and the Special Educational Consortium. We will challenge politicians and policy-makers to make good on the Government’s commitment that every child matters.

Only 1 in 13 families get support from social services.
Disabled children are 13 times more likely to be excluded from school
8 out of 10 families with disabled children say that they are at breaking point

EDCM believe that disabled children and their families should have the right to the services and support they need to live ordinary lives. Every Disabled Child Matters is the campaign to make this happen.

They want 10,000 supporters to sign their petition by December. If you wish to support the campaign, follow the link here: www.edcm.org.uk

Green Paper Uffffffff Care Matters Transforming the Lives of Children and Young People in Care

The government has published its green paper, Care Matters, which is hoped to be an important step in improving outcomes for looked after children and young people.

This green paper sets out radical and wide-ranging reforms to improve the quality, range and choice of care for society's most vulnerable children. Under the reforms, children in care would have the right to choose when they leave care once they reach 16, and measures would be introduced to stop them being repeatedly moved between foster homes; ensure they are placed in the best schools; and provide financial security as they enter adulthood. You can download a copy of the green paper <here>

There is also a young people’s guide to the care matters green paper which can be downloaded <here>

The Centre for Young Policy Studies has also just published a report on the experiences of young people in care ‘Handle with Care - an investigation into the care system’. You can access a copy of this report <here>

Patient and public involvement...changing again!
Details of the latest structure for community engagement in the NHS are now published. This sees Patient and Public Involvement Forums replaced by Local Involvement Networks (LINks). These are intended to work with the local voluntary and community sector to support the voice of local communities in the planning and delivery of health services. MACC will be producing a response to the guidance which we'll publish on this site. In the meantime, the details are available on the Department of Health website >HERE<.

Children's Services News (Jan 06)
The children's services news electronic monthly update provides, for all those working with children, young people and families, and update of what is happening in Children's Services at Manchester City Council. You can download the Dec/Jan edition > here <

Framework forJoint Planning and Commissioning of Services at a District Level (Jan 06)
This framework aims to help local planners and commissioners to design a unified system in each local area and create a clear picture of what children and young people need, make the best use of resources, and join up services so they provide better outcomes than they can on their own. You can download the framework > here <