Place–based partnership development was an important part of our work across Lancashire and South Cumbria throughout 2021/22.
All five places worked together to develop a common strategic narrative which outlines what it means to be a place-based partnership, which was approved in December 2020. Following this a ‘maturity matrix’ was developed: a set of criteria against which each place could assess how well it was developing. For example, areas such as leadership and collaboration and population health management.
The first self-assessment exercise took place in February 2021. Using the findings from this assessment across the five places, a place-based partnership development programme for 2021/22 was approved. This has been delivered across the five places to ensure some elements of consistency in the way we work collaboratively at place.
The maturity matrix self-assessment exercise was then repeated in December 2021, allowing us to consider what impact we have had based on the work we have done together so far.
Maturity matrix insights
People were asked to rate each domain as either: not started, emerging, developing, maturing or sustaining.
- West Lancashire Partnership has seen significant improvement across the board compared the first data set.
- Leadership is the area with the most “sustaining” responses, followed by governance.
- Listening to communities, planning integrated services and improving quality of services had 100% of responses in “emerging – sustaining” with no “not yet started” responses.
- Maximising use of resources appears to be the most significant area of development with nearly 70% of respondents scoring as “emerging” or “not yet started” followed by delivery of integrated services where 50% of answers were “emerging” or “not yet started”.
- Decision making has seen the highest decrease in “not yet started” responses when comparing to the previous data, down from nearly 55% to just over 5%.
- Mental health trusts were most likely to score “not yet started” followed by district councils. However, this could be due to there not being a “don’t know” option (some people said they didn’t have sufficient knowledge, so made a ‘best guess’ answer).
- Submissions from CCGs and Lancashire County Council provided the highest ratings of “maturing” whereas CCGs alone provided most “sustaining” responses.
- Acute trusts were most likely to vote “emerging” across the board.
- Governance and leadership, despite being areas of strength, also provided divergence of opinion, with responses in every category.
Peer to peer review
Following this, each of the five place-based partnerships across Lancashire and South Cumbria had a peer-to-peer review session in January for each Place-based Partnership:
- To reflect on their self-assessment and compare headline strengths/developments/areas of divergence to other (anonymised) partnerships.
- To consider their own areas of strength to share with other partnerships.
- To consider their own areas of development for 2022/23.
- To identify what they consider to be common areas of development to form part of the ICP Development Programme for 2022/23.
These findings (along with the other place-based partnership findings) will be used to develop a common approach to place-based partnership development during 2022/23 for all five places.