Denbighshire County Council’s commitment to collaboration has resulted in the Council’s Cabinet backing proposals for two major joint working projects in education and social care across North Wales.
The Cabinet, meeting at Ruthin yesterday (Tuesday), approved a Full Business Case for a new regional School Effectiveness and Improvement Service across the six North Wales counties.
Councillor Eryl Williams, Cabinet Lead Member for Lifelong Learning, said: “This service, if agreed by all local authorities will greatly assist efforts to raise standards and school improvement on a regional basis. The project would see arrangements in place for monitoring and challenging schools, as well as providing support services for professional development and management of schools”.
The new Service would realise an overall regional saving of 20% (£882k) which can be released as a saving or re-invested in education.
Should all North Wales councils approve the proposal, the next step would involve agreeing on a host authority, the appointment of a Chief Officer to run the service and training and transfer of staff to the new service. All this would expect to happen before April 2013.
In a separate discussion, Cabinet members also supported plans to establish a Regional Commissioning, Procurement and Monitoring Hub to serve the six counties in North Wales and the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board.
It would commission local authority (education and social care) and health services, initially for high cost, low volume residential placements around learning disabilities, mental health, physical disability and sensory impairment and children’s services.
Councillor Pauline Dobb, Cabinet Lead Member for Social Care and Well-being said: “This is about improving the quality of placements for some of the most vulnerable people in Denbighshire by more thorough monitoring and looking at developing alternative services closer to home. The council and its partners anticipate saving between £1m to £2m approx across the region and it is really positive that this is a collaboration between the six local authorities and Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board. This is not easy, but it’s really worthwhile for individuals to have all these organisations working together.”
Key benefits to partners include improvements to the quality of services, driving down costs, joint commissioning to ensure value for money, as well as improved market management and contract monitoring arrangements.
It is expected that the new hub will come into effect immediately, if the plans are backed by all local authorities and Betsi Cadwaladr’s Board of Directors and Full Board.
The next steps would involve recruitment to staff posts, setting up of a Management Board, finalising the Partnership Agreement and to raise awareness amongst partners and providers of the changes.
Leader of Denbighshire, Councillor Hugh Evans, said: “Denbighshire already has a track record for collaboration with other councils and partners in the public sector.
“The decision to back these major projects reflects our belief that these initiatives will improve these crucial services by encouraging learning from best practice across the region and also making substantial savings for the councils to spend on their priorities, including education and social services.
“Collaboration is very much a feature in Denbighshire’s budget strategy and our aim is to protect frontline services by implementing efficient and streamlined management, with a focus very much on continuing to provide the best possible services to our residents, whilst realising the need to find efficiencies in this current financial climate”.
