We help organisations that want to make a greater social impact, respond to change and meet the needs of their communities.

• Home
• About OPM
• The work we do
• Ideas, areas and approaches
• Publications and events
• Forums/blog

W3C-validated transitional XHTML

W3C-validated CSS

Pages change and sometimes invalid code can creep in, so we re-validate our pages regularly. Please tell us of any errors you spot.

OPM has been working with the DfES, government offices for the regions, local children's services partnerships and local authorities on all aspects of the children's services agenda.

The support we provide includes: strategic consultancy and mentoring for directors and senior managers; researching and developing integrated front-line services; stakeholder engagement that is cross-sector and involves children and young people; management development that focuses on policy implementation; and personal development.

• Outcomes for children
• Integrated services
• Integrated processes
• Integrated commissioning
• Integrated governance
• Participation
• Workforce development

Outcomes for children, young people, their families and communities

OfSTED’s overview of the first round of Annual Performance Assessments showed just how challenging it is to define outcomes and work with them in a practical way. OPM has been working with partnerships to apply the 'results accountability approach' of Mark Friedman. Within Children and Young People’s Plans, this provides a means of both interpreting trends in outcomes and identifying what must be done to sustain or change the trend. It's therefore an essential step in the planning process. OPM contact: Judith Smyth.

Outcomes must be measured using both harder and softer data, and also need to be interpreted from the perspective of children, young people and their families. OPM has developed a range of innovative approaches to measurement.

Children and young people are greatly affected by the communities in which they live. Bringing up a child in an environment where the community is fragmented, transient or subjects the family to harassment is immensely difficult. So the development of sustainable communities is an important outcome. OPM has been working on practical ways to measure and develop the social capital of communities. Contact: Hywel Lloyd

back to top

Every Child Matters and Our Health, Our Care, Our Say, the adult services white paper, recognise the important role that parents play in children’s lives. There are new requirements for services to tackle factors that are impairing adults' ability to parent, such as domestic violence, drug and alcohol misuse, mental ill health and worklessness. OPM is working with directors of children's and adult services to work through the practical implications. Contact: Clive Miller

back to top

Integrated services

Service integration is central to the Every Child Matters agenda. However, integrating services that are neither effective nor tailored to the needs of children, young people and their families will make little difference. OPM already provides a good practice research and benchmarking service – contact: Ewan King. We're also starting to work with schools to identify the practices they use to meet the needs of children in the round and how these can be made an integral part of the school improvement agenda. Contact: Clive Miller

Services do not produce outcomes. Children, young people and their families and local communities do, assisted or otherwise by services. The recognition that services should focus as much on supporting and enhancing the capacity of children, young people, their families and communities as on directly meeting needs is central to OPM’s approach to service development. (See the OPM publication Co-production in Children’s Services). Contact: Clive Miller

Service integration will sometimes require either the creation of multi-disciplinary teams or the co-location of some existing targeted services. The activities of universal services, notably housing, leisure, primary care and schools, will also need reshaping and co-ordinating. OPM has been working on the development of integrated service networks as a means of co-ordinating the full range of targeted and universal services that children, young people and their families require. (See figure 1 below). Contact: Clive Miller

Some specialist integrated service networks are already in existence, for example those for young offenders and children who are at risk of significant harm. Others, such as networks for helping children with disabilities, are under development. At the preventative level the focus is on developing locality-based, preventative services networks, designed to co-ordinate the activities of new integrated services such as extended schools and children’s centres, along with those of other targeted and universal services.

OPM development programme: Locality Based, Preventative, Integrated Service Delivery Networks

back to top

Integrated processes

Where children and young people have additional needs and require both universal and targeted services, integrated processes are essential to co-ordinate the work of the different services. The aim is both to benefit individual children, young people and their families, and to improve organisational efficiency. Common assessment, information sharing and the role of the lead professional are essential parts of the solution. For example, as part of the DfES lead professional project, OPM has been working with a number of partnerships to develop ways of bringing three previously parallel streams of development together into an integrated practice. Figure 2 (below) illustrates how this might be achieved, at a preventative level, through a three-tiered approach to meeting the level 2 additional needs of children and young people.

Figure 2: A tiered approach to meeting level 2 additional needs

OPM development programme: The Lead Professional: embedding the role into integrated service delivery practice.

The development of integrated practice is a major cultural change. It requires staff to be outcome-focused and to work together to deliver the five national outcomes as an integrated set. Existing knowledge, skills and training are still valuable, but have to be deployed in different ways. Flexible working demands different professions understand what each brings and are prepared to challenge and be challenged to change. Contact: Stefan Cantore

OPM development programme: Multi-disciplinary teams: meeting managers' skill development needs

The DfES guidance on lead professionals envisages the role as complementing existing key worker roles where children have multiple additional needs that require services to be co-ordinated across sectors. OPM’s work has found there is no one recipe for effectiveness. Who takes on the role, when it is deployed and the activities undertaken will vary from specialist to preventative settings and will reflect the integrated working processes.

back to top

Integrated commissioning

Strategic or joint commissioning is the subject of new DfES guidance and a continuing cause of confusion in many localities. The confusion arises partly from the lack of a common understanding across sectors of the term 'commissioning'. For example, in health and social care, commissioning (a major means by which services will be reshaped and resources redirected) is sometimes confused with contracting (which is one lever for reshaping a particular resource). OPM’s commissioning workbook has helped staff from across the partner sectors to cut through this confusion and develop their own shared definitions and processes. Contact: Judith Smyth.

The DfES commissioning guidance recognises the need for linked action at four connected levels: regional; local practice; community; and individual children and their families.

Regional collaboration focuses on meeting the needs of children and young people where such needs in any one local authority area are few. It is also being used as part of the approach to meeting the needs of children who are in danger of significant harm, as a basis for co-ordination with the police, who are organised on a wider area basis than local authorities. OPM worked with a joint area child protection committee - covering two local authorities - to facilitate its transition into a joint local children's safeguarding board with strategic commissioning responsibilities. Contact: Clive Miller

Area level involves commissioning across the whole of the local authority area. Decommissioning is as important as commissioning in reshaping resources at this level. Contestability and the greater use of the private, voluntary and independent sectors require new skills to be developed in market management and provider development. Contact: Ewan King

At community level, locality based integrated service networks have a role to play in devolved commissioning. OPM is working with a number of authorities to establish such networks and to determine appropriate devolved commissioning roles. An important factor in these developments will be the introduction of ‘practice-based commissioning’ in health. Contact: Clive Miller

OPM development programme: Making Effective Links with Health Services Reform

New FORUM for commissioning and market development : DfES Standards Jive Forum

Examples of local commissioning and market development : Every Child Matters Strategy

Rising swiftly up the partnership agenda is the need to develop effective performance management processes. These processes should be capable of supporting the implementation of priorities agreed via the children and young people’s plan and local area agreements, as well as improving outcomes across all the partners’ services. Processes should be tied into the Annual Performance Assessment (APA) and Joint Area Review (JAR) inspection processes. OPM has been developing ways of using the JAR framework as an integral part of cross-sector performance management. Contact: Clive Miller

OPM development programme: Getting the Best out of Joint Area Reviews.

back to top

Integrated governance

The appointment of directors of children’s services (DCSs), lead member arrangements and the reform of partnership arrangements has been a major focus of change in many areas. Whilst taking on strategic responsibilities is not new, doing so across the broad canvas of the Every Child Matters agenda is. Both DCSs and lead elected members are drawing on, and creating, new forms of support. Both have regional networks. Nationally, OPM provides the IDeA Leadership Academy modules for lead members for children’s services. (See example).

To complement the work of the DCS regional networks, OPM is launching a national learning network and a parallel network for other senior managers and senior partnership staff.

OPM development programme: Every Child Matters: Learning network for assistant directors of children's services, commissioners and heads of service

Some children and young people’s strategic partnerships have been in place for a long time and are now reforming to embrace the wider children’s services agenda. Others are relatively new and are being designed from scratch. OPM’s work on enabling partnership redesign, within the ambit of children’s trust arrangements, draws on both our own learning about children’s services (see OPM publications Children’s Trust Arrangements: developing local ways forward and Integrating Children’s Services) and local strategic partnership development work on behalf of the then ODPM. Contact: Judith Smyth

Related work includes the national evaluation of local strategic partnerships (LSPs), and the evaluation of local area agreements (LAAs) [see the DCLG website]; and the outcomes of the OPM-supported Independent Commission on Good Governance in Public Services. Contact: Sophie Ahmad

Drawing learning from the research we undertook for the IDeA (Show me how I matter – part 3), we have extracted a set of key structural elements that partnerships are typically taking into account in their redesign process (see figure 3, below). Contact: Clive Miller

OPM development programme: Good Governance for Children's Trusts Arrangements

OPM development programme: Using Local Area Agreements as a Lever for Change

back to top

Participation of children, young people, their families and communities

Partnerships have developed by engaging with children, young people, their families and communities. OPM has focused on both developing new approaches to including children and young people who are perceived to be ‘hard to reach’ and enabling partnerships to develop the infrastructure and skills to support participative processes. (See examples). Our work includes supporting children and young people to develop their own representative organisations and develop the skills and confidence to advocate for change. (Download OPM's commissioned review of the UK Youth Parliament). Contact:Diane Beddoes

Much of the focus of participation has been on planning. Whilst many partnerships have ways of obtaining the views of children and young people, they are less sure about how to take these views into account in the priority-setting process. OPM has been working with partnerships on this aspect of transforming views into reality. Contact: Clive Miller

The co-production perspective (see Outcomes section above) stresses that children, young people and their families and communities are already involved in producing outcomes. What is now needed is a new way of understanding how they produce or inhibit the production of effective outcomes and how their capacity can be further enhanced. OPM is starting work on practical ways in which this can be achieved and their implications for service redesign. Contact: Judith Smyth

back to top

Workforce development

Being outcome-focused and working within integrated service networks will require changes in culture, how skills and knowledge are applied, roles and the management of services. All of this has implications for workforce development. On behalf of the DfES, OPM developed and tested a draft framework that descries the skills and knowledge managers will need to work in the new multi-agency environment. The Championing Children framework focuses on the skills, behaviour and knowledge required, over and above those of line management. The framework is applicable to all levels of management and to the integrated service management requirements of universal services as well as those of multi-disciplinary teams. The learning from the Championing Children project is now being incorporated into OPM’s management development programmes and into nationally commissioned programmes. Contact Lesley Campbell

OPM development programme: Multi-disciplinary Teams: meeting managers' skill development needs

The role of the lead professional requires a radical rethink of the front-line skills and knowledge required for service integration and the way these can be most effectively deployed. OPM’s work shows that the orientation that staff bring to the role is as important as their skills and knowledge. The challenge is to develop a perspective that embraces the five outcomes discussed here and co-ordinate the activities of all relevant services, which will be new to most staff who will take on the lead professional role. Contact: Stefan Cantore

---