Author: Carol Ward, Catherine Mangan and Robin Miller
On April 1st 2013 health and wellbeing boards moved out of the shadows to formally take on responsibility for improving health and wellbeing and reducing health inequalities in their areas. They face many challenges, not least reductions in local authority budgets, increasing demands due to an ageing population, the restructuring of the NHS, and a challenging public health agenda.
Based on observations and experience of working with health and wellbeing boards, this publication addresses four key questions to health and wellbeing boards to ensure that they orchestrate system change and bring about integrated care.
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Author: OPM
The London mental health models of care seek to improve the quality and outcomes of services for those experiencing a mental health crisis, and to support those with a long term mental health condition to better manage their own mental and physical health in line with a recovery approach.
This competency framework has been developed by OPM and London Health Programmes to support the implementation of the two mental health models of care; for people with long term mental health conditions and people experiencing a crisis. The models of care require development of the skills and practices of the workforce, identifying best practice in London and building upon it.
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Author: Ewan King, Jean Taylor, Rebecca Williams and Tim Vanson
OPM has recently completed a learning report and evaluation of the Health Foundation funded, Making Good Decisions in Collaboration (MAGIC) programme, which aimed to develop and test practical ways to implement shared decision making (SDM) in different clinical settings.
The learning report is based on seven improvement stories developed by the OPM as part of their evaluation of the first phase of the programme. The stories draw on a series of interviews with clinicians and patients carried out by the evaluation team and present the experiences of both primary care and hospital-based teams.
The evaluation itself shows that, while there are challenges to making shared decision making a reality, and it can be hard and slow to do, shared decision making can create positive change within health systems and to individual patients.
Download the learning report from the Health Foundation website.
Download the evaluation from the Health Foundation website.
Author: Vidhya Alakeson, Antonia Bunnin and Clive Miller
This paper explores the common philosophy underpinning different approaches to coproduction and shared decision making in health and social care. We discuss similarities and differences between these two concepts, and some of the ways they are being applied in practice. We recommend that a number of trailblazer sites be created; such sites would commit to implementing a range of coproductive approaches together, taking an integrated portfolio approach to scale up change, challenge how current professionally led health and social care systems are organised, and radically improve health outcomes.
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Download the Executive Summary.
Author: Chih Hoong Sin
Few topics could be as crucial to get right as how we make decisions about which aspects of public services are more and less valuable. Valuing Public Services offers practical ideas about how we measure and demonstrate the value of our public services, based on OPM’s real life experiences of working with a broad range of public organisations, including charities and professional bodies to achieve this.
This publication is divided into three parts, covering different dimensions of valuing public services. Each chapter includes practical ideas about ‘how’ to measure value, and explores our and our clients’ real-life experiences.
As we continue to do more work in this area, we would like to build up a community of practice so that, together, we can co-create innovative approaches for valuing our public services. To support this, we have initiated a free breakfast seminar series, the first of which was held in April and focused on how to make the Public Services (Social Value) Act come to life. Registration has now opened for the next seminar on 5th July, where we will hear from the nursing profession about innovative developments that empower them to adopt evidence-based approaches to meet the quality and efficiency challenge.
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Author: Linda Jackson and Kate Fitzpatrick
This report outlines the findings from our evaluation of the 4Children business skills programme, funded by the Department for Education. Delivered over two years, the programme aimed to improve business knowledge and skills across the childcare and early years sectors. It involved three strands of work: training sessions on various business topics for providers, the development of online resources, and training for ‘local business champions’ involved in supporting providers. The evaluation used a theory-based approach and ran alongside the programme, and this report outlines some of the immediate and longer-term impacts based on primary and secondary research.
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Author: OPM
This initiative is offered to support CCG colleagues with a better insight into local government, the political landscape and ultimately to optimise system ability to work productively across key partnerships in the new commissioning landscape. The masterclasses are free of charge and will introduce significant theory and knowledge about leading edge change in public services and partnerships, and create space for you to explore your own thinking, to reflect on real-life case examples, and to translate learning into practice.
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Author: Sarah McDonnell, Hilary Thompson
Local Government has been moving to explore and support staff-led spin-outs in a variety of ways over the last couple of years and their employees are included in the kinds of groups eligible to submit expressions of interest under the Community Right to Challenge in the Localism Act. The LGA commissioned OPM to produce eight case studies of public sector mutual spin outs. This executive summary sets out the context of the case studies, which look at the process of spinning out from local government and provide answers to the questions most frequently raised.
Author: Claire Lazarus, Clive Miller and Judith Smyth
This guidance is useful to people wanting to understand how the whole system needs to be changed in order to improve outcomes for children, young people and families. It will be of particular interest to those looking to improve outcomes through personalisation and personal budgets, as well as those concerned about the future of specialist services for particular groups of children and young people.
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Author: Phil Copestake and Hilary Thompson
‘Mutuals’ are organisations that are owned by their employees, in some cases alongside other stakeholders, and now represent a significant section of the economy. Recent policy initiatives from all political parties seek to extend their contribution, and the government has recently outlined plans to extend their role in public services. This report draws on research evidence to suggest which models are likely to be most appropriate in different circumstances, and identifies the public services where greater employee control might add value. It sets out some of the issues for government and commissioners, and for leaders of provider organisations to consider. It was published as part of OPM’s pro bono public interest research programme.
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On April 1st 2013 health and wellbeing boards moved out of the shadows to formally take on responsibility for improving health and wellbeing and reducing health inequalities in their areas. They face many challenges, not least reductions in local authority budgets, increasing demands due to an ageing population, the restructuring of the NHS, and a challenging public health agenda. 
