Expression of Interest - March 2020

Please tell us why you are applying. What does the partnership want to achieve and why, and over what period of time? Why do you think you can be successful?

In Plymouth, our aspiration is to ‘shift the dial’ on health inequalities which represent such deep and intractable problems. The Local Care Partnership aims to ‘level up’ Plymouth by acting as a unified system across four key priorities. Seeing the impact of social isolation and related factors has led to one priority focusing on community and social connectedness. Yet the solution, being complex and varied, gives us a huge challenge.

The challenges are technical – the steps from community response to health system impacts are non-linear; and are cultural – this complexity challenges the balance between command and control and facilitative responses. So, whilst we know connections and relationships play a central role in individual and community wellbeing, we need to learn how.

Woven into highly participative processes, this funding will allow us to test approaches to community capacity building. It provides time to learn, whilst agreeing on critical system measures that will allow adoption in the future. In year one, we will start using data and fuzzy cognitive mapping to underpin participative design processes that attract engagement from diverse groups and begin real-world testing. We will follow a cycle of participatory test and learn, continuing into years two and three, ramping up the testing and starting to influence future commissioning processes and future investment decisions.

We are mindful that social connectedness sits within and alongside other determinants of health. Because participatory processes distribute power and control, and increase connection to the real issues, we aspire that lessons and techniques learned are cascaded out and adopted elsewhere in the system; a gateway to introducing culture change and new ways of working. Combining this funding and support gives us the capacity to tackle the technical and cultural challenges to help push a local health system to a tipping point that allows community and prevention to become mainstream.

How do you anticipate using the grant funding and leadership support to help you build your partnership approach?

There are two uses the grant will be put to:

1. Delivery of a co-design process that is participative and starts with creating an understanding of the ‘system’, moves to exploring issues, and quickly into real-world testing. This then gives structure to the second use of the grant.

2. Funding activities that build connection, using existing structures such as the Plymouth Partners and Funders Forum to bring together a coalition of funders and social investors, together with commissioners to maximize investment in the actions that are judged to be most impactful. This offers an opportunity for the Healthy Communities funding to be used as leverage and match funding. Building on POP+’s experience and connections, it is worth noting that the process will naturally bring in other funders and social investors, thereby maximizing opportunities for funders to collaborate.

Leadership support:

- Using the ‘brand’ and significant experience from the King’s Fund support to engage senior leaders in inputting into the design of the co-design process.
- Using the cycle of inquiry, discovery, and reflection to support leadership and OD challenges to improve responsiveness.
- Giving challenge to the process, thereby improving, amplifying, and increasing credibility.
- Supporting the development of a common language that will emerge out of the process and funded activity.
- Underpinning the process with relevant theoretical input and learning from elsewhere.
- Supporting a cascade to other areas (towards the end of the nine months of support).