The concept of pooling budgets to overcome professional silos is nothing new. The last government's Total Place scheme attempted to do just that and various local areas have been taking the initiative to align public services budgets for some time. But the coalition government's "community budget" pilot scheme claims to go further than before, giving local areas more power to combine resources into a single pot and redesign provision for local people.
The first phase of the pilot, which started last April, focused on using the budgets to support families with multiple problems. The second phase will look at how community budgets can expand to tackle a wide range of complex multi-agency problems.
This second phase involves two strands, dubbed "whole-place" and "neighbourhood-level" community budgets. Jo Lappin is interim head of strategy at Cheshire West and Chester Council, one of four whole-place areas selected to develop a blueprint for large-scale public service reform. Supported by Whitehall officials, Lappin and her team will spend the next nine months working on plans to pool £3bn to £4bn from 150 local services into a single budget. From 2013, all services provided by the public, voluntary and community sector in the area should be funded from one local pot.
"Everyone is facing budgetary pressures, which is a huge catalyst to change the way we behave," she explains. "The community budget allows us a period to really critically review what we've been spending and to think about doing things differently to deliver better outcomes."
Underpinning the whole-place pilot in Cheshire West and Chester are five outcome themes the area hopes to accomplish - one of which is "best start in life".
"We want to do numerous things to improve the quality of life for our young people," Lappin says. "Within the best start in life theme, we've identified four projects - troubled families, early help and prevention, youth support and children's centre redesign.
"For the early help and prevention project, we want to develop more peer community support for young people, which aims at minimising the need for specialist support in the future," she explains. "On children's centres, the long-term stability of our 20 centres has to be about offering a broader range of services, so we want them to become a one-stop shop for service delivery in the community. For example, children's centres will be used to help older residents lead independent lives."
More than 100 miles further north, meanwhile, work is beginning on one of the 10 neighbourhood-level community budget pilots. In Newcastle, three of the most deprived wards in the city will use the scheme to build on existing work to improve family support services. Over the past two years, the council has been working with residents to redesign public services in the Cowgate, Kenton Bar and Montagu wards.
Paul Whiston, senior area project manager at Newcastle City Council, says neighbourhood-level budgets present a great opportunity to hand permanent control of local services to residents.
Ward committees will control budgets and invest in the services that local people need and want.
"We've already been working hard to develop the community, people's skills and their willingness to trust us," Whiston says. "Our next tranche of work will be about creating sustainability in terms of that community participation. We're looking at developing a social enterprise to run services and boost economic development, so we can actually generate an economy in the neighbourhood rather than a very high dependency on benefits."
Newcastle's neighbourhood-level community budgets will allow the expansion of projects such as one where residents are trained as peer-parenting support volunteers to work on the local estate and surrounding area, run in partnership with Action for Children.
Whiston says this is a good example of how to entrench learning and skills in the community and provide a lasting benefit for residents, young and old - something that epitomises the purpose and the potential of community budgets.
The Local Government Association is now pressing the government to go further and faster, by widening the community budgets scheme to councils across the country.
However, Louise Casey, head of the government's troubled families unit, last week insisted that local areas need not wait for a community budget to begin reforming provision. "It [central government] doesn't stop you putting two budgets together," she said.
COMMUNITY BUDGETS
Community budgets give councils new freedoms to join up local services by pooling budgets across the public sector.
The first phase focused on families with multiple problems. Sixteen pilot areas started to use community budgets last April to tackle this issue. The second phase will apply community budgets to tackle a wide range of complex multi-agency problems, using whole place and neighbourhood level budgets.
Four large-scale "whole place" pilots will focus on ways to improve local services across entire geographical areas. These are Cheshire West and Chester, Greater Manchester, West London and Essex.
Meanwhile, 10 neighbourhood community budget pilots have been selected to develop initiatives that give residents a so-called "micro-level" say over local services. Work in these will begin imminently.
