People
Our policy outcome
Ensure Thurrock is a place where everyone has the opportunity to reach their full potential and access the support they need.
Our strategic objectives
We will lead a wellbeing and inclusion transformation by:
- working differently, and integrating services to support communities, families and residents to achieve their version of a good life
- focusing on prevention to reduce the potential for long term damaging impacts for children, adults and / or families
- ensuring that inclusive, people-focused outcomes are integral to all our work to reduce inequality, and widen opportunity for all
- supporting people to improve their skills, find good employment, progress in work, or realise entrepreneurial ambitions and thereby accelerate social mobility, enabling them to contribute to and benefit from economic prosperity
What this will do for local people, businesses and places is:
- simplify access to support for residents and families by enabling a breadth of services, responding to needs in a locality, to be delivered
- enable change in the skills system to allow community capacity building and support more residents to be better qualified, access a good job with training and improve their economic potential
- increase the numbers of employers actively promoting good health and wellbeing in order to reduce the days lost due to health
Our priorities for 2024-2029 are as follows.
A. Accelerate and improve engagement with our adult priority cohorts to ensure we listen and understand health and wellbeing needs and priorities
What we will need to do well is:
- collate and interpret data about our people and place – understand the characteristics, needs and risks ensuring we better understand our place and people
- commission responsive services that are adaptable to meet priority cohort needs
- innovate and pilot new solutions
| Number | What we will deliver |
|---|---|
| 1. | Build a strong evidence base for each of our priority cohorts and those with complex needs; the elderly, learning disabilities, mental health and physical and sensory disabilities. Utilising this evidence and insight to commence meaningful engagement with residents, service users and service deliverers to listen and understand opportunities, limitations and risks. |
| 2. | Identify the desired outcomes to be achieved for each priority cohort and collaborate with service users to co-design desired service improvements and support. |
| 3. | Mobilise the new way of working outlined in Better Care: A further case for change, delivering the pilot in Tilbury, engaging residents in decision making on priorities for the Innovation Fund and agreeing the plan for the remaining three localities. |
| 4. | Develop the business case to recommission domiciliary care based upon services working to the principles of the 'wellbeing team', to lever whole system savings. |
| 5. | Agree the approach to independently evaluating impact of service delivery with the users and deliverers of services, ensuring that all opportunities for further improvement are explored. Over time, build the baseline of data and agree any improvement metrics. |
Directors responsible:
- Executive Director of Adults and Health
B. Provide the leadership to ensure the priority of developing a more integrated adult health and care services is mobilised and delivers tangible improvements
What we will need to do well is:
- collaboration and engagement.
- commercial acumen in commissioning.
- evaluate, understand and manage risk.
| Number | What we will deliver |
|---|---|
| 6. | Create multi-disciplinary teams and integrated networks, overseen by Community Investment Boards (CIBS), empowered to work flexibly to brigade services across a locality and to focus on delivering people focused solutions. |
| 7. | Develop a new place-based model of commissioning to make the best use of available resources to deliver outcomes that are unique to the individual. |
| 8. | Review partner capacity and development needs to enable the council to successfully pivot to the new operating model as effectively as possible and maintain and improve service quality. |
| 9. | Clarify the priorities that the council will lead and deliver and influence partners across health, education and the VCFSE to commit to meeting their actions set out in the HWB strategy. |
| 10. | Review locality-based assets to identify and mobilise co-location centres transforming these into integrated locality working bases. |
| 11. | Expand Micro Enterprise Development, working with community catalysts transition towards a broader Community Economic Unit. |
| 12. | Across the council, evaluate the cost of service delivery across localities and consider different approach to finance and resourcing. |
Directors responsible:
- Executive Director of Adults and Health
C. Work to ensure the children and young people who access or are at risk of accessing council services are appropriately supported to achieve positive outcomes
What we will need to do well is:
- collate and interpret data about our people and place – understand the characteristics, needs and risks ensuring we better understand our place and people
- commission responsive services that are adaptable to meet priority cohort needs
| Number | What we will deliver |
|---|---|
| 13. | Work to increase regulated placements, in order to improve access to local high quality placements, that effectively support the complex needs of Thurrock's children and young people, with a provider and in a locality that positively improves the quality of life and outcomes for the young person. |
| 14. | Ensure the offer, capacity and blend of skills within the service is responsive to the needs of all our children including looked after, care leavers, special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) children and young people and our cohort of unaccompanied asylum seekers. |
| 15. | Collaborate with education, training providers and businesses to increase meaningful and accessible programmes, apprenticeships, placement and employment opportunities for young people including SEND, care leavers and other vulnerable groups. |
| 16. | Continue to develop and innovate in our approaches to prevention and early intervention, ensuring all children are supported and able to live safely in their communities and reduce the numbers of children and families requiring a statutory service and children needing to be accommodated. |
Directors responsible:
- Executive Director of Children's Services
D. Continue to deliver the Brighter Futures: Developing Well in Thurrock Strategy, to ensure capacity and capability within the council and its delivery partners increasingly supports our priority cohorts to achieve positive health and well-being outcomes
What we will need to do well is:
- collate and interpret data about our people and place so that we better understand and have greater insight into our challenges and opportunities.
- evaluate, understand and manage risk.
- partnership building.
| Number | What we will deliver |
|---|---|
| 17. | Lead and support strong partnership approaches across the Borough, utilising Family Hubs and other assets to improve information and access to services and to develop improved insight of the needs of our families and young people. |
| 18. | Enhance engagement approaches with service users, families and service providers to build new approaches to the co-design of essential services. |
| 19. | Continue to use information and timely data to evaluate the complexity of cases for looked after children and unaccompanied asylum seekers and other priority cohorts to build our insight into desired outcomes and priorities to inform our commissioning approach. |
| 20. | Continue to develop and innovate approaches to prevention and early intervention, ensuring children have access to services to be healthy, minimising longer term complex problems and reducing service costs. |
Directors responsible:
- Executive Director of Children's Services
E. Support activity that raises aspirations and develops skill that enable all residents to achieve their potential in securing good jobs or self-employment
What we will need to do well is:
- understand the economic impact of different activity
- develop new partnerships with businesses, educational and anchor institutions
- influence local accountability for the impact of Adult Education Budget (AEB)
| Number | What we will deliver |
|---|---|
| 21. | Work intensively with deliverers of large-scale regeneration and development investments, including the Freeport and other large-scale strategic partners to ensure opportunities for young people and adults to access jobs with training and apprenticeship programmes are maximised. Maximise impact by targeting enhanced support for those who are less represented – for example, women returners, young people with SEND needs, care leavers and those in the criminal justice system. |
| 22. | Work with education and training providers to communicate ambitiously and share the potential impact of education and training to prospects, earnings and health and wellbeing. Ensure information and advice and guidance is available to all residents, ensuring a more enhanced offer for vulnerable groups. |
| 23. | Play a leadership role in devolution of or impact of Adult Education Budget (AEB). Influence the development of plans demonstrating responsiveness to local outcomes, ensuring providers deliver effective and well understood options for Thurrock residents to access and sustain work with training, seeking other public, private or voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector (VCFSE) delivery partners. |
Directors responsible:
- Executive Director of Place
Corporate Plan pages
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