Meeting the Countess of Wessex during her visit to Staffordshire Place last week
Following the excitement of the recent county council election, recent days have had a real back to business feel about them. Together with colleagues from the Senior Leadership Team I met both the returning and newly elected councillors for the first time last week and there were many new faces. No doubt they will bring new ideas, different expectations and a different outlook to the work we do. Full Council will meet today (Thursday) to formally agree a new cabinet and I am sure we will have a busy few months ahead.
Our role as officers remains, as ever, to translate the pledges – the basis of the election of our new administration – into action. Through their choices in the polling booths, the people of Staffordshire have set our direction for the next four years. In many instances it will be business as usual, including a relentless drive to support job creation and economic growth, to deliver value for money, to support people to be more independent and to produce better outcomes for people who live, work or are educated in the county.
It’ll be a challenge, but we believe we can make improvements for local people and their families because of our commissioning approach. In recent months, many of you will have attended the Achieving Commissioning Excellence workshops (if you haven’t been to one yet, find out more about future events on the intranet).
Put simply, we ‘commission’ in order to make things happen that achieve positive outcomes for our residents, communities and society as a whole: based on knowing their needs, wants, aspirations and experience. Individual councils cannot make these changes by going it alone; commissioning is about making the best use of all of our resources and working ever more closely with partners to deliver real improvements in our communities. We need to do things differently, to innovate, to work in tandem across the public sector in Staffordshire – especially against a backdrop of what will likely be even less financial support from central government. We’re already doing these things, and more and in many areas, leading the way locally and nationally through programmes such as the integration of social care and health, and the Entrust partnership.
Commissioning is a theme that I will return to here on my blog but in the meantime you can find out more about the Staffordshire approach on the intranet.