Wigan Council

Wigan Council

Service Delivery Footprints Profiles

Briefly describe the initiative/ project/service; please include your aims and objectives

In Wigan we have 7 Service Delivery Footprints containing 30-50,000 residents who are supported by a multitude of agencies. To support the integrated working, for the 1st time, business intelligence and staff from across the Health and Social Care partnership came together to produce a strategic neighbourhood profile.

The clear aim was to produce ‘joined-up’ analysis, not split by organisation or activity type. Each profile contained analysis of up to date Partnership data, the direction of travel across a 24 month period, context against the Borough wide picture and highlighted those metrics where the SDF area is a particular outlier or of interest for further deep dive analysis.

Viewing thematic issues in a more holistic way helped identify key strategic actions from which to build a local partnership delivery plan of activity. For the first time, the profiles gave place-based staff a common currency from which to build a specific place based offer from an evidence base that for the first time was tailored to and built around the very granular needs of the SDF. The profiles were delivered to each SDF and a business intelligence model has now been wrapped around an identified partnership advisory group within each SDF area.

What are the key achievements?

At a local level, it quickly became clear that the depth of analysis produced was valuable and not something that had been seen before. One GP commented that often he “didn’t know what was happening in the surgery room next door” and that his local profile provided that context and much more. Good analysis should invariably ask more questions than it answers and this has been true of the profiles.

They have prompted local leaders to ask for further insight and created a demand for integrated intelligent analysis. This appetite for local intelligence and the ability the profiles have given the Borough to feed that appetite is perhaps the most rewarding achievement. It’s put intelligence-led analysis and evidence based decision making on the radar across the health and social care system in Wigan.

Further achievements have been how the production of the profiles has instigated the development of a connected business intelligence model in the borough. Partners who had previously not been ‘around the table’ are now firmly embedded, ownership of issues has been identified and partners have come together to combine efforts and reduce duplication. Providing a better service and experience for our communities and local partnership teams.

What are the key learning points?

One of the key learning points from completing the profiles and implementing the recurring Business Intelligence Model is that unless there is ‘buy in’ from local leaders and operational staff alike then the profiles will not provide the benefits as described above. Ownership and understanding of local issues is also vital and without this the profiles will not become a rich source of intelligence. Because we completed this for each SDF it became very clear that leadership styles and partnership relations were different across each of the SDF’s, this created a challenge in completion and delivery time and is something to consider when replicating.

Furthermore, it is vital to ensure that the analyst compiling the profile works very closely with place based staff to develop an understanding and ‘feel’ for reasons why certain results may be highlighted in the analysis. Finally, the greatest learning point is that the development of the profiles is an iterative process.

Additional Comments:

The development of the profiles has been a journey that we have travelled along with colleagues, they have been extremely well received with both national praise from NHS England & the GMHSCP Chief Officer Jon Rouse ‘the profiles were bloody brilliant’ and Dr Tracy Vell (Lead in Primary & Community care GMHSCP) said ‘I completely love this…It’s a real exemplar’. We are excited about the future versions and have felt great achievement when hearing how the work has been used to shape service delivery and close gaps in service. It is exciting to see the profiles being replicated in wider parts of our partnership, a clear example of this came from one of our supporting organisations who we helped to replicate the process. This allowed the organisation to align their service activity to need, to understand where there are potential gaps, under use and under referral in service.