CLS Spring Forward Festival Week 1

4th May - 6th May

For CLS Network members and people involved in their work only!

join the conversation: #communityledsupport

This year's Online Spring Festival is all about Building on the strengths, taking the learning and looking forward...

Tuesday 4th May

10.00 – 10.30am: Welcome, update and… what is community led support?

Jenny Pitts, Community Led Support Programme Lead, will open the festival, share news and updates on the Community Led Support programme and what to expect over the next couple of weeks of the festival.

11.00am - 12.00pm The Personal Perspective: Joe Powell
Joe Powell is National Director of All Wales Putting People First and, although being an engaging, entertaining and powerful speaker now, spent many years too afraid to speak. Joe has a wealth of personal experience of how care services can both damage and transform people’s lives. We have given Joe the brief to not hold back, to say what needs to change as well as celebrate, when a different approach is taken, just what is possible.

1.00 – 2.00pm Human Rights Based Practice
Sanchita Hosali is the Director of the British Institute of Human Rights. The government report from the ASC Covid-19 Taskforce last summer highlighted the importance of human rights being at the forefront of all our work to support people well. In this session Sanchita will provide an overview of human rights, the Human Rights Act in relation to the pandemic and demonstrate how it can be a force of positive change to transform people’s lives.

3.00 – 4.00pm Hospitals and CLS – a balanced approach
The pressures of Covid 19 have impacted on Hospital teams considerably. We know there is a huge personal and professional conflict for some balancing a human rights, strength based approach with the need to release as much hospital resource as possible. Anne Coyle, Managing Director from South Warwickshire Foundation Trust has offered to share some of the current experience of what's working well within Warwickshire.

Wednesday 5th May

10.00 – 11.30am Introducing ERIC (Economic Return on Investment Calculator)
Mike Richardson (NDTi) will introduce our new team member, ERIC (the Economic Return on Inclusion Calculator) and his sidekick, ERNie) that enable us to understand, from government returns, what is currently happening in local authority areas and what has been, or could be, the economic value of applying CLS principles. The tool is still in development but being tested now in a number of areas and Mike will share what ERIC is capable of.

1.00 – 2.00pm CLS and the ‘workforce’
Amanda Nally, Community Led Support Development Lead recognises that the ‘workforce’, practice and skills required to embed CLS are critical to achieving whole system transformation. But what is the impact on the workforce? How do we ensure the transformation is embedded to achieve practice and cultural change that lasts. Where are the opportunities to support the workforce amongst peers, leaders, supervisors, practice development? This session is seeking to hear from you, what’s really changing and working well? How do you know? What are your top tips for embedding transformational change amongst the workforce and celebrating this?

3.00 - 5.00pm CLS Leaders Network
This session is aimed solely at those responsible for leading the implementation of CLS in their area, whether they have just embarked on the task or have been going for many years. It will relaunch our CLS Leaders Network, a supportive forum based on shared learning and experiences and trusting relationships. Participants will receive the joining link by email.

Thursday 6th May:

9.30 – 10.30am Co-producing a ‘front door’ community response
We know that getting the first contact right is hugely important. In November Becky from Torbay shared with us the plans for their community helpline that had grown from the amazing response from Torbay Food Alliance. This has now evolved to become an integral part of Torbay council’s customer services ‘front door’. In this session Andrew Moorhouse, Deborah Gidman and Tracey Cabache will share the “story” of its evolution and the approach they’ve taken to co-design

11.30am – 12.45pm Demonstrating and evidence change - the CLS way
This session is for new/ish CLS sites (or those who would like a refresher) and will particularly benefit local site leads and evidence & learning leads. During this workshop, Helen Bown, who leads our work in this area, will look at two things:
• An overview of how we approach the big question of whether the changes you want to achieve, through CLS, are happening and how those changes happened. This includes how we work with you to develop a whole system evidence framework, as well as some specific “evidence offers” available through CLS.
• Some simple qualitative measures to learn about what matters and is different for local people. This second element will be highly interactive – we will share some examples from different CLS sites and other programmes and invite you to bring your own examples and ideas to share with others.

1.30 – 2.30pm Hartlepool carers organisation and CLS
One of the key success factors for CLS is the partnership work between local community/ voluntary sector organisations and statutory organisations. In Hartlepool Christine Fewster and the team at Hartlepool Carers have been involved in CLS right from the first engagement sessions. Here Christine and Leigh Keeble will consider the approach that has built on their partnership. Christine will share how this has led to creative, responsive initiatives to support local carers with alternatives to traditional commissioned support and the journey to undertaking Carers assessments on behalf of the Council.

3.30 – 4.30pm How community focused is our workforce really? The CLX
We talk a lot about the importance of community supports, mainstream, micro enterprise, voluntary groups and neighbourhood contributions as alternatives to formal supports, or to prevent, delay or enhance those. But this requires those advising and planning with people to have trust in and to value those community options. How do we know the extent to which this trust and belief in the value of community supports exists? Raj Singh and Caroline Harding (NDTi) will share the Community Lens Index, how it works and what it can tell us.