Annual Conference: Jackie Mould

Jackie Mould, the director of Be Birmingham

She said that the third sector would need to muster its creativity and enthusiasm to take advantage of the opportunities that the new landscape would provide. She said that the role of the voluntary community and faith sector is central to Be Birmingham.

She said the sector had been at the heart of delivering, particularly in worklessness. Now was the time to think about how the sector could prepare for the future. There would be an end to the Working Neighbourhoods Fund and an end to the future jobs fund. She'd be looking at how that saving could be made.

But she said that the partnership was still committed to working collaboratively. While it would be easy to retreat and just concentrate on one's own business, it was now essential to see how people work better and more efficiently together.

• 'Only by working together can we deliver the change we need', she said.
• Already have great track record for delivering services
• Led the way for education and tackling crime, climate change.
• The government is looking to Birmingham for goood practice.

A Be Birmingham pilot study - the Total Place report - found:-

• More than £7.5bn public sector money - comes in every year.
• It isn't always spent as it should be. Couldn't we use the resources more effectively?
• We found that there are 18 funding streams to fund offender management
• There are 100 public buildings in one constituency - were they being used effectively? Probably not.
• High-contact families on average cost the state £250,000 each.
• Spent 37million dealing with two dynastic crime families.

Need to create shared vision and work together to deliver this in an efficient and effective way. There will be difficult conversations about what to commission and to decommission. It was vital to shift emphasis to prevention and also to put citizens at the heart of what we do.

She said that now we should be looking for individuals to create the services for themselves.

A number of things will be done as a result:

• Revisit Vision 2026 - to sharpen priorities
• Summit on July 19
• Serious conversation about the future - to decide what we can do together
• Review of governance and partnership arrangements
• Develop a behaviour and culture change.
• Develop the concept of a budget for Birmingham
• Developing shared intelligence function - less data collection and more real research and analysis
• Looking at capital assets and how they can be used more efficiently.
• Committed to driving forward a piece of work about working with families.

She said this would all require a huge change - finding ways of doing more for less. She said this would be through co-creation of services with citizens. People would have to think creatively and find ways to use assets more effectively.

It would mean working across organisational and hierarchical boundaries. The citizen should be at the heart of everything that is done. It was people who really make things work in the end. 

You can see Jackie's presentation here.