Who We Are: Bridges Outcomes Partnerships Edition
Grace Duffy, Director of Policy, Influencing and Engagement at Bridges Outcomes Partnerships, tells us about the organisation’s work with local authorities and the partnerships it has developed to build better outcomes for residents.
Our focus is on improving lives and creating better value for society through the power of partnership.
Through partnerships, we create public and social services which are collaborative in design, flexible in delivery and have the clearest possible accountability for supporting people.
We aim to improve outcomes for individuals in need and communities over the long term.
We do this by finding more effective and innovative ways of working; by considering how to improve the whole system of funding and commissioning services, while keeping individuals at the heart of our work; and by sharing our learnings along the way. From homelessness prevention to family therapy, from education & employment to health & wellbeing: we provide exceptional operational expertise, essential data management, broad policy input, and co-ordinate socially motivated working capital to enable services that truly empower people.
Instead of tying delivery to specified activities, we focus on achieving meaningful, long-term improvements in peoples’ lives.
We take a person-centred, outcomes-focused approach to addressing and preventing the most complex challenges facing people and communities across the country. That means that instead of tying service delivery to specified activities regardless of whether they are effective – the traditional approach – we focus on achieving meaningful, long-term improvements in peoples’ lives. Crucially, commissioners only pay for what actually works, once positive outcomes have been achieved and evidenced.
Our approach to service design and delivery is highly flexible, place-based and data-led. It is person-led and collaborative from beginning to end.
Naturally, this means that each service is different, because each challenge and each individual, is different. For concrete examples of what this looks like, take a look at our detailed learnings here; we’d love for other members and annual partners to discover, learn more about and adopt this approach where possible.
We work with and alongside local authorities.
BOP delivers outcomes partnerships globally, with a well-established footprint across England – where it pioneered the outcomes movement over a decade ago – and with aims to bring the model to the rest of the UK. It works in a highly place-based way with local authorities (LAs) and their communities, creating People-Powered Partnerships.
We partner with LAs to understand what existing services they are looking to improve; what local challenges they are looking to address; what outcomes they would like to target; and what success looks like for them.
We know that a service will be far more impactful and sustainable if it is rooted in the community, tailored to the specific needs of that place and its people.
We explore which community assets already exist and where there are opportunities to join these up for better provision – engaging with community stakeholders and meeting with partners to understand more about their organisations and services. And where there are gaps, we work with LAs, local partners, and the people we support, to create new community-owned, community-led assets. Because we know that a service will be far more impactful and sustainable if it is rooted in the community, tailored to the specific needs of that place and its people.
You’ll find a more detailed look into our take on community power in this New Local post.
Our focus is on partnership working to deliver better outcomes for people.
Recently one of our programmes – dedicated to supporting children in Suffolk and Norfolk to remain safely with their families and out of the care system – crossed an impressive milestone: Stronger Families has now kept 580+ children out of care for over 365,000 cumulative days. That’s the equivalent of over 1,000 years!
In partnership with Family Psychology Mutual, Suffolk County Council and Norfolk County Council, Stronger Families supports children and adolescents at risk of being taken into care, or who have returned to their families from care, by providing them (and their family) with access to therapeutic support. It is designed to address challenging patterns of behaviour and communication, developing families’ capacity for sustainable, positive change, and building a foundation of acceptance and respect.
The model provides an opportunity for commissioners to create meaningful outcomes and prevent escalation of issues, at real value for money and in line with their own budgets.
“The outcomes payments are structured over a couple of years, measured by those children continuing to stay out of care… the avoided costs are potentially enormous. I think it stacks up in both senses – it’s the right thing to do for families and the right thing to do for council budgets.”
Graham Beamish, Head of Programmes, Children & Young People’s service, Suffolk County Council
You can read more about the milestone and the value that Stronger Families is creating, here.
About the author
I joined BOP in October 2023, following a 12-year stint in the civil service, most recently at MHCLG. In that time, I came to understand how the system in which public services operate is flawed and can drive unintended and negative outcomes.
In BOP I found a compelling alternative. For many years there has been broad consensus on the need for more personalised, place-based and joined-up services, but little clarity on how to achieve them. People powered and Social Outcomes Partnerships are a practical and highly effective way of realising these principles and radically improving outcomes for individuals and value for society. I am excited about the prospects for expanding their use and unlocking more effective support for more people across the country.
Photo credit: photos from one of BOP’s social prescribing programmes, Thrive Northeast Lincolnshire.
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