Welcome to your new Partnership website
Updating the site
Since we posted this page, and the first iteration of the website, there's been quite a bit of thinking about how the Partnership operates and how the website can better support that.
In summary, we want to be more about getting people together to find solutions to the big issues facing this borough, and less about board meetings with long agendas and many reports.
We're in the process of changing the structure of the site to make it more about the business and less about the bureaucracy. What we're up to is:
- Changing the board pages to be more about our priorities - treating them as streams of work, not as a 'board' in the first instance;
- Making the content reflect changes to the governance of the Partnership, including changes to memberships; abolition of the Stronger Borough Board; creation of the Local Strategic Partnership.
- Removal of CAA pages and changing the LAA pages to be about data and intelligence management, which is the information on which we make our decisions;
- Preparing for the imminent refresh of the Community Plan.
We hope that it's all about making a website that keeps you engaged in what's going on across the borough to make it a better place to live, work and do business.
Got any queries or suggestions? Give us a shout: partnership@lbbd.gov.uk
The original intro...
The Barking & Dagenham Partnership has been around since 2001. In 2008, Public Service Board (the Partnership's 'executive' group) agreed a new structure, which you'll see reflected in the six Partnership boards in the menu, left. Each board meets at least quarterly, and has clear responsibility for delivering against a selection of the Local Area Agreement's indicators.
But the Partnership has to be about more than board meetings. We need people to be making connections all the time, coming together to generate ideas about the sort of public services that the residents of this borough need. Some of those ideas will be sparked off by discussions at Partnership boards, but many more of them will come from people meeting and talking outside of the 'formal' structures. This website is part of our work to get more of those informal conversations going, and providing the opportunity for more people to be part of the good work that results.
Beyond good ideas, the site also contains a wealth of information that will allow people at all levels from across the community, public and private sectors to keep track of the work that the Partnership is doing. Want to know how we're doing on a particular measure? Check out the interactive 'Local Area Agreement'. Want to find out what happened at the last board meeting? Then there are the regularly-updated Partnership board pages. Just interested in keeping up to date with the latest projects and initiatives? Then the news and events pages are for you, and we've included an interactive calendar so that you can keep yourself plugged in to the huge range of events that are being run across the partnership by different organisations. If you have a few minutes to spare over a coffee, you may want to browse the video library to find out about exciting projects and services, or see the latest that is playing on the Community TV screens across the borough. Finally, if you want to join in online discussion, there's a forum where you can post questions, thoughts and replies, and contribute to the future policy and service development of the Partnership.
It's your website
The website has an editorial team from across the Council, police, local NHS and third sector. However, if we really are going to make it useful for communicating all that is going on around the Partnership, you have to contribute as well. Use the forum, add your events, give us your news items and think about what other contributions you can make.
Finally, that prompts the question: who is a member of the Partnership? Quite simply, anyone can be, if they are committed to the aims of the partnership, and to working with others to build a better Barking & Dagenham: a borough that is safe, clean, fair and respectful, prosperous and healthy and where our young people are inspired and successful. If that sounds like you, come and join us.
A work in progress... help us to progress it!
Getting a website off the ground is a continuous process, and there are a number of areas of the site that we are still building. In particular, you may find that:
- The A-Z of services needs further work, and is currently based around the Council's own A-Z. We are currently working on making this more appropriate to frontline professionals from across the partnership who need to refer people on, or just need to get the details for other professional colleagues.
- Board pages will continue to develop with messages from chairs, lead officers and others, and increasing numbers of project updates, etc.
- The library of documents will always continue to develop. Seen something that should be on there? Let us know...
- More video will be added as and when it's developed, but if you have ideas, then talk to us about them.
- The Partnership's governance arrangements, being finalised over the coming months will also be a prominent new section.
And of course, we're always looking for ways to make it more dynamic and engaging so we'll be looking to reduce the number of 'text heavy' pages, whilst making sure that the information you need is still available.
Perhaps most importantly, if you spot something that needs changing, or that doesn't work, then let us know. A lot of work has gone into making this site as comprehensive as it can be, but we will have missed things or allowed errors to creep in. We also need to know if there is a problem with compatibility with your computer or browser, so do let us know and we'll see if there's anything we can do to improve things.
Thanks for visiting the site. Everyone involved looks forward to it improving the way we work together for the good of the residents of the borough. All comments are very much welcomed!