Friday 8 August 2014

Of bondage and birth!

No, silly, not that sort of bondage…the Peterborough Prison social impact bond (sib) first results were reported this week, showing that the efforts of the charities working with the first cohort of 1,000 prisoners before leaving gaol has resulted in an 8% reduction in re-offending.

This does not seem like much for 2 years work, and whilst the ever growing social finance market is claiming this as a success, the fact is that the investors won’t be repaid yet as re-offending rates were supposed to drop by 10% to trigger payments to investors by the Ministry of Justice. All depends on achieving a higher rate of reductions by 2016  to hit the 10% average target.

Meanwhile Worcestershire CC  have embarked on a bond to enable working with older people. See:  https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-unveils-major-boost-to-social-investment-sector

It has been a great week with interesting meetings seeing the “re-birth” and birth of new ideas.

The “re-birth” was with Surrey CC Property re-opening discussions about the possibility of us taking over the running of the Woking Youth Arts Centre and was a very positive discussion..what a pity we hadn’t had this type of “what are we trying to achieve here?” discussion at the start. Live and learn.

The second was again with Surrey CC colleagues and hugely promising about whether we could collaborate together to link our exciting CommUniLAB project with SCC’s intentions to commission a time bank and youth social action projects. We have already been working on a Youth Social Action conference on Sat. 15 November with a main speaker from the Demos think tank. We have agreed to meet again, or rather for my successor to do so. A great opportunity to make a difference.

We held our first Healthwatch focus group with young people this week about their experience of the NHS and preferred priorities. The experiences of GP and A&E services were generally positive, but with criticism of orthodontic services, delays in A&E and some GO receptionist - much better in dentist services which were praised. Bullying, in its many forms came up yet again. There is something about resilience that is important here.
  
And finally, in the week when Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond have been debating Scotland’s independence, another Anglo – Scottish event was taking place in London that has resulted in the birth yesterday of our fourth grandchild..a boy. He doesn’t yet have a name as there are delicate discussions going on between very English son and very Scottish daughter-in–law, and both are lawyers….so it may take some time yet. But you can guess where my wife and I will be this week-end !

Mike (PS Loving the cricket by the way)

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