Dept of Health needs help from social entrepreneurs to improve services
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The new Social Enterprise Unit will encourage innovation and entrepreneurialism in health and social care and pave the way for new services which better meet patients and service users' needs.
Joining other government colleagues at the Third Sector Summit, Care Services Minister Ivan Lewis said: "We want people to live life to the full. The voluntary and community sector work very hard in the community and are well placed to understand what people need. They can help us fulfil our White Paper commitment to improve the quality of services, making them more flexible and available closer to home.
"The new unit will encourage social enterprises to involve staff and service users in designing and delivering services tailored to meet people's needs and also achieve greater value for money. To help with this we will establish a Social Enterprise Fund from April 2007, to help with set-up costs.
"Getting the third sector more involved in providing services will bring wider benefits by recycling proceeds back in to the community."
It has been established on the same day that Prime Minister Tony Blair announced increased involvement of the voluntary sector in the provision of community equipment, such as wheelchairs.
The Transforming Community Equipment Services Project, announced by the Prime Minister, will invite key stakeholders, including the third sector, to help develop new ways to deliver services. The aim will be to cut down on multiple assessments across health and social care and explore how to harness the capabilities of both the third and private sectors. We aim to have developed a new model by Autumn 2007.
It will radically review the 'end to end' delivery of these services from the needs assessment process through to commissioning, procurement, logistics, warehousing and installation of equipment.
Jonathan Bland, Chief Executive of the Social Enterprise Coalition said:
"The Coalition is delighted that DH has set up its Social Enterprise Unit to give doctors, nurses and other health professionals a helping hand in making the transition into social enterprise. We are committed to working closely with DH together to maximize the opportunities for social enterprise in the healthcare market."
Other concrete examples of social enterprise work underway include the Expert Patients programme (EPP), which has been established to deliver high quality courses to help people manage their long term conditions. Key to this approach was having the course led by a person who themselves has a long term condition.
The EPP has proved successful, but in order to expand from the current 12,000 courses a year to 100,000, we are liberating it by creating the first national Community Interest Company (CIC) to be established in England.
The Expert Patient Programme CIC will be able to develop exciting new approaches to self-management that will be more relevant to the young, ethnic minorities and other groups that the traditional NHS sometimes struggles to reach. It will operate as a business but with the principal goal of improving the lives of people with long-term health conditions.
The Department of Health Social Enterprise Unit will work very closely with the newly established Government Office for the Third Sector, led by Ed Milliband.
Related links to this article:
Department of Health
Expert Patients Programme
For further information on the Transforming Community Equipment Project, see this link
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