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Local Compact

“Better working and better partnership with statutory agencies”

What is a Local Compact?

A Compact is an agreement between the local council, other public sector agencies, and local voluntary and community sector organisations. It can also include the local private sector.

Haringey’s Compact is titled “Working BETTER Together”, which is an aspirational and practical agreement. The Compact commitments are a foundation of the agreement and underpin how organisation’s that sign up to the Compact relate and interact between and within sectors. On the practical side there are a set of principles, which are fundamental to better partnership working, these include:

Improve volunteering
Valuing the role of BME, Voluntary and Community Groups
Recognising the role of young people
Good practice in funding and procurement
Good practice in communications and consultation
Promoting partnerships

The Haringey Compact - “Working BETTER Together” - has the following key objectives:

To promote equality and strengthen voluntary activity throughout the borough;
To recognise and support the vital and unique role that voluntary and community groups play in the lives of Haringey’s residents;
To give the voluntary and community sector a real voice in decision and policy making, and service delivery;
To develop a consistent approach to the funding of local voluntary and community organisations;
To assist local public, voluntary and private sector organisations to develop meaningful partnering arrangements;
To simplify public sector processes and procedures, encouraging effective ways of joint working;

To put in place a robust and trustworthy mediation process to sort out disagreements when things go wrong.

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Vision

“Working BETTER Together” is the new starting point for the public, private and voluntary and community sectors to develop Haringey’s services to effectively meet the social, economic, health, and environmental needs of its local communities.

Our central goal is to encourage better partnerships that fundamentally value diversity and equality so that Haringey can strive to sustain local services through clearer and fairer decision-making arrangements, which will benefit all sectors and improve the wellbeing of all of Haringey’s residents.

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What the Compact means in practice

“Working BETTER together” is not just a piece of paper. It is a working document which will be continuously developed over time, ensuring that all the sectors work together towards the improvements in services and quality of life that Haringey’s people need and deserve.

Local voluntary, community and public sector organisations who sign up to Haringey’s Compact will implement the commitments and principles contained in the agreement.

Over time, through training and support, the principles and commitments will be embedded throughout existing strategic structures (e.g. public policy will be Compact assessed) and among voluntary and community organisations (e.g. organisations can nominate Champions who will work with Haringey’s Compact Implementation Group – HCIG – see section entitled Working BETTER Together in Action– The Compact Challenge)

The Compact does not seek to duplicate existing work but to build on the good practice that is currently being delivered across Haringey.

Who should be involved?

All organisations in Haringey which work in conjunction with other groups are also considered as partners and are invited to sign up as well. For the voluntary and community sector, this covers professional, regulated organisations, those that are more grass-roots based and local, including faith-led groups, and the growing social or community enterprise sector.

Public sector organisations which can sign up are those institutions that receive core funding from Government, with statutory duties to deliver key services locally. As well as the council and local NHS trusts this includes the emergency services and a wide range of educational, employment and housing agencies.

Private sector organisations also increasingly work in partnership with the voluntary, community and public sectors, providing services, funding and other support, and it is envisaged that many private sector businesses will also endorse the commitments and principles of the Haringey Compact.

Becoming part of “Working BETTER Together” means sharing the compact commitments, but most importantly it means becoming part of a new framework for promoting equality, equal rights and mutual respect across the sectors, backed up by a clear disputes procedure.

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“Working BETTER Together” in action – The Compact Challenge

The basis of the Compact is about creating a holistic, cross cutting approach to collaborative partnership working that will be mutually beneficial to all partners involved. This partnership work will help to reduce duplication, secure better value for money and more effective partnership relationships which will help to create more responsive, efficient, effective and accessible services for Haringey’s residents.

A Haringey Compact Implementation Group (HCIG) will be formed, trained and support will be offered to Compact Champions, and reports about the Compact effectiveness locally. Haringey’s Strategic Partnership also will consider the Compact annual report and help make recommendations. The HCIG will be formed with members from all the sectors. Their role is to ensure that the objectives contained in the workplan which accompanies the agreement are put into place and Compact Champions will be nominated from each sector to help drive forward the message of meaningful partnership working.

Work Plan

Now that the document is ready; 3 key things must happen for it to be a success:

Fully supported by local organisations from all sectors
Clear/realistic Implementation Plan
Resourced where necessary (so that Compact Champions, for example, are trained etc)

Compact Champions

The aim of the Compact Champion is to build awareness, ownership, involvement, use and accountability of the Compact and partnership working. Compact Champions are key to successful Compact implementation and driving it forward to improve partnership working between and across the sectors.

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What are the benefits of a Compact?

Mutual Benefits of the Compact

Shared vision
Integrated ambitions that are reflected in partners plans activities
Addressing the local, regional challenges to secure the well being of local communities
Involving local people in developing the vision, agreeing priorities and making decisions
Right partners in the right relationship
Making outcomes better then they otherwise would be.
Clear rules and guidance to enable the sectors to have a better understanding of they work.
Developing quality measures, good practice and consensus locally
Building real trust between partners
More effective and genuine consultation processes

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How would my organisation know that the Compact is working?

Projects and partnerships undertaken that could not have been previously undertaken
Improved communication with partners
Greater effectiveness with less wasted effort
Greater effectiveness is achieving your organisation's goals
Greater effectiveness in delivering the goals of the community strategy

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Background consultation reports

Haringey’s Compact is a result of an 18 month long consultation process in which over 300 local people, and people working in the borough, have had an opportunity to hear about the purpose of a local Compact and share their views on what they believe should be in the Compact.

Over 14 focus groups and consultation events were held. Consultation reports available for downloading are at the bottom of the page and includes the focus group report produced by Insight Business Development.

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The HCWG has produced regular newsletters through out the process and will continue to produce newsletters and information updates to support the implementation of Haringey’s Compact.

Back editions of the newsletter can be found below

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Attached Files
Filename	Filetype	Size
compact newsletter 2.pdf	PDF	382K
compact evaluation report focus groups.doc	Word	290K
compact newsletter issue1.pdf	PDF	236K
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