Community based services

Our vision

Our vision is to ensure that access to good quality information and advice is freely and easily accessible to all, helping people to:

• Plan effectively for the future
• Solve emerging problems
• Make well informed life choices to maximise their health, wellbeing and happiness

Strategic priorities

Our strategic priorities are:

• Getting people to the right place as quickly as possible
• Development of a triage approach and single point of referral which will assess people's needs and get them the right support as quickly as possible
• Designing with social justice in mind: Running social justice through the heart of delivery, focusing on the four pillars of social justice; equity, access, participation, and rights
• Working alongside connecting communities to develop a formalised voluntary, community and social enterprise sector (VCSE) pathway
• Building in the living well model: By developing and building the links to the living well approach and advice services to maximize opportunity for people to utilise their own assets and resilience and promote their independence
• Improved access: Making the service easier to access using a range of technologies, including the ability to self-help
• Connecting people to their community: The focus will be to connect people to their community whilst supporting them to build their assets and promote their independence

Care act responsibilities

The Care Act (2014) sets out an information and advice duty for local authorities to inform residents and people with care needs in the following way:

• How the social care system works and how people can access it
• What's available and a choice of how people receive services (to include health, housing and employment)
• Financial advice to understand care charges, ways to pay, money management and where to get independent financial advice
• How to raise concerns about safety and well-being

Promoting independence

Giving good information and advice that is easy to access enables people to make informed choices and promotes their independence. It can also support them to develop links within their community offering greater stability and improved health outcomes.

Prevent, reduce and delay

Through providing early help to support people and reduce the demand on formal care services. There is also the opportunity to support people to build their own assets and to make better links with their community.

Advice, advocacy and representation

We commission VCSE organisations to deliver advice, advocacy and representation under a partnership agreement.

This advice, advocacy and representation includes:

Social welfare, information advice and representation

Our social welfare advice includes guidance on:

• Money and debt
• Welfare benefits/ universal credit (UC) (UC is a welfare benefit and isn't usually singled out in advice context)
• Pensions
• Housing
• Family and relationships, such as child protection or child contact
• Employment (in the context of advice this is relating to employment law and rights, not support finding a job or CV writing for example)
• Discrimination
• Education
• Immigration
• Taxes
• Legal
• Health and wellbeing, such as mental health and social care support entitlements
• Consumer rights
• Carers rights
• Domestic abuse, such as legal remedies including non-molestation orders or support with court applications

Community advocacy and specialist support

Our community advocacy and specialist support:

• Facilitates access to a process or a service
• Advocates on behalf of people, ensuring their voices are heard
• Supports people to understand their decisions (and to seek advice on their issue)
• Promotes self-advocacy and empowers people to do this
• Supports people to be independent
• Enables people to have choice and control

Social isolation and loneliness

We fund a package of services to help tackle loneliness and social isolation, including:

• Better together
• CAN Connect
• LILY

Clients are helped to:

• Access social and community activities, volunteering opportunities and local support networks
• Identify and overcome barriers that prevent them from becoming connected
• Reconnect with family and friends and make new connections in their community

In addition, we provided grant funding to citizens advice bureaus as part of a community advice and support offer.

Norfolk citizens advice

Activity and impact of Norfolk citizens advice from 1 April 2022 to 21 March 2023:

• Number of clients: 13,642
• Number issues supported: 42,200
• Number of cases: 13,074
• Number of activities: 39,393
• Income gain for clients supported: £1,401,830
• Debt written off: £1,108,893

A client will usually come to the service with multiple issues. If they have not used the service previously, a new case will be opened. Activities refer to the number of individual actions undertaken for the clients being supported.

Our offer targeting support via hardship and debt services is funded through the household support fund.

Integrated VCSE delivery

In 2021, the Norfolk and Waveney VCSE assembly was formally established, with the following overarching functions:

• To provide a VCSE engagement forum across Norfolk and Waveney, with a focus on health inequalities and prevention, with connection at neighbourhood, place, and system levels
• To provide a mechanism to support the collaborative design of services and the capability to respond to emerging needs
• To increase influence and participation of VCSE organisations and groups in the design and delivery of health and care services within the integrated care system (ICS)

The model for the VCSE assembly continues to develop in line with the developments being made in our ICS and recognises engagement mechanisms at a system-level, such as the links to our existing thematic VCSE forums, such as:

• Children and young people
• Older people
• Mental health

It is also supporting the progress around place and neighbourhood connections.

Challenges

The challenges we face for integrated VCSE delivery include: 

• Lack of a co-ordinated vision for the role of the VCSE in supporting health and care activities
• Lack of formal processes to make referral to the VCSE simple and timely
• The need to make best use of the VCSE resources available, formally linking VCSE provision into service/care pathways
• The need to secure funding to progress the VCSE partnering agenda
• The difficulties of engaging communities of interest/underserved communities and embedding the community voice into ICS in (full) decision making
• The failure to address known health inequalities through missed opportunities to target health interventions to those most vulnerable/least engaged with services and support. Increasing the number of people accessing services with avoidable needs.

Supply and demand

There are approximately 12,000 formal and informal charitable organisations in Norfolk and Waveney. Registered charities report an annual income of £709m.

Key actions

Our key actions for working towards an integrated VCSE delivery are: 

• To better understand what services are currently being delivered and the service pathways that these VCSE services can best support
• To scope opportunities for the development of micro enterprises to support areas that are sparsely populated
• To deliver the connecting communities programme, ensuring that people can access the right service, in the right place, at the right time
• To embed the newly commissioned information, advice and advocacy model
• To continue to fund the citizens advice bureau to deliver information and advice support

Feedback

We want people living in Norfolk to say:

• "As well as family and friends, I have people who care about me"
• "I can get information and advice that is accurate, up to date and provided in a way that I can understand"
• "I can get information and advice that helps me think about and plan my life"
• "I can live the life I want and do the things that are important to me as independently as possible"
• "I am valued for the contribution that I make to my community"