Chair’s summary

Today, we held our final Partnership Collaborative meeting which was hosted at the Changing Futures office with around 20 people attending.

The vibe was nice and relaxed, which allowed for people to converse and network prior to the meeting commencing. Once everyone had settled, the meeting chair welcomed everyone and thanked all for being in attendance, as well as giving an overview of what’s to come, which would start with various updates from a panel of Changing Futures staff.

To kick us off, Helen Pitches from Bristol City Council introduced the Bristol Multiple Disadvantage Strategy. She explained how and why the strategy came about and what it is set-up to do.

Tom Dunn followed-up with an update on how MTAM has now successfully completed its pilot phase, is currently in its implementation stage and will soon enter its mainstreaming phase.

Amanda Pywell shared client stories which really highlighted what ‘multiple disadvantage’ looks like, bringing the work being done to life and giving a vivid insight into the impact of MTAM.

Next-up, Ben Muton-Phillips introduced Changing Futures’ restorative approaches pilot for social care. It is a ground breaking pilot due to end in 6 months but is showing great promise already.

Corrado Totti then spoke about Lived Experience and what Independent Futures has developed so far, including coproduction workshops and the Copro Lab, a community of practice for those working in coproduction.

Ben then returned to give an update on evidence-based evaluation and the tools currently being used to measure the success of the work across the programme.

Then, before going to questions, Emmie Davies enlightened us on the progress being made around collaboration, and illustrated that things appear to be in a good place and going in the desired direction.

Ahead of the break, the presenting panel then faced some questions around data collection and the inner mechanisms of the support systems weaved throughout the programme, which were all answered substantially and allowed for some interesting discussion. Overall, there seemed to be a collective consensus of opinion that MTAM was effectively becoming practice more widely across the sector, but there is still an underlying uncertain political and financial landscape , which has an impact on the progress of this work.

After the break, we had an open and fruitful discussion around the 5 objectives set out in the multiple disadvantage strategy, where attendees reflected on how they sit within the work and how they wish for things to develop moving forward, which brought-up a lot of important thoughts for future consideration and unpicking.

The chair then began to draw the meeting to a close by thanking all for being present and contributing so meaningfully. Finally, the chair paid homage to the overarching contributions the Partnership Collaborative has made over the past few years, in-light of this meeting being the final one, after which, the chair was handed a small gift for their involvement over the past 18 months.

Today was a very nice way to conclude the Partnership Collaborative, and we’re sure it will be missed; however, onwards and upwards as always!