Minutes:
The Board participated in a facilitated discussion session on objective setting for the CSP, covering areas such as the make up of the partnership, branding, transformational change and opportunities for new areas of working and where the partnership could add value going forward.
It was agreed that the review undertaken by the Council of partnership arrangements across the borough be circulated to the Board alongside the minutes to help identify any areas of overlap or gaps and to ensure that lines of reporting and responsibilities were clearly identified to provide a context to discussions over where the partnership could add value.
[action: Tracy Evans]
The Board held a brief round table discussion and provided the following feedback in response to key questions asked:
Q1) How can the work of the CSP be improved?
· The Board’s strategy needed to set out clear, uncluttered lines of communications, assign clear roles and responsibilities and formalise arrangements for information sharing.
· Critical evaluation was required of the past work of the partnership in order to focus on lessons learnt and areas for improvement in approach. An important part of this was ensuring the Board was kept up to date on progress against outcomes and associated feedback.
· Implementation of a CSP communications strategy was required to publicise successes and send out key messages and counter narratives. In order to deliver this, input would be required from the Council’s communications team in CSP meetings going forward and as such it was agreed that the team would be invited to future meetings.
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· The importance was identified of the CSP being receptive to change and new ways of working.
Q2) Priorities/areas of focus for the partnership going forward
· A focus needed to be maintained on the fundamental role of the partnership to provide challenge and support for key community safety elements but also to recognise the importance of delegation to underpinning sub bodies.
· Improving public confidence was proposed as an overarching objective of the Board in recognition that this was a broader community safety issue than just confidence in policing.
· Additional proposed objectives for the partnership were a focus on members of the community at high risk of harm or considered vulnerable (common definition of prevention required, clear pathways and roles and responsibilities identified) and improving community involvement (linking up to community forums, Youth Council, Bridge Renewal Trust etc to achieve a community voice on the CSP, whilst recognising a careful, nuanced approach was important to community engagement).
· Concerns were raised over the sometimes scattergun approach taken on CSP themes such as engagement with schools and how this could be improved through the assignment of a lead officer.
Q3) How could the CSP add value?
· Focus required on gathering intelligence not just data in order to provide a rounder context and the potential for rolling out a Haringey Stat approach to facilitate a focussed review of all the information held across the partnership on a specific issue.
· Improving the working connections between the strategic and operational mixed role of the CSP.
· Partner agencies interactions with schools relating to community safety required review in order to pool information and to maximise effectiveness in this vital area.
· The CSP had a key role in bringing together overarching themes and strategies and the importance was emphasised of the Board being kept up to date in this regard.
· The holding of themed CSP meetings going forward was proposed to allow a more thorough, detailed review of key areas of responsibility.
· The CSP had a clear role to play in the dissemination of information to the community in conjunction with a clear branding strategy.
A report summarising the discussion session would be drafted by the independent facilitator and submitted to the CSP Executive for consideration. The Executive would then feedback actions to the CSP Board.
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