organisational capacity
Supporting integrated commissioning in Tower Hamlets
‘This work really helped our new division gel, and to begin to work together in new ways.’
— Warwick Tomsett, Joint Director of Integrated Commissioning, Tower Hamlets Council and Tower Hamlets Clinical Commissioning Group
The brief
In December 2018, colleagues with responsibilities for commissioning services across Tower Hamlets – staff from the recently-formed Integrated Commissioning Division and from other, related service areas such as Public Health – came together for an event to consider the future of integrated commissioning across the Borough and beyond. We were commissioned to plan and facilitate this all-staff and partners event. The aims of the event were to:
enable colleagues to learn about and from one another’s commissioning activities, and to consider how to strengthen commissioning across the Borough; and
opportunities for aligning and joining up commissioning activities across service areas to improve experiences and outcomes for citizens and communities in Tower Hamlets.
What did we do?
First, we worked with senior managers from within the Integrated Commissioning Division, as well as key partners in other service areas, to understand how they saw integrated commissioning within Tower Hamlets and what they would find useful from this work. We then facilitated two all-staff events, six months apart.
The first event took place in December 2018. This brought together staff in the new Integrated Commissioning Division and key partners for the first time. We created a series of activities, including a self-evaluation framework related specifically to integrated commissioning, that enabled colleagues to:
learn more about what they and their teams were responsible for;
reflect on and develop a shared understanding of current strengths, challenges and opportunities; and
identify some specific priorities for strengthening integrated commissioning, and agree some practical actions for taking this forward.
We agreed that Tower Hamlets colleagues to set up three task-and-finish groups, each led by a senior manager from the Integrated Commissioning Division and made up of staff from different service areas. For the second workshop, held in the summer of 2019, we gave colleagues the opportunity to:
reflect on their progress and learning over the past six months; and
hear about and help to refine the plans of the three task-and-finish groups.
We concluded the second workshop by capturing a concrete set of actions and a timeline for taking forward the work that has been agreed, with the aim that this provides a clear framework for strengthening integrated commissioning across Tower Hamlets.
What difference did we make?
We enabled over 100 people working within or with integrated commissioning in Tower Hamlets to come together, develop relationships and the culture of joint working, as well as shared vision and set of practical actions for taking forward their work together. During the second event, colleagues commented on the way these events had:
enabled them to forge connections, both within the Division and beyond;
provided a clear sense of shared priorities and practical actions; and
created opportunities for greater joined-up and integrated working that was, in some instances, showing promising early signs of impact.
What did the client say about the work?
‘This work really helped our new division gel, and to begin to work together in new ways and across some old dividing lines. It helped us lay the groundwork for taking forward our integration across the Borough and we have been able to build on this since.’
— Warwick Tomsett, Joint Director of Integrated Commissioning, Tower Hamlets Council and Tower Hamlets Clinical Commissioning Group
