Public Service Leadership First Annual Conference

Workshop 1

Collaborating across Whitehall - lessons from cross-departmental PSAs

In the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review a new set of cross-departmental Public Service Agreements were announced as part of a framework to drive ambitious performance improvements and collaboration across delivery systems. This workshop will explore some of the early lessons from this varied set of PSAs, from the perspective of the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit (PMDU), who have responsibility for both monitoring and supporting departments' work to deliver. The workshop will consider the dynamics of cross-departmental working; the benefits, and costs, of collaboration; the different forms collaboration across Whitehall can take; and the question of what makes for successful collaboration across Government departments.

Facilitators: Felicity Harvey, Director, PMDU; Kate Josephs, Deputy Director (Performance policy and Communities), PMDU.

Workshop 2

Public Service Leadership in Scotland - The National Community Planning Group

The workshop will explore the actions of the National Community Planning Group (NCPG) in supporting the development and implementation of an outcomes focused approach to public service delivery in Scotland. The NCPG comprises of top level executives from local government, police, fire and rescue and the NHS. A core purpose of the group is supporting the transformation of public service delivery by driving forward a joint approach to service planning, resourcing and delivery across Scotland. The workshop will reflect upon the challenges faced by the group and key lessons learned from its actions.

Facilitator: Mark McAteer, Director of Governance and Performance Management, The Improvement Service.

Workshop 3

Leading Collaborative Partnerships - Establishing a Welsh Public Service Academy

For public service leaders, developing an integrated approach to service delivery requires a commitment to collaborative working , the appropriate enabling skills and a capacity to deliver outcomes beyond personal authority. This interactive workshop will focus on the establishment of the Welsh Public Service Academy as a case study of collaborative leadership in action, together we will discuss the successes, the challenges and the learning involved in a whole country initiative.

Facilitator: Jo Carruthers, Public Service Management Wales.

Workshop 4

New PSL Cross Public Sector Top Leaders Programme

This workshop will provide an overview of the background, purpose and progress on the joint commissioning of this innovative cross public sector programme for top leaders. You will then have the opportunity to contribute to thinking on the approach to this new programme, the process for its development , roll-out and how the learning from its commissioning and delivery might be used to strengthen cross public sector working in other areas of leadership development.

Facilitator: Sara Williams, Strategic Advisor- Strategy, IDeA.

Workshop 5

Making the Top Team One Team

West Sussex county council has radically transformed its senior management in the last two years. All of its top group are now appointed first as members of the strategic management team and then assigned roles which rotate regularly around the organisation. The approach has helped broaden the professional background and skills mix of the group so that they are able to work more effectively with other public services and the private sector. The session will cover why and how with the support of elected members and working alongside external advisers we achieved this radical change and the impacts it has had on improving the services we deliver.

Facilitator: Mark Hammond, West Sussex County Council.

Workshop 6

Collaborating across the region: Innovative working in the East of England

The Leadership Centre has worked on a number of innovative leadership development programmes in the East of England. In this session you can hear from leaders from Suffolk's "The Lives we Lead, the Leaders we Need" programme, and Norfolk's "LEAPP: Lead, Engage, Aspire, Perform in Partnership" work about their experiences and what they've learned as a result of working differently together.

Facilitators: Pat Rockall, Chief Executive, Babergh District Council and Michael Attwood, Suffolk County Council.

Workshop 7

Worcestershire: Leading the County

Worcestershire has assembled senior leaders - public and private - from across the county to consider how they might best lead the county in the coming years. They have engaged with PSL to develop an innovative and demanding leadership programme to support them in this. The group has also volunteered to become one of 13 Total Place pilots and are engaged in the leadership of the pilot work.

Facilitators: John Tizard, programme lead and Director, Centre for Public Service Partnerships, University of Birmingham and John Atkinson, managing director, Leadership Centre for Local Government.

Workshop 8

Leading in Partnerships and Beyond Authority

The format for Common Purpose programmes is not to run classroom based courses. Instead participants are encouraged to step outside their usual environment and grapple with real-life problems at first hand. This helps participants gain an understanding, not only of how other organisations function, but also how leaders in those organisations are held accountable in different ways.

Facilitator: Julia Middleton, Chief Executive, Common Purpose.

Workshop 9

Leading Cities

This workshop presents the findings of new primary research into cross-sector leadership collaboration in three UK cities, with particular emphasis on partnership with their universities, and unveils the framework for a new city-level leadership development process to underpin it.

Facilitator: Ewart Wooldridge CBE, Chief Executive, Leadership Foundation for Higher Education.

Workshop 10

A 'local solutions' approach to school leader succession planning

Two thirds of headteachers are now over 50 and a third are over 55 years of age. In response to this national issue the National College has successfully developed a 'local solutions' approach, which has seen it provide support to LAs and schools in order to help them solve their own local succession planning challenges. Local solutions has achieved promising outcomes from being a bottom up initiative that has allowed disciplined local innovation rather than following a 'one size fits all' national blueprint.

Facilitator: Mark Pattison, Executive Director, Succession Planning, National College for Leadership of Schools and Children's Services.

Workshop 11

The Clore Social Leadership Programme

This Programme is a new initiative for aspiring leaders in the third sector, offering a bespoke, individualised and modular range of experiences aligned to the needs of each Fellow built around a newly developed leadership framework. The workshop will share the early learning from the Programme including the recruitment of the first cohort of Fellows. It is a strongly cross sector initiative, actively engaging with the public and private sector.

Facilitator: Dame Mary Marsh, Director, Clore

Workshop 12

Collaborate to innovate: children's centre leaders leading an integrated system

How do you lead a collaborative initiative that takes account of the needs of all stakeholders? The workshop will explore this question using World Café, a method for facilitating a structured collective conversation around a critical question. Participants will develop their own answers to this question using a facilitation technique that was used to build the first national Children's Centre Leaders' Network. The facilitator, Children's Centre Leader Network Coordinator, Sue Webster, will set the scene supported by three children's centre leaders who have engaged with Network events over the past year.

Facilitator: Sue Webster, Children's Centre Leader Network Co-ordinator.

Workshop 13

Cross Sector Partnership Peer Support

This workshop will provide an overview of the launch of the 'strategic alliance for partnership peer support' and invite your contribution to thinking on how peer working, its benefits and learning might be made available across the public sector and beyond. Core to the success of the IDeA has been the recruitment and deployment of councillor and officer peers who have provided the critical friend role to held drive sector-led improvement. The new strategic alliance now widens the pool of peers and the potential impact of peer support to meet the increasing needs of partnership working.

Facilitators: Councillor Jonathan, National Lead, Independent Member Peers, IDeA and Jeremy Crabb, Associate, Board Level Development, National Health Service Institute for Innovation and Improvement.

Workshop 14

Communities and Local Government - Take Part programme for promoting active citizenship and civic participation

Take Part is a national programme, being developed through 18 pathfinder areas, which aims to give people the skills, knowledge and confidence they need to have more of a say about what happens in their areas, and to help shape the decisions that affect their daily lives. The learning from the pathfinder areas is informing a national support programme, which will enable a roll-out to other areas.

Facilitator: Stuart Hoggan, Acting Director, Local Democracy and Participation.

Workshop 15

Kids Taskforce "Partnership through desire helping children and young people learn how to stay safe"

An introduction to the Kids Taskforce a partnership between ACPO, CFOA and the PFA, creating a national standard of safety information for schools. With the secondary school materials funded for every child for three years by the DCSF, Home Office and OSCT the Kids Taskforce is now looking for public sector support to overcome the hurdles of rolling out the programme to every child in Britain by 2010.

Facilitators: Sharon Doughty, President of the Kids Taskforce and Assistant Chief Fire Officer John Hoey from South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue.