New Local have been commissioned by NHS Leadership Academy (North East & Yorkshire) to train four NHS West Yorkshire ICB staff and staff in neighbouring ICBs to deliver sessions on Working with Communities grounded in their approach for a Community Powered NHS.

This has resulted in New Local producing a flexible toolkit to use in different sized workshops with different audiences. As part of this toolkit, New Local are keen to ensure that case studies are based on local examples across West Yorkshire.

New Local’s Offer

New Local would like to work with local VCSE organisations based in West Yorkshire to develop short case studies on the following topics that can be included in the toolkit and used elsewhere:

• Community voice in decision making – ways in which organisations are trialling new and innovative ways to hear from their communities, and building opportunities to shape the decisions and services that affect their lives. Example here.
• Mobilising Assets / Focusing on community strengths– ways in which organisations are recognising existing strengths in the community and investing in those strengths to deliver better outcomes for communities. Example here.
• Shifting organisational culture – can include a range of things from shifting working practices, to upskilling organisations in the core skills that enable community power to come to life. Examples where organisations are shifting power that once sat with a small group of people in a public sector organisation to sitting with the community directly affected. Example here.

New Local’s Process

To develop the case study, New Local would have an initial 30 min conversation with someone who knows a lot about the work to see if it meets the above topic areas.

This would then be followed up by a 90 min interview and providing any documentation related to the work that can be shared with New Local (impact report, metrics, project plan, etc.).

New Local will then develop the case study and share with the VCSE organisation for sign off before use.

Getting involved

If you are a VCSE organisation based in West Yorkshire with a potential case study covering the topic areas above and would like to see if you could have your case study written up by New Local, please email arfan.hussain3@nhs.net with the following information. Please include:

• Name of the VCSE organisation / project / offer
• What topic area does your example cover?
• Brief description (no  more than 2-3 sentences)‍
• Point of contact for New Local (incl. name, role, and email address)

They are particularly keen to create studies from diverse grassroots / small VCSE organisations that may otherwise not have the capacity to develop a case study.