Helping different sectors in Thamesmead unite around shared goals

The challenge

The Healthier Thamesmead Partnership brings together a range of organisations across Greenwich and Bexley in south London. Their aim is to improve health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities for residents. Partners include councillors and officers from the local authorities, public health, planning, housing, NHS organisations and voluntary community sector organisations.

Despite the pandemic, the partnership had achieved a lot, and wanted to take stock, gather insights from the work so far, and to spur on the next action phase of work.

Kaleidoscope was asked to design and run an engaging event with several aims:

• help partners gain a better understanding of the practical steps and structures needed to underpin the programme
• continue and renew enthusiasm for the work
• build greater energy and commitment to what each person could contribute
• explore how individual commitment could be supported by the wider partnership.

We had five weeks to design and build an event agenda that spoke to the wide range of people attending. The programme needed to accommodate varying levels of knowledge and involvement in the programme and the different roles/skills people were bringing.

Our approach

Our approach centred on being purposeful with every aspect of the agenda. This meant designing the event in partnership with the Thamesmead team – taking time to listen and understand the needs that had to be met. We worked closely with the partners to craft an event that was engaging, collaborative and inclusive and would make use of every minute available.

On the day, the first sessions were all about exploration – coming together to understand work to date, give ideas for further opportunities, and to spot links between all the partners’ work. The later sessions were about action planning, prioritising and getting a better sense of how partners could use their individual and collective impact to the best effect.

The partners explored ideas for improvement and positive changes for residents across four workstreams: ‘living well in Thamesmead’, ‘mental health and wellbeing’, ‘feeling safe’ and ‘access to services’.

Participants identified actions that would help the next phase of this work to succeed, focusing on three main areas: practical things, relationships and ways of working, and how best to engage residents. They reflected on their individual roles and what actions they could take to support the work of the partnership.

The result

The output from this event was the agreed core actions- some very immediate and practical, and some big-picture aspirations – that the partnership agreed to work on together. Individual participants also committed to immediate actions that would take the ‘best next step’.

In feedback, 100% of participants said they found the event energising and would recommend an event like this to a colleague. People valued the challenge to focus on the practical, the opportunity to drill down on issues, as well as time to reflect and connect with colleagues.

Kaleidoscope had a real understanding of what would work in our context and helped create an action-focused and energising space for people to connect around shared goals. The feedback has been very positive. An additional benefit is the insights pack, which is an invaluable report, capturing the rich conversations and outputs from the day – it will really help in planning our next steps.

Jane Connor, Acting Assistant Director of Public Health, Health and Adult Services, Royal Borough of Greenwich