Page 51 - WCEN Dr Rochelle Burgess evaluation report\ Baloon

Recommendations

Findings from this evaluation highlight a series of significant changes established through WCENs
work on coproduction. More importantly, they highlight a strong foundation from which to build and
expand and an opportunity to enable community organisations to take more truly active roles in the
health economy, in ways that avoid typical challenges created by volunteerism (Burgess 2014) and
the use of communities as ‘handmaidens’ of health services (Campbell 2003; Campbell & Burgess,
2012).

However, in order for these positive changes to be maintained and new opportunities to be capitalised
on, in ways that are successful we present a series of recommendations to be considered. As
suggested in figure 5 below, recommendations for future practice are geared towards establishing
sustainability, not only within WCEN itself, but also across the community organisation sites. Through
this proposed line of work, it is hoped that communities and organisations like WCEN can be become
less reliant on external funding priorities, and more protected from the constant shifts in wider health
agendas.

Current priorities in health systems management and financing highlighted in the NHS five-year forward
view highlight an approach to community participation through the development of Multispecialty
community providers (NHS, 2014). Such entities seek to expand definitions of leadership in primary
care to include a wider range of practitioners, of which ‘community based professionals’ are considered.
Over the past few years, WCEN has begun the work to establish certain individuals within the network
to be positioned at such levels – in particular, this is seen in projects on family therapy and IAPT.
However, due to the uneven nature of the network, not all sites have the capacity to participate to the
level required to capitalise on this opportunities, particularly in areas of bidding and management of
contracts, delivery of care, and more importantly monitoring and evaluation of services, which is a
particular gap in the current work of the network.

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