[cma-l] Community Media, Social Housing and the NHS Sustainability & Transformation Plans - An Opportunity to Change the National Wellbeing Landscape?

[keith at newhealtheconomics.com]

For those of you who were able to attend the CMA’s Community Media 
Conference 
<http://www.commedia.org.uk/news/2016/03/community-media-conference-16/> 
this year, you will know that one of the principal discussions concerned 
the role of community media as an essential partner in enabling and 
improving social change and wellbeing.

Although I don’t come from community media I believe strongly in how it 
can enable social change and I was delighted when Lucinda Guy and Bill 
Best invited me to join you. I had several conversations at the 
conference about audience engagement, both direct and in partnership 
with others such as housing associations. I learnt a lot about how these 
two essential national services are collaborating, with the common goals 
of improving both social cohesion and community wellbeing. I was also 
able to share my knowledge and experience of a current national change 
programme within the NHS and how it could provide additional, funded 
partnering opportunities; the Sustainability & Transformation Plans (STPs).

For context, 44 STPs have been established covering all counties in 
England. Their purpose is to enable local delivery of the national NHS 
Five Year Forward View through three core activities being, closing the:

1.    Care and quality gap
2.    Health and wellbeing gap
3.    Funding and efficiency gap

One of the principal tenets underpinning all actions taken by the STPs 
is to “think about populations, not institutions or organisational 
form”. What’s exciting about this, is that this is what community media 
does!

I think it’s important to state the obvious here in that you help your 
neighbourhoods establish and develop community-based conversations for 
empowerment, cultural expression, information and entertainment. You do 
it through online radio and television, free-to-air community and local 
television and community film makers. It is a crucially important 
delivery enabler for achieving local aspirations and improving wellbeing 
and these outputs, are remarkably consistent with what social housing 
aims for too.

You may be saying “so what”? For me, the response to this is that the 
ducks seem to be lining up!

Two national organisations can demonstrate concrete examples of 
collaborative working for the purpose of enabling/improving local 
wellbeing. This is happening at a time when the NHS has been allocated 
additional funding (circa £1.8bn) and instructed to roll its’ sleeves up 
and find partners to enable the delivery of the local STPs. An 
opportunity exists now (2016/17), through collaboration, which could put 
CM at the heart of enabling and improving health and wellbeing across 
the country.

*What Next?*

  * We (CMA and me) would like you to tell us about any current or
    recent collaborations; whether or not these have been with social
    housing providers; which have focused on activities to do with
    improving health and wellbeing in your communities
  * Please send your responses to me, Keith Hackett,
    keith at newhealtheconomics.com <mailto:keith at newhealtheconomics.com>
    and I will collate your feedback as part of research I am doing with
    the CMA on how community media facilitates the development of
    community wellbeing
  * These examples will be used to:

      *          Make government departments, including DCMS, more aware
        of the social impact of community media, for the purpose of
        obtaining funding
      *          At a local level, where community media**and social
        housing collaborations are currently active, build a business
        case for local funding from the relevant STP
      *          Show the BBC that community media is its essential
        local partner and should be funded accordingly
      *          Potentially, encourage other funded collaborations with
        social housing providers and other partners

Best regards

Keith Hackett

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