It Starts Here

Barking and Dagenham is a place of opportunity and potential. It’s dynamic and vibrant, and changing for the better. A place where people can find and make a home, raise a family, chase a dream, enjoy arts and culture, be surrounded by green spaces, and participate in one of the great global cities.

The future is bright, and we are building a borough where people can thrive, feel a sense of community and belonging, and enjoy a good quality of life. Opportunity needs to be universal and inclusive for all which means addressing deprivation and inequalities. This is the key challenge for everyone who provides services and support to residents, or who has a role in shaping this place.

Change can only happen when we all work together to meet this challenge. No single public agency or voluntary organisation or faith organisation can fix a complex socio-economic issue alone or expect to improve an outcome significantly on its own. Increasingly we need to nurture partnerships and work together on common issues sharing assets and resources for efficiency and maximum impact and benefit. We also need to recognise we are equal partners in this or endeavour.

The financial context for public bodies is a driver of this, but doing more in partnership would still be our preferred approach because we cannot achieve systems change without collective action.

We are also trying to respond to the complexity and interconnectedness of issues faced by residents which requires a holistic and personalised approach. Key to that is bringing services and support closer to residents, which we’re doing through creating a neighbourhood model of service delivery and working with the VCFSE to be a key provider of many types of support.

Their relationships with residents, ways of working and specialisms are often more impactful to change lives and sustain positive outcomes than traditional public services. They are key to all our partnership activities and strategic responses to big issues.

Ultimately, we are all trying to give people the best start to life and prevent hardship, ill health, social isolation, vulnerability and frailty. Prevention gives residents the best opportunity to succeed and thrive before problems escalate and disadvantage compounds.

This document sets out ten missions to focus and work together on and is a call to action to innovate, collaborate, integrate, commission and transform through partnership working. It is the beginning of a new phase of place-based working which requires new approaches that change systems and change lives.

Everything is about people, place and partnerships. Looking at our challenges through these lenses and seeking to solve them through a combination of people, place and partnerships is the guiding approach to achieving these missions.

It starts here.