Recovery & Renewal Insights

1. Recovery and
renewal insight

2. Overview
1. Objectives
2. Impact on residents & communities
3. Impact on staff
4. Impact on our services
5. Reopening services
6. Benefits & opportunities
7. Working with partners
8. Financial impact
9. Principles & challenge questions
10. Recommendations

3. 1. Objectives
of renewal
work
• Continuing to help people protect themselves
• Understand need and impact to identify what
we focus on
• Build on lessons learned to test what we
stop, continue or reinvent
• Develop the organisational design & skills we
need for the future
• Build on our financial model to meet
increased demand & pressures
• Use our different levers to get the investment
and support we need

4. Phases of recovery and renewal
1. Emergency response
2. Understand
3. Plan, test and learn
4. Evaluate and mobilise
May 2020 June 2020 Dec 2020 and beyond
5. Renew Work with staff, partners & residents to deliver responses to strategic org challenges
• Understand staff, resident & partners' experience
• Understand regional and national drivers
• Prioritise what needs to stop, continue, reinvent
• Impact & needs analysis, including disproportionality
• Identify key policy priorities
• Test and learn
• Service re-design
• Resource allocation
• Key policy development
• Organisational re-design
Government direction of travel – exit strategy and review of Covid 19 support
Evolution of public perception and behaviours to any changes in measures & support

5. Approach
• Support Camden's 'curiosity' to work
across the council to understand what we
have learned from the response and what
we need to improve
• We worked with directors and heads of
service to facilitate discussions in teams on
what we learned from working with
residents, staff, partners and the impact
this has had.
• From 38 submissions from services, we
identified a series of key themes which we
outline through this report.

6. Insights so far

7. 2. Impact on
residents &
communities
• Cross cutting issues that have affected residents
have been the digital divide, financial impact,
employment, housing and mental & physical
health.
• Health
• Worsened range of population health measures
and widen health inequalities;
• Increase in contact about physical & emotional
wellbeing
• In adult social care, increased risk of severe illness
and death, impact on ability to live independent &
active lives, new cohort of younger people
• Financial impact
• Rise in those seeking support with council tax by
700 and universal credit by 600; rise in
unemployment and businesses and ratepayers
devastated

8. • Certain communities have been affected more than
others and there is a need to focus on this more.
• Children & young people – There is concern about
school closure: digital divide, food poverty, reduced
employment opportunities, with higher than national
average of vulnerable children attending school
• There is some concern the emergency response
could foster a sense of dependency.
• There have also been new ways of working with
residents, including how we engage communities,
virtual services, new insights about people who use
our services, new behaviours and risks.
• Services will need to plan for a change in demand,
where it might have been delayed due to needs that
went unmet during the pandemic or where
government support could reduce. This will have an
impact on changes to strategies or new areas of need.

9. 3. Impact on
staff and
ways of
working
• A rollercoaster of emotions - with some groups
particularly affected
• A need to focus on management
responsibilities & supporting staff
• Making the most out of a diverse range of
skills, but some skills gaps exist
• Desire to continue to collaborate and work
jointly across the council
• Strong feedback on governance and the
emergency structure

10. 4. Impact on
services so
far
• Full service maintained in a number of areas (if
provided differently) - including children’s
safeguarding and social work, benefits, Contact
Camden, and environment services.
• Significant reductions in service due to social
distancing – large number of services affected,
inc. libraries & leisure centres.
• New services set up fast – frontline presence
team, redeployment hub, Covid-19 phone line
• Impact on some workforce levels - significant
impact on service delivery due to high staff
absence (e.g. adult social care), and
challenges around PPE.
• Impact on services’ capacity - e.g. adult social care
and housing management.

11. 5.
Considerations
for reopening
services
• Understanding the 'new normal' and how it aligns with
pre-COVID activity – including the space to make
decisions and review programmes and priorities
• Aligning our response to the wider context and
constraints nationally– in line with government guidance
and regulations
• Understanding impacts in communities and working
together to adjust support – addressing the
disproportionate impact of COVID on BAME residents.
• Back logs, catching up or delayed demand –
birth registrations, school catch-up, YP mental health.
• Reflecting on new services and ways of working –
including scrutinising positive responses longer-term.
• COVID-Secure – carrying out risk assessments, availability
of PPE & ensuring social distancing.
• Planning and resourcing for the second phase – including
the possibility of a second outbreak
• Connecting into work to plan for transitioning services
and test & trace
• How the governance will work and decisions made

12. 6. Working
with
partners
• Relationships have been strengthened across
directorates – regionally, with partners, the VCS
and in some cases with government.
• Some identified Camden's position as a system
leader in touch with residents and the voluntary
sector, but recognising when to let others take the
lead or to signpost to additional support.
• Improved perception of the credibility and
influence of the Council – taken a lead
on lobbying.
• Commissioning, procurement and working with
contractors has largely been positive:
• New ways of working and flexibility
• Communication and collaboration
• Some negative experiences - Estate Services,
Development, Housing Management/
Environmental Services
• Introducing social value in procurement going
forward

13. 7. Benefits &
opportunities
• New services/delivery models - large numbers of
new approaches that people want to keep e.g.
redeployment pool, beacon, frontline presence team
• Working with residents - people
more independent, better able to use technology
and more understanding than expected. Benefits in
reaching some hard-to-reach groups digitally
• Video meetings/appointments - Wide recognition of
a number of advantages of holding meetings virtually,
e.g. shorter and more focussed, easier to join up
more frequently, benefits reaching residents
• Extended hours - some services have seen benefits
from operating extended hours e.g. expanded CAMHS
crisis response, ASC & monitoring social media

14. 8. Digital
transformation
• Transforming how we work – and what we
need to do this safely and effectively
• Changing how we interact with residents
• Recognising the digital divide
• Something to invest in

15. 9. Financial
impact
• Impact of COVID-19 on income generation
• Changing attitudes towards regeneration
• Impact of COVID-19 on businesses and
commercial tenants
• Impact of maintaining temporary measures
if they lead to permanent change or demand
continues at current levels
• Uncertainty around whether there is a
continued need to achieve current MTFS
savings targets
• Perceived need to make savings/threat of cuts
in all areas versus potential opportunities

16. Principles &
challenge questions

17. 10. Principles
• We will need to prioritise based on Camden 2025, the
strengths & needs of our residents & local organisations and
our ability to deliver a balanced budget.
• We will need to identify what are our short, medium and long
term priorities, recognizing that we may need to flex these to a
changing situation.
• We will need to build on the shared sense of purpose &
urgency the pandemic has provided to energise people to work
across teams on shared challenges.
• Services need to work together to prioritise how to adapt to
this new environment and identify where they are best placed
to lead, collaborate, or support others to lead.
• Our residents are facing new and changing needs that can be
invisible, but we need to value their creativity & strengths to
work with them to meet those.
• We need to empower people closest to the problem to decide
how to tackle it and support staff to bring their whole selves to
work to make the best use of their skills.
• We will need to build on the work we’ve done to embed digital
into how we work and deliver activities and rethink how we
use our physical spaces in this new normal.

18. How do we
prioritise
what we do in
a changing
environment?
How can we ensure changes to our policies and
services reflect:
• Our political priorities
• Resident needs that have emerged or
increased as a result of the pandemic
• Strengths our staff, partners and communities
can bring to the table
• Need to transition for the long term, while
flexing to a changing situation
• Where we’re best placed to lead, support,
collaborate or empower others to lead
• How can we support services to plan for potential
future scenarios to adapt to new challenges?
• How the economy evolves
• How the virus evolves
• What impact any change in government policy
support has
• Adapting their service & business models

19. How do we
mobilise
people to
work together
on shared
challenges?
• How can we build on our redeployment to make
the best use of everyone’s skills to work across
teams to tackle shared challenges?
• How can we develop local government as a
platform – mobilizing partners around shared
challenges?
• How can we tackle the dependency that we may
have created amongst residents during the
pandemic?
• How can we work with the strengths of our
residents to help them meet changing needs as the
impacts of the pandemic unfold?

20. How do we
help people
have the tools
& support to
work in new
ways?
• How can we balance face to face delivery with
increased digital provision?
• What does the future of the workplace look like
and what should it be used for?
• How can we provide the right tools and equipment
to enable people to work safely from home?
• How can we ensure managers are effectively
supporting their staff?

21. 10.
Recommendations
• Recommendations to be developed by Renewal Group
• Transition GOLD Covid 19 governance back to business as
usual governance
• Facilitated session with CMT & Cabinet to anticipate
future scenarios & review priorities
• Cross-cutting task & finish groups to explore key
challenge themes and prototype solutions to those issues
in their areas, while learning together
• Extend work on disproportionate impact to all
communities with protected characteristics
• Bring together services around common resident needs
(i.e. isolation, digital divide) and test ideas to those
challenges
• Supported by resident need, scenario planning, project
management & remote working toolkits
• Bring together strategic partners to regularly shape &
review future priorities of the borough
• Work with partners to identify opportunities to tackle
shared challenges (I.e. digital divide, food, etc.) and
match need & resources (i.e. challenge prizes, etc.)