Changing Futures Cambridgeshire & Peterborough
With the support of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Public Service Board (CPPSB), local partners are working together on a programme known as Changing Futures Cambridgeshire & Peterborough.
Changing Futures is about improving the outcomes for people with multiple disadvantage. This is achieved by people with lived experience guiding professionals on how organisations across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough can work together more effectively to tackle multiple disadvantage.
This is achieved by taking a system-wide approach to the issues people face, meaning a lot of emphasis is on how separate organisations dealing with the 5 areas of multiple disadvantage, work together.
What is multiple disadvantage?
People are said to be in multiple disadvantaged when they experience at least three of the following five situations:
- Homelessness
- Substance misuse
- Mental health issues
- Domestic abuse
- Contact with the criminal justice system
The five areas of disadvantage led us to create a logo for the work – a flower with five overlapping petals, because the five issues often overlap in a person’s life.
Our local work is supported by the national Making Every Adult Matter team. Please follow this link to see a short video about the Making Every Adult Matter approach. You can find out more about our work across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough here – previously known as Counting Every Adult.
What is a system-wide approach?
Representatives from local authorities, public sector organisations and organisations from the voluntary sector are working with people who have been through “the system”. By working together, barriers can be removed, support can be improved, better outcomes can be achieved for people with multiple disadvantage and organisations can work more efficiently.
With support from all partners, Changing Futures helps organisations learn from people with lived experience and learn from each other – both the successes and failures – and do all they can to avoid putting people through additional trauma as they tackle their challenges they face.
Changing Futures is not a challenge to or replacement for existing services. It is a tool to use for the issues and barriers existing services face, day-to-day. It does not create a new team or service – rather, a small team help organisations and individuals work together better, learning how to overcome barriers and sharing successful approaches rather than having to re-invent them.
Two evaluation reports set out analysis of the impact of this work, one for Cambridgeshire and one for Peterborough.
What does Changing Futures bring?
Changing Futures enables co-production of better, more effective and more efficient systems – with people with lived experience involved in every aspect of the work and at all levels, over a period of years.
The six work areas provide the structure for these web pages. They are:
- Embed trusted person approaches
- promote a more trauma informed system
- Establish mechanisms to share learning and address barriers
- Embed co-production and co-design across the system
- Support practice across the system (under construction)
- Monitor and evaluate impact of Changing Futures (under construction)
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- Footnote: During 2020 and 2021 local partners worked together to submit an Expression of Interest and Bid to the government’s national Changing Futures programme. You can find out more about our (unsuccessful) bid here.
Feedback
If you have questions, feedback or want to get involved or be added to our mailing list, please contact us at changingfutures@cambridgeshire.gov.uk