Skip to main content

Search form

Type your search then hit enter
  • Contact Us
  • Login
  • About usBack
    • About us
    • About Us
    • Meet the Team
    • Meet the Board
    • Our Partners
    • Current Contracts
    • Current VacanciesBack
      • Current Vacancies
      • Head of Business Development
    • Partner with Us
    • Contact Us
    • Governance
  • What We DoBack
    • What We Do
    • Core ServicesBack
      • Core Services
      • Equity
      • Facilities
      • Funding & Support
      • InsightBack
        • Insight
        • Devon receives national investment to help older people get active in nature
      • Marketing & Communications
      • Safeguarding
      • Strategic Networking
      • Volunteer Development
    • ProgrammesBack
      • Programmes
      • Local Programmes
      • Primary Premium
      • Satellite Clubs
      • School Games
      • Workplace Movement
    • SectorsBack
      • Sectors
      • Commercial
      • Community Groups
      • Education – HE & FE
      • Education – Schools
      • Health
      • Local Authorities
      • NGB
  • Latest
  • Active Partnerships
  • Impact
  • Search
  • Login

Search form

  • Contact Us

You are here

  • Home
  • Latest
  • Delivering system change - hard wiring physical activity into everyday lives

Delivering system change - hard wiring physical activity into everyday lives

Posted on 24th April 2019
Rob Hayne head and shoulders photo
  • Network News

Written by Rob Hayne, Active Essex

Having returned to sunny Essex after an always enjoyable, thought provoking and hard networking couple of days in Nottingham with Active Partnership colleagues (always a great 2 days to catch up with people from all around the country..) – I thought I would share some reflections from the event (including snippets from some late night conversations in the bar) 

 I was hearing, and heard, attendees comment: 

“Collaborative Leadership – that’s partnership working – we are all doing that aren’t we?”

“System change  - we are already doing this in our place”

Our Journey..

 When we launched the Active Essex Strategy – “Changing 1 Million Lives” back in June 2017, we had begun to think about doing things differently.  We delivered an Olympic Event (Mountain Biking in 2012), Tour De France in 2014 also a wide range of programmes and interventions - but we hadn’t changed the curve on physical activity data in Essex at a population level, whilst inequalities in our deprived communities were growing. Something had to change.

Essex (at a local government level) has been on system change journey for a couple of years, with our leadership at the highest level aware of the need to do things differently to improve outcomes for residents. The LDP can (and will) super charge the role that physical activity can play in this. We have support from our leaders, recognising the need to work across and through systems but also the ability to connect to our communities and residents and work together on issues important to them. The Essex Vision is the home for this work – 100 system leaders coming together to drive change, something we are part of.

So the term ‘whole system change’ has now become very real. The LDP has helped us shape thinking and we have identified seven important systems to influence to achieve our ambition of one million people regularly active across Essex. These priorities emerged from our Chapter 2 report “Delivering system change and can be download.

In the past, CSPs focused mainly on the voluntary sport sector. Now, in Essex, the seven systems settings  we focus on are social care, health, community, education, planning and infrastructure, workplaces, and community safety. 

We do not highlight voluntary sport as a system setting – we see it mainly as part of the wider community setting. This is “part” of the system that CSP’s and now Active Partnerships have been working with in the last 10 years. We have been driving systems change – but very much within our own system.

This thinking and realisation that most of our energy in the past was focused on delivering new projects/interventions in a community leisure setting. This approach is flawed in terms of tackling population levels of physical inactivity, in isolation – our level of resources does not allow change at scale – however can all show impact and change on people and communities locally. 

 We are faced with the need to drive wider collaboration - how to influence senior managers of CCGs, GP practices, planning, the Police and Crime Commissioner, the Director of Adult Social Care, as well as the huge number of organisations in the community sector. Only this way can we achieve population level increases in physical activity, rather than just relying on the community sport sector. However – we don’t “own” these systems or organisations, control their resources or set their policy…

 It is this a different way of thinking about systems and settings, outside of our usual world, our control, comfort zone and influence, that is really challenging us. Of course, we have always done partnership working and collaboration, but it was mainly confined to the community sport sector. 

Our expert adviser in Essex, Dr William Bird, hammers home his message consistently. He tells us that only a small percentage of physical activity is delivered via projects, interventions, classes, clubs, and formal provision. The vast majority is active travel (mainly walking to school or work) and informal activity with friends and family. These two areas are the promised land of increased physical activity. To achieve this, we need to step outside of the world of community leisure, and collaborate with planning, health, social care, and employers.                                                                                                  

It is early days, but we are finding in Essex that the currency of physical activity genuinely opens doors for organisations that are focused on wider agendas of social and economic outcomes. The really hard bit is getting community safety to work with health to work with planning to tackle physical inactivity. Breaking down the silo’s is genuinely the holy grail of system change. 

 

This work takes time…

 For me, the history of how we have evolved as a partnership has helped to create the conditions for success and underpin the work we are currently driving. As a way of working – Collaborative leadership is an important element of how we enable  a whole system approach to tackling complex issues.

There is also relevance in some of theory and philosophy that support system thinking and collaborative leadership.  Myron's Maxims are consistently appearing and have been talked about a number of CSP events and meetings:

1. People own what they help create.

2. Real change takes place in real work. 

3. The people who do the work do the change. 

4. Connect the system to more of itself.

5. Start anywhere, follow it everywhere. 

6. The process we use to get to the future is the future we get. 

 

Behaviours…

Emotional intelligence and social engagement are key behaviours in this work.  Systems are not populated by machines – they are led and run by real people. We need to­ recognise this, use empathy to build relationships, responding to the strengths of people and organisations -  and most importantly build trust.

 Our Active Essex journey has shown us this – we’ve had 8 years to work on relationships in order to build the trust to open doors to leaders and impact on policy. 

 We need focus strongly on the on learning that comes from this work – we need recognise that working in complex environments means continuous learning, rather than delivering programmes, this is needed to create good outcomes.

 

 Mapping…

With start somewhere as one of Myron Maxims, I believe it’s good to have a map to get some kind of idea as to where this might lead! We’ve been looking at stakeholder and systems mapping. This work is evolving with some good examples/ tools / methods coming from Public Health colleagues. 

 Any mapping will need to constantly change and evolve but if we are going to connect the system to more of itself  - we have to start somewhere. I’d like to share our first draft of this work below -  a place based example of this, at a locality level with Essex. This uses Chelmsford Local Authority  as the place and starts to try and show some of the stakeholders, connections and dependences  of partners involved at a local level.

 

We have 14 Local and Unitary Authorities in Essex and have built a map for each on. This enables us to show the impact our work is having, via these connections, showing granular understand at a local level from strategic partnership through to local delivery.

 

New Age of Collaboration…

To draw this to a conclusion, there is a need for us to focus our work and lead based on the principles of trust, integrity, alignment – build relationships, lead from the front when needed and drop into pack if required. We need to add value to the system and show our impact to policy makers. We need to provide better outcomes for communities and individuals and empower them to take responsibility. We will need to put our collective goal ahead of our own egos and agenda’s, owning the culture, vision, mission to have a system wide, population level impact in our work if we are to truly hard wire physical activity into everyday lives.

The measurement, impact and effectiveness of this work however need’s a whole different blog!

Rob Hayne, Strategic Lead Business Operations, Active Essex

April 2019

 

 

Related stories

Active Essex and partners
Network News
Active Essex leads county-wide pledge to support social inclusivity through sport

High-profile sporting organisations in the county have pledged their support to the Essex Faith Covenant, to use participation in sport as a way of bringing people of all faiths together.

Read more...
Network News
School Games goes virtual

Virtual school games are a resounding success with thousands of children involved across the country.

Read more...
Go Back

Filter posts by region

Popular Tags

older person
Health
COVI19
Active Gloucestershire
Under 5
PE
inclusive
CYP
Active Sussex
west midlands

Most Popular Posts

The growth agenda: why physical activity and sport matters.
Bedford Mums get on their bike thanks to new project
A Million Bite Size Activities Logged

Archives

  • November 2015 (5)
  • December 2015 (4)
  • February 2016 (5)
  • March 2016 (3)
  • April 2016 (4)
  • May 2016 (8)
  • June 2016 (10)
  • July 2016 (10)
  • August 2016 (3)
  • September 2016 (13)
  • October 2016 (9)
  • November 2016 (8)
  • December 2016 (1)
  • January 2017 (8)
  • February 2017 (4)
  • March 2017 (6)
  • April 2017 (8)
  • May 2017 (8)
  • June 2017 (14)
  • July 2017 (9)
  • September 2017 (11)
  • October 2017 (11)
  • November 2017 (5)
  • December 2017 (5)
  • January 2018 (5)
  • February 2018 (4)
  • March 2018 (3)
  • April 2018 (1)
  • May 2018 (9)
  • June 2018 (6)
  • July 2018 (11)
  • August 2018 (1)
  • September 2018 (9)
  • October 2018 (11)
  • November 2018 (5)
  • December 2018 (6)
  • January 2019 (6)
  • February 2019 (5)
  • March 2019 (6)
  • April 2019 (8)
  • May 2019 (7)
  • June 2019 (7)
  • July 2019 (6)
  • August 2019 (2)
  • September 2019 (8)
  • October 2019 (6)
  • November 2019 (7)
  • December 2019 (2)
  • January 2020 (5)
  • February 2020 (7)
  • March 2020 (7)
  • April 2020 (14)
  • May 2020 (4)
  • June 2020 (9)
  • July 2020 (8)
  • August 2020 (2)
  • September 2020 (11)
  • November 2020 (8)
  • January 2021 (4)
  • February 2021 (7)
  • March 2021 (7)

@ActivePartners_
Follow us

  • Great to hear from @JShakespearePA on the #ActiveSchoolHero launch event and looking forward to supporting this gre… https://t.co/zFFEypnvM2
    POSTED ON 22 April
  • So many people inspired children to remain active over the last 12 months - this is your chance to nominate any pri… https://t.co/VN7QkqzR9u
    POSTED ON 21 April
  • RT @SFDCoalition: #SportForDevelopmentCoalition emphasised the huge opportunity that exists to deliver important social outcomes thro… https://t.co/l88Md3453O
    POSTED ON 21 April

Follow us

Newsletter Sign-up

Be the first to hear news and opportunities from the Active Partnerships

You may have noticed we have a new brand, and the CSP Network is now known as Active Partnerships

Contact us

Telephone
07788 296161

Email
info@ActivePartnerships.org

Copyright © 2021 Active Partnerships All rights reserved.
  • Site Map
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Cookies
  • Legal
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
Site design by EHD