Working in partnership with City of Bradford MDC

IMPOWER has been the strategic partner of City of Bradford MDC for adult social care transformation since 2008. The council has been extremely ambitious in the scale of their programme – ‘Your life, your choice’ – seeking not only to meet the Putting People First milestones but also to improve customer access for citizens, streamline processes and maximise choice and control as far as possible. Since providing initial support to set up the programme, IMPOWER has worked alongside an internal programme team to provide expertise, skilled capacity and challenge across a number of different projects.

Martin Cresswell, IMPOWER chief executive, sees the partnership between IMPOWER and Bradford as an excellent example of how consultancy works best:

“Our long term relationship with Bradford has enabled us to work together on some really challenging agendas that take time to work through from establishing a business case to implementation planning right through to implementation. Guy and his team are clearly very ambitious for Bradford and their enthusiasm for making a real difference rather than just ticking boxes makes them one of the best clients we have worked with”.

Guy Van Dichele, assistant director for commissioning, performance & business support, is very positive about the relationship:

“The IMPOWER team has been able to work with staff across the council to accelerate progress and make a real difference on the ground. They help connect us to best practice across the country and grasp our high level challenges whilst also bringing a real ability to make something happen. They are able to appreciate the bigger agendas across the council and with partners and ensure that their work supports these. For me it was important that IMPOWER was ‘in this together’ with us – not only did they support us in the initial stages of analysing and suggesting changes but they were equally responsible for benefits realisation and outcomes.”