Study day: care councils and local governments working together - review

The study day: care councils and local governments working together took place on February 22, 2024! This day focused on the latest reforms and how local boards play an important role in this. Such initiatives are an important step in strengthening cooperation and knowledge sharing between local boards and care councils.

Program
Nastasja Veraert (staff co-worker social work, VVSG), Ine Tombeur (alderman in Tienen, president of ELZOH) and Elke Verlinden (regional employee home care VL-brabant, VVSG) told us more about how cooperation takes place in local government and what the differences and similarities are between local government and local social policy. Sabine Verhoestraete (agency binnenlands bestuur) in turn told us about the ins & outs of the policy and management cycle in local government, elaborating on the BBC analysis tool.

The day continued with interactive sessions:

• Policing: From the broad network of a front-line zone, as a care council you pick up a lot of signals about what could be done differently and better. How do you effectively bring these to the right local policymaker? How do you unite on the ground with other actors to work in a coordinated way towards the same goal?
  Speaker: Elke Plovie
• Project-based collaboration on the ground: 3 existing supra-local collaborations take you through the lessons learned from their stories. What are the success factors? What went wrong, and what did we learn from it?
  Speakers: Lore Tilley, Stef Spiessens, Sylvie Prévot, Mieke Geldhof and Gard Bemelmans
• Getting started with the BBC analysis tool: Discover for yourself how to retrieve desired information about your local governments
  Speaker: Sabine Verhoestraete
• Guided exchanges for health boards with one large local board or multiple small local boards - guided by VIVEL staff. (Collaborating) with multiple small boards in your frontline zone can go smoothly, but also creates challenges and sometimes conflicting situations. How do you deal with them? Based on pre-data questions and case studies, exchange thoughts with colleagues during this guided session. Through focused case discussion, we can learn from each other.