The Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner hosted their annual event online for multiple partners from across Bedfordshire this week.

The purpose of the event was to give partners a chance to hear updates from each other and to encourage partnership working to share ideas and practices to avoid duplication.

The group were able to share services and identify opportunities where they can join forces to provide an even better holistic service to victims in Bedfordshire.

Both commissioned and not commissioned partners were invited to the 4-hour session. They had the opportunity to speak with the Police and Crime Commissioner and to share updates with each other and the OPCC on their services and plans for the year ahead in a speed round.

The event saw over 40 different organisations attend, with 28 of them presenting their latest projects seeing representation from victim services, early intervention organisations, Hollie Guard, offender management and the probation service.

Zoe-Jade Fraser, Events, Community Engagement, Youth and Partners Officer for the OPCC, said “It was fantastic to see so many partners talking about the wonderful programmes their organisations have been up to. The aim of this event is to encourage partnership working across Bedfordshire with the specialist in certain areas working together to offer the best service for their service users.

“Throughout the event, organisations were offering help, staff, volunteers, work space and pre-set programmes to each other’s organisations, highlighting the need for events like these to give opportunities for organisations to network.”

Colleagues from Bedfordshire Police also attended including Ed Finn from the Mental Health Team.  Partners were blown away with the service that the Beds Police Mental Health Triage team offer with Emma Branch from The Counselling Foundation commenting “I think this service offered by the police is amazingly innovative and very different from some of the other localities we work with. Thank you for the work you do.”

If you’d like to get in contact about the day or want to find out more, please email pcc@bedfordshire.pnn.police.uk.