The statutory/voluntary HIV partnership

<p>The Landmark was set up as one of the first community based service centres for people with HIV and AIDS and has taken a pioneering role in developing facilities. It set out to be an integrationist service, in other words it was offering therapies, advice, social support etc under one roof. Since it opened in 1989 there have been pressures towards targeting the services. These have been both external pressures linked to funding, but also to some extent internal pressures within the Landmark related to management and procedures.

<p><p><p>The Landmark is an example of the statutory sector helping to stimulate a major innovation in the independent sector. This stimulus came largely from people within Lambeth Social Services who with members of the community, people living with HIV and others in South London, set up Lambeth AIDS Action, which provided the original Board of Directors for the Landmark. It has proved to be a fairly low-cost centre, which is particularly relevant in the current financial climate.

<p><p><p>Given that Landmark was to be a very innovatory enterprise, both Lambeth AIDS Action and its Director were keen to have an evaluation which would examine Landmark as a pioneer, and look at what could be learnt from its early development in terms on developing facilities and services elsewhere. The evaluation had several objectives. First it would look at Landmark as a model of social care. Second, it would investigate how Landmark fitted into the spectrum of HIV services being developed in South London. Third it would examine Landmark's development within the prevailing national policy context. However this last is outside the scope of the present meeting which is focussed on service provision.

<p><p><p>The evaluation was to have a twofold outcome. First it could be used internally. It would examine issues of quality assurance in service delivery to people living with HIV and AIDS, as well as management procedures and developments, the origins of problems and their resolutions and how they might be avoided in future. Second, it had an external function. It can be used to look at how other centres might be developed in the future, and how resources for HIV and AIDS across the whole range of services can best be deployed. This is intended to be of use to the Department of Health and other funding bodies.

<p><p><p>The evaluation has had four streams.

<p><p><li>Resource use and costings of the Landmark.</li><p><p><li>The development and structure of the Landmark as an organisation, by observing the staff and board meetings and various other groups.</li><p><p><li>The role that Landmark and similar HIV organisations play for people living with HIV. This work has included approximately 60 interviews with people living with HIV, to discuss how HIV has affected their lives in medical, economic and social terms. It has included how they came to use HIV related services and how good those services have been in different regards, in terms of supporting different kinds of people. </li><p><p><li>The impact that Landmark has had on other agencies in South London, and what that implies about how these different sectors can best work together. </li>

<p><p><p>It is this last stream of work which is the main focus of the present meeting.