Strategic Prevention Partnerships

Across decades, we have worked with pioneering local authorities, NHS Trusts and UK government agencies. Our focus has been to redesign systems to strengthen prevention — shifting resources from the very expensive strategy of reacting to harm, to the far more cost effective approach of preventing it at source. Alongside this, we have applied our four decades of experience in improving the cost structures of complex organisations. The case studies below illustrate the power of strategic partnership to reduce long-term social costs, improve outcomes, and demonstrate that bold system change is possible.

Tower Hamlets had long faced high levels of youth offending, child maltreatment, and persistent intergenerational disadvantage. Cameron Consultants and WAVE Trust were commissioned by the local authority to develop a strategic framework to shift services from crisis response to early intervention. Drawing on extensive consultation with more than 60 local leaders and professionals, we co-designed a bold prevention strategy focused on the 0–3 age window, strengthening parent-child attachment, and multi-agency collaboration.

Cameron Consultants, through WAVE Trust, worked with Croydon’s CEO to embed early years prevention at the heart of local policy. The resulting strategy — Child–Family–Place— became a flagship Total Place pilot, earning central government backing. With projected savings of £62m, the model introduced Family Advocates, Early Years Academies, and a radically integrated workforce approach. It became a national exemplar in the Government's 2011 Allen Review.

In partnership with the Western Health & Social CareTrust and Derry Council, WAVE co-led one of the UK’s most comprehensive designs for whole-system prevention. The Pioneer Communities model won local cross-party support and brought together over 40 agencies — including PSNI and local Education and third sector leads — to co-design long-term family support rooted in prevention and early intervention. Although implementation was halted by the collapse ofthe NI Government, the project remains a model of system-wide design.

Cameron Consultants were commissioned by The National Audit Office to carry out an in-depth efficiency review of NHS supply and distribution systems. Utilising our specialised COGENT system for public agency cost reduction we demonstrated significant scope for reducing costs and improving efficiency, and showed how to do so. Thanked for our impact by the head of the NAO, he stated that Cameron’s methodology “would be highly relevant to most branches of the public sector.”