Monthly Archives: October 2010

Big Society reads for the weekend

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I thought I’d do another quick round up of what’s out there and interesting on the Big Society right now. It seems that the initial flurry of research and reporting on the Big Society has died down slightly, and instead we’ve got some concrete initiatives and announcements to get our teeth into. So once again, in no particular order, here’s what I’ve been reading lately on the agenda:

  1. Reaction to the Big Society Network’s announcement of a dedicated Your Local Budget team, to spread the practice of participatory budgeting across more areas. This comment focuses on the need to make sure the new participatory budgeting initiatives learn from best practice, and the need to ensure it’s not just face-to-face, but that access is multi-channel as far as possible. The Guardian provides some comment.
  2. Some excitement on the opening of the Sutton Life Centre, modeled as a ‘Big Society classroom’. The centre, opened by Nick Clegg this week, is part teaching facility on citizenship and part local community centre.
  3. Andrew Hind encourages greater collaboration and less competition between charities. At the annual Charity Trustee Network lecture Andrew Hind warned charities against envisaging themselves in competition for ever scarcer funding. He also had some interesting ideas about how to guard against this, such as buddying and mentoring programmes for individual trustees, and ‘charity twinning’ programmes for charity boards.
  4. Comment on the Big Society divide – A really well-written post on the Guardian’s Joe Public blog that highlights a potential conflict of interest in some of the messages coming out of central government. How will messages about benefit cheats and welfare wasters affect people’s motivation to give more time and resource to helping their communities?
  5. What can membership contribute to a big society? The last is not so much what I’ve been reading, as what I’ve been listening to. The RSA’s recent event, The Big Society: Challenges and opportunities for membership organisations, provided some interesting ideas about different forms of association and the value of different types of networks – from a vision of membership fostering resourcefulness and engendering reciprocity, to a vision of membership reinforcing closed mindsets and crowding out other forms of engagement. How to engender the first? The audio from the event should be available in a couple of days on the RSA website.

I hope you find these useful.

What articles/blogs/reports have you been reading?

By Sarah Holloway, OPM senior researcher

Sarah Holloway

Local authority leaders need to make radical change to our children’s and adult systems

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A major strategic challenge in public services is redefining and renegotiating the relationships between individuals, communities and public services by replacing ‘doing unto’ with ‘doing with’, replacing ‘one-size-fits-all’ with individual budgets and personalisation and replacing  outmoded universal services with the co-production and support that friends, family and community can provide.

Without a major shift in these relationships we cannot hope to tackle our social issues, including the twin problems of old age and dementia and ingrained poverty for particular families. A shift in relationship that offers potential could see the public as donors to charitable providers via co-payment as well as through individual payments to supplement state provision.

Local government and their partners are in pole position as lead commissioners of local services and can use their wider influence with local businesses to make better strategic decisions to meet these challenges. Directors of adult and children’s services share the lead in commissioning services that support people in need. When they are effective they can break cycles of deprivation.

For example, strategic commissioners can reshape services for the three per cent or so of families who are typically receiving the attention of as many as 30 different practitioners at vast cost and to very little good effect. While this is now well known, commissioners in local authorities need to change entire systems to establish effective ways of working with these households using evidence from successful approaches such as ‘Think family’, family interventions projects and family nurse practitioners to drive system change.

The approaches applied in, for example, Gateshead, Gloucestershire and Croydon, show that it may be possible to provide better services and save as much as 50 per cent of costs, with promising results emerging within 12 months of starting. Further benefits and cost savings are possible by moving resources into effective prevention and away from high-cost, last-resort services. The challenge for leaders is therefore to redesign systems and reallocate the resource currently tied up in traditional service teams across the system.

There is very little to be gained by change at the margins especially if it involves setting up yet another special project or programme without fundamental change to the system.

By Judith Smyth, OPM director

Judith Smyth

What role should the voluntary sector have in private sector-led local economic partnerships (LEPs)?

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As the geography of local economic partnerships (LEPs) begins to clarify following the Coalition Government’s announcement of its local growth white paper, the thorny issue of membership is coming to the fore.

Ministers have made it clear that LEPs should be led by the private sector. The voluntary and community sector was not included in the original invitation. Following pressure from the sector, CLG has now said (in a letter from communities minister Greg Clarke) that the third sector will be welcome, although it will be left up to localities to decide.

Third sector representative organisations have welcomed this. They point out that, particularly in those areas where the private sector is weak, the voluntary and community sector plays an important role in supporting the economy. The sector makes a contribution to local output, is a significant employer, and plays a key role in delivering learning and skills programmes and initiatives to help the workless. The sector also supports social business start-ups and helps to develop an enterprise culture. It can add important social and environmental perspectives to strategic discussions about the local economy (see for example the written evidence submitted by Voluntary Sector North West to the select committee on LEPs).

However, although some of the LEP bids included the third sector, there are signs that the sector will not always be welcome. National business leaders have made it clear that they see LEPs as being confined to business and local government interests. They have said they would not want LEPs to become like Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs), which businesses became disenchanted with because their representation and level of interest were so wide that they didn’t have a focus (for example see this transcript of oral evidence from business representatives to the select committee). Vince Cable also sees LEPs as a partnership between business and local government, and expects them to be ‘practical bodies for promoting enterprise, not talking shops.’

Experience of LSPs and, more recently, Multi Area Agreements (MAAs) highlights some of the issues that are likely to arise in relation to third sector engagement in LEPs (a report based on research into MAAs is available here).

The enormous diversity of the sector poses a challenge, particularly in terms of the ‘representative’ role of individuals who sit on partnerships, how far they speak for the sector and what ‘model’ of representation should be applied. Related to this is the issue of how the voluntary and community sector members of a partnership should be held to account by those whom they supposedly represent (something that OPM and partners explored as part of the national evaluation of LSPs). The engagement of the third sector in LSPs has often been hampered by the weakness of local infrastructure, and the sector’s engagement in MAAs was limited by the lack of sub-regional representative bodies . Of course, these issues often also apply to the private sector.

Another important issue is the need for clarity about the role of the voluntary and community sector in any partnership. In relation to LSPs, it has been noted that VCS representatives do not necessarily feel equipped to address high level strategic issues, nor is this where their interests lie. Yet – based on analysis of the bids – it is precisely on such issues that LEPs are expected to focus.

By Catherine Staite, OPM director

Catherine Staite

What are the keys to success for free schools?

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With the passing of the Academies Act in July, and the first 16 new free schools announced last month, attention has again focused on the coalition Government’s agenda for educational reform.

OPM’s experience of community capacity building for the previous Government’s new schools competitions provides some important insights for this agenda that should not be lost in the heady rush of change.

Our experience shows that if free schools are to be community-led and sustainable, they will require community capacity building and a strong role for local educational authorities. In what follows, we outline this argument based on our experience, and discuss the issues of the free schools agenda.

Community capacity building

OPM’s involvement in new schools competitions, including the whole-school re-organisation on the Isle of Wight in 2009, focused on working with people who were short of the skills, knowledge or inclination to contribute to setting up a new school. The mixture of people and organisations now running secondary schools on the Isle is a good example of what can be achieved by carefully managing opening education to a market of providers.

These secondary schools now benefit from the expertise and resources of one of the best academy providers in the country, while other successful bidders were people from the local community who felt they could do better than what had gone before. These successes were not achieved overnight, and needed adequate resourcing to support the local community in assuming responsibility for their children’s schooling.

There is a risk that this vital groundwork of community capacity building will be lost in the rush to outsource schools to the fastest bidder. Without this capacity building, free school sponsors are likely to remain a relatively small and elite band of individuals, limiting power and influence over schooling to a mobile minority.

A strong role for local educational authorities

The free schools agenda presents a challenge to local educational authorities that should be welcomed in principle. An apathetic attitude of ‘can’t so won’t’ can persist among parents where they feel bereft of power or influence in their children’s schooling. Increasing the political involvement of communities in schooling should be encouraged.

But the free schools model, as currently formulated, risks ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’ where the role of local educational authorities is concerned.

The Academies Act 2010 removes the need for local authorities to be consulted about setting up an academy and gives new academies or free schools renewed powers to set their own curriculum. In brief, the free schools agenda extends the previous government’s academies model by limiting the role of the local authority to planning school places, which the marketplace of providers then responds to. This presents the risk of providers with the necessary expertise and resources to deliver school improvement cornering elements of the market, whereas other schools will have to buy-in this expertise. If the free schools model does not allow for a pooling of resources and expertise, inefficiencies are likely to develop.

An excellent example

St. Paul’s Community Development Trust is an organisation responsible for running a local school, and other children’s and youth services in Balsall Heath, Birmingham. St Paul’s Community School is a powerful example of how communities can be empowered to take responsibility for their local schooling, and meets with the government’s vision for free schools in almost every respect, except for its continued reliance on the support of the local educational authority.

Due to the school’s size, it was deemed financially unsustainable and scheduled for closure. In response, local people argued that the school was too important to close given levels of deprivation in the community, and since then, the school has been run by St. Paul’s with grant support from Birmingham City Council.

At the time of writing, St. Paul’s has little incentive to apply for free school status as this appears to offer no extra funding for the school beyond what it is already receiving from the council. Given that the school is based in a disadvantaged area of Birmingham, the local educational authority also provides vital expertise to the school about social care needs for children. In short, St. Paul’s and schools like it stand to lose vital funding and expertise by moving more fully out of local educational authority control.

The keys to success

Our experience highlights how free schools stand a much greater chance of success where communities get support to take greater responsibility, and where local government enjoys a strong strategic relationship with schools. The free schools agenda must not lose sight of the important and enabling role that local educational authorities can play, or assume that local communities – particularly in more deprived areas – are ready, willing and able to assume greater responsibility for schooling without sufficient support.

By Tim Whitworth, OPM senior fellow and Chris Reed, OPM research assistant

Tim WhitworthChris Reed

Should we beware the meritocracy?

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Lord Browne’s review of higher education funding provoked much debate about whether young people from poorer backgrounds will now be deterred from going to university.

The president of Oxford University’s Student Union said the report heralded ‘a dark day for meritocracy’. Meritocracy is a word that has become popular with politicians on all sides in recent decades, but what exactly does it mean? It has been defined in different ways, but most would say it reflects the belief that anyone should be able to succeed based on their ability, not their background.

‘Ability’ can mean many things, however, and it is worth remembering that Michael Young, the Labour politician and social reformer who coined the word meritocracy half a century ago, originally meant it to have negative connotations. His 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy was intended as a satire on what society could become, not a vision of what it should strive to be.

Replacing one elite with another

Most would argue that success based on ability is fairer than success based on an accident of birth, but exactly how much fairer must depend on whose idea of ability we’re talking about. When invoked in support of meritocracy, it usually implies ability as displayed through educational attainment, e.g. that the opportunities for children with poorer parents to attend university should be equal to those of children with wealthier parents.

But is this focus too narrow? What does it mean for people whose strengths are not recognised by academic measurement? As Michael Young wrote, ‘education has a narrow band of values’ and ‘puts a seal of approval on a minority’ while relegating the majority to a lowlier position. It surely can’t be healthy for a society to dismiss so many of its citizens, whose talents we need just as much to make our lives function, as less worthy of higher social status and respect.

Winners and losers

One potential danger is that the nearer we get (or think we get) to a truly meritocratic society, the more license we give to the winners to look down on the losers – because in a society which assumes that all the ‘able’ people can make it, unfettered by background, those who remain at the bottom of the heap have no excuses, and must simply be ‘unable’. The fact that we are defining ability so narrowly too often escapes us.

As such, the very trend that has empowered some people from economically poorer backgrounds has disempowered their peers. A meritocracy throws into stark relief those who do not ‘succeed’ and thus, implies those people are less valuable to society. That people should no longer be shackled to their class roots has to be a good thing, but we must acknowledge that it has also encouraged us to de-value the contribution of those millions of people who remain in the socio-economic bracket into which they were born.

We see this in politics, which in the middle of the 20th Century, it could be argued, was giving people in the poorest communities a voice. Now, by contrast, and thanks in part to our faith in meritocracy, those voices have to a large extent disappeared. Politics may now be much better at being representative of women and minority groups, but people of ‘working class’ backgrounds tend only to be present if they have first been funnelled through higher education into a different social and economic sphere. Surely if we want to empower the poorest communities, we must give them the confidence that we’ll listen to their own voices, not only to those of their off-spring who ‘made it out’.

If Browne’s reforms to university funding do indeed deter the less well-off from experiencing higher education, then that will be a negative consequence that no one wants to see. But at the same time, we must always remember that university is not the only game in town, and that while a meritocracy as commonly defined might be a better way of ordering society than by privilege of birth, it can never be the only answer to improving our collective health, wealth and happiness – not, at least, until we see an expanded definition of what signifies merit in the first place.

By Rob Francis, OPM associate fellow

Rob Francis

Tackling long-term health issues in a time of austerity: dementia care

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One of the biggest challenges currently facing the NHS is the rising rate of dementia in the UK. The government predicts that there will be 1.4 million people with dementia in the next 30 years.

Alzheimer’s Disease International’s World Alzheimer Report 2010 says that:

‘The cost of dementia will continue to increase at an alarming rate … we must work to improve care and support services, treatment and research into dementia in all regions of the world.’

These are problems that reach beyond the UK. Dementia is a growing problem across the developed world, with a global cost this year of £388bn.

I read an article recently in the Nursing Times (NT) referring to research conducted with staff in acute settings that shows they lack training and skills on caring for people with dementia.

The article made me reflect on a project I was involved in last year on dementia. It also sparked my thinking on how the proposed health reforms could affect these skills gaps.

Gaps in dementia care skills and training

The project included researching the provision and quality of dementia training and development across the East of England. This involved speaking to a range of health and social care professionals, as well as to people with dementia and their carers. Our findings were similar to those in the NT. We found a number of key skill gaps and training needs across the dementia workforce, including:

  • A lack of dementia-specific expertise among primary care staff, including GPs and district nurses. Such professionals have an important role to play in supporting people with dementia experiencing other health problems
  • Staff in acute settings, particularly those on general wards, possessed gaps in skills on how to communicate with people with dementia
  • Staff working in care homes or providing domiciliary care were inexperienced
  • A lack of support, guidance and access to training for informal carers

In addition to gaps in skills and knowledge for the dementia workforce, we also identified gaps among training providers, particularly in terms of responding to the needs of their participants, linking training to the work environment, and providing follow-up training to ensure that knowledge and skills are maintained.

Evidence shows that although in many areas high-quality dementia training is being provided, there is a need for standardisation across different regions and between health and social care, as well as tailored training for specific professional groups.

Health reforms

Based on such research it seems as though the changing health landscape could have a significant impact on dementia training. The proliferation of new providers could make it even harder to ensure consistency in the quality of dementia care, and the impact of financial pressures could make decent training unaffordable for some organisations.

These potential challenges require careful thinking. Dementia is a problem that is not going to go away – I think that we should use this as an opportunity to reconsider how the needs of people with dementia are being met. It is also essential that we think about how we are going to meet the current and future training needs of frontline health professionals if we are to truly cultivate a ‘culture of care’ and tackle what has been referred to as ‘the most significant health and social crisis of the 21st Century’.

By Kate Allman, OPM research assistant

Kate Allman

Striking the right balance between innovative and adaptive leadership

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The current financial and political climate calls for genuine transformation, and for leaders who are able to encourage and harness different styles of thinking. Traditional salami-slicing of budgets cannot yield the required level of savings; radical thinking is required. But where does this leave managers and leaders who naturally adopt a more adaptive style? OPM’s Richard Field explores.

‘Innovative’ and ‘adaptive’ preferences

The work of Dr Michael Kirton suggests that individuals differ in their thinking, either tending towards adapting what already exists or innovating something different. Relatively adaptive leaders seek solutions to problems in tried and tested ways, generating ideas within the prevailing paradigm. Leaders who are, relatively speaking, on the ‘innovative’ end of the spectrum challenge assumptions and manipulate or reframe problems, generating a greater number and diversity of ideas.

This is a period of unprecedented change for public services, some of which is innovative, the rest a case of making adaptations on a grand scale. Views on what constitutes innovation vary; in my view an authority that switches from traditional bricks and mortar services to providing work and business opportunities for people recovering from strokes and brain injury is potentially innovative, at least for this authority. Choosing to sell off remaining homes for older people having sold one or two previously is large-scale adaption; it does not require a shift in thinking or involve anything new, simply a repetition and augmenting of previous actions.

For those leaders comfortable with uncertainty, complexity and paradox this is a time of unparalleled opportunity, a time for imagining, innovation and experimentation. For leaders who function best in conditions of certainty and stability this is a less comfortable time. Much of what has been developed over the last ten years is being reduced or dismantled. Established services, relationships and processes are transforming at a speed that allows little time for careful thought, planning or coordination.

Being naturally adaptive or innovative is neither a good or bad thing: particular contexts and circumstances call for relatively more adaptive or innovative responses. While individual leaders often face contexts that require a response that does not match their thinking style, management teams usually have a mix of styles and should be better equipped to lead in a diversity of situations. Successful responses to the current context will depend on the sense leaders make of their environment, their ability to correctly diagnose whether an innovative or adaptive response is required, thinking style diversity within the management team and the ability of those involved to harness diversity and adapt their behaviour.

Getting the mix right: ignore adaptive thinking at your peril

Both innovative and adaptive styles of thinking are valuable and management teams benefit from a mix, the balance of which will need to shift over time. While the current emphasis on thinking outside the paradigm makes innovation popular, ignoring adaptors is a mistake as they can make a significant contribution, particularly in shaping and implementing ideas. More important, however, is the contribution adaptive thinkers can make post-transformation in the quest for high performance, which at this point is more likely to be achieved via sustained continuous improvement.

As a user of adaptor innovator theory for many years I’ve found the following questions to be particularly helpful for senior public service leaders to ask top teams:

  • What is the mix of adaptors and innovators in your leadership team(s)?
  • What balance of adaptive and innovative thinking is needed for future effectiveness?
  • Does the current balance need to shift?
  • What changes need to be made to the wider leadership system to support the future balance?
  • Do you and your colleagues possess the ability to make the necessary shift and harness thinking diversity?

With the appropriate mix of innovators and adaptors an organisation should be equipped both to break out of the existing paradigm and make the new paradigm work. At present innovators are leading in many organisations and there is a need to ensure that those motivated to do things better rather than differently are engaged. Their time is coming, and soon.

By Richard Field, OPM senior fellow

Richard Field

How can managers keep trusting each other in tough times?

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Having to make 25 per cent cuts is enough to put a strain on relationships in any management team, and in this kind of situation ensuring good levels of trust between leaders is all important. In this post, OPM’s principal for local government, Sue Goss, pinpoints the key ingredients of maintaining trust within councils working through difficult times.

The realities of relationships between leaders when the going gets tough

Having worked with the top leadership teams of politicians and managers across a range of local authorities, I’m beginning to see how hard trust is to sustain when anxieties run high. We often work hard on ways to build trust, but as I re-read the text books on ‘trust’ I realise that we are often trying to build the wrong sort!

The management books refer to two important sources of trust: integrity and competence. Both are important. I might consider someone to be honest, but be doubtful about their ability to, for example, take my appendix out safely if I didn’t also trust their competence.

But integrity and competence are not enough on their own. I’m discovering that tension between members and officers leads to  managers feeling that their integrity or their competence is doubted, when actually the source of the problem is different.

The scale of the financial cuts that councils are now facing makes it almost impossible for politicians to simply trust managers to make the right decisions. The political risks are too great. And both officers and politicians worry that others don’t see the whole picture. As one deputy leader said to me ‘the danger is we will prefer to cut the things we don’t understand, because the things we do understand we want to protect.’ And if each portfolio holder or manager only sees part of the picture, they will tend to be defensive and suspicious, with politicians wondering if officers are ‘hiding’ resources, and managers wondering what part of ‘25 per cent cuts’ the politicians don’t understand!

Things are made harder when councils change hands politically, or where leaders or chief officers are relatively new and relationships are still being formed. Ironically, transitions between administrations can sometimes be too smooth, so that officers simply continue working to the meeting structure, agendas and even priorities formed by a previous administrations without stopping to redesign decision-making spaces, to rethink priorities and to build a new shared understanding.

A different sort of trust is needed, but how to create it?

So the third sort of trust needed in these difficult times is trust in a shared project, and this can only be built by thinking and working together. It’s not enough to stop after the first few hazy flipchart notes about ‘future vision’. A vague commitment to ‘greener environment’ or ‘empowering communities’ will not be enough to guide future action in these challenging times. The leadership team of members and officers needs to build trust in shared judgements about the balance to be struck between conflicting objectives, and the actions that need to follow.

One approach that has worked is for the leadership team to take time out to explore how a specific proposal to redevelop a site or to share services or to merge a library with a children’s centre would really work in practice. In a safe experimental space, the team can work together to understand the obstacles, and find solutions. This is not because in future every real decision needs to be worked through in such detail, but to learn about how each member of the team thinks, to understand the perspective they contribute, and to recognise where they can add value. That way, managers can begin to understand the political sensitivities and dilemmas, while politicians can begin to see the practical problems that managers are encountering.

When pressures mount, the temptation is to move faster, to pile more items onto agendas, to rush to even more meetings. But to get to a really good shared understanding takes time and patience. Some of the problems faced are so difficult that they will take the very top brains of the organisations hours and hours, often days, to think through properly. Setting that time aside now might make all the difference between success and failure.

By Sue Goss, OPM’s principal for local government

Sue Goss

Public Interest Seminars in November: inequality and innovation in the Big Society

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We’re really excited to be able to announce not one but two public interest seminars this November.

On Tuesday 30 November OPM will host an evening of discussion and debate in response to pressing concerns about the potential impact of the Big Society agenda on social inequality.

While there is much positivity about what the Big Society agenda could achieve to empower communities to better serve their own needs, there is also understandable concern about the potential impact on more disadvantaged communities who do not currently have the necessary resources (e.g. time and social capital) to take advantage of these opportunities. As well as exploring the risk that the Big Society agenda may increase inequality, the seminar will also explore some practical suggestions for mitigating this risk, and ask whether there is an opportunity to use the Big Society as a vehicle to reduce social inequality.

Confirmed speakers include Anna Coote, head of social policy at the New Economics Foundation and author of Ten big questions about the Big Society and ten ways to make the best of it; Gill Bull, executive head of policy at one of the CLG Big Society ‘vanguard’ authorities, Sutton; Belinda Pratten from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations; and Toby Blume from Urban Forum.

On Monday 22 November we’ll be turning our attention to the role of local government in this new and challenging landscape. The number and speed of proposed changes to the sector has prompted many local authorities to think radically and ask: what is local government for? If councils have to do less, what things do they have to do and what sorts of organisations do they need to be to maintain those crucial functions?

Giving their views on this crucial debate will be the chief executives of two of the most advanced and innovative authorities in England: Gavin Jones from Swindon Borough Council, and Chris Bull, joint chief executive of Herefordshire County Council and NHS Herefordshire. You can hear about some of the radical changes made in both these places in a video posted on this blog.

Both seminars will be held in the evening (6 pm for a 6:15 pm start, finished by 7.45 pm), at our offices at 252B Gray’s Inn Road, WC1X 8XG, a ten minute walk from King’s Cross. The seminars are free, but places are strictly limited so please do let us know as soon as possible if you would like to attend, by emailing Kimberley Green on kgreen@opm.co.uk.

Patient and public engagement in the era of the Big Society: seminar report

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On 11 October 2010 OPM and Involve held a public interest seminar at which panellists and participants explored in-depth what patient and public engagement might look like in the era of the Big Society. Read the seminar briefing paper outlining the policy context.

Below is a note of the key points made and issues covered at the seminar itself, which you can also download as a PDF. If you’re interested in being added to the mailing list for future seminar, please email Kimberley Green: kgreen@opm.co.uk.

Patient and public participation and the Big Society