Monthly Archives: December 2011

It’s time for community-led community cohesion

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By Ewan King, OPM director.

Ewan KingThere are signals emanating from Government that we will shortly see the long awaited strategy on community integration and cohesion. This is good news, as there was a creeping sense of despair amongst some working in this field that the Government was going to abandon the commitment to this strategy completely.

Initial reports are sketchy but there is talk of a new cross-government strategy that will concentrate on four main areas:

  • A new drive against ‘anti-Muslim hatred’ in Britain and a recognition that anti-semitism is also growing.
  • Events to celebrate the Queen’s diamond jubilee and the Olympic Games that bring together different communities.
  • An online integration forum, which includes a ‘barrier-busting site’ to remove bureaucratic barriers and encourage different community and faith groups to come together.
  • An initiative to establish common ground with Gypsy and Traveller communities.

How these aims are governed, managed, delivered and measured locally is not yet known. However, if previous policies arising from this Government are anything to go by, we should not expect a detailed blueprint prescribed from the centre on how each and every element of this agenda will be delivered locally. Certainly, it is very unlikely that significant funding will be attached to this strategy. Continue reading →

What’s so good about coaching … for the coach?

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By David Love, OPM principal

David LoveCoaching is good for you. There’s increasing evidence that coaching has benefits for coachees and their organisations. I’m also seeing a diminishing sense of coaching as an expensive luxury, given its power in getting to the heart of the issues and building individual leadership capability that connects strongly with organisational priorities. More and more public service organisations are creating their own in-house coaching cadres often with the aim of creating a dramatic shift in the day-to-day ways they ‘do leadership and management’.

But what’s in it for those doing the coaching? Continue reading →

The NHS – a social network?

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By Deborah Rozansky, OPM principal

Deborah RozanskyI realise it’s unusual to get excited about an academic article in a somewhat obscure scientific journal, but a recent piece of research about the evolution of cooperative behaviour caught my eye and got me thinking. (Please stick with me here!)

‘Cooperative behaviour cascades in human social networks,’ written by Fowler and Christakis in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, describes a set of laboratory experiments testing how people cooperate and behave towards each other while playing a series of public goods games. In these games individuals were asked to make contributions to a group; some of the experiments also included punishments. Continue reading →

Vital service for public sector mutuals re-launched

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By Phil Copestake, OPM’s head of communications.

Phil CopestakeFor some time now we’ve been writing on this blog and elsewhere about the importance for new public sector mutuals of knowledge sharing, peer support and joining up access to relevant expertise. Yesterday there was really good news on this front, with the Government’s re-launch of the Mutuals Information Service (MIS).

The MIS brings together information, advice and guidance, including a new website to support individuals and teams who are looking to begin the journey, a new national hotline, and – perhaps most significantly – potential access to funding for bespoke professional support (the long-promised £10m Mutuals Support Programme). Continue reading →

Putting social value at the heart of new public sector mutuals

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By Linda Jackson, OPM associate fellow.

Linda JacksonI recently attended a great event held by the Transition Institute to launch their publication on public service spin outs called, Towards a Social Value Ethos. The lively and challenging debate focused on the different things that need to happen in order to spin out public services into a different form of ownership. Whilst the paths, processes and duration of each transition are likely to vary from organisation to organisation, there are some commonalities that need to be in place for the journey to effectively take place. Continue reading →