By Mohini Khanna, OPM researcher.
In my spare time, I volunteer with the Migrant and Refugee Communities Forum (MRCF), based in west London. Set up almost 20 years ago, MRCF is a ‘user-led, community forum working to promote the rights of migrants and refugees in London’. One aspect of its work is to act as an umbrella organisation; as such it has a membership of over 40 migrant and refugee community organisations. Continue reading
By Phil Copestake, OPM principal.
This is the latest in a series of posts in anticipation of new research from OPM about what local government can do to unlock local capacity. To find out more about the free evening seminar on Tuesday 21 February where the research will be launched, click here.
When looking to unlock the capacity of local communities, local councils find nothing is more fundamentally important than the language they use. This was one of the points that struck me most powerfully at a really excellent, wide-ranging debate last week at the RSA, to launch the 2020 Public Services Hub’s evaluation of Sunderland City Council’s community leadership programme.
In amidst thoughtful opinions offered by amassed luminaries including the RSA’s own Matthew Taylor and head of volunteering charity CSV Lucy de Groot, the leader and chief exec of Sunderland both made telling points based on their practical experience. Continue reading
By Robin Clarke, OPM fellow.
This is the latest in a series of posts in anticipation of new research from OPM about what local government can do to unlock local capacity. To find out more about the free evening seminar on Tuesday 21 February where the research will be launched, click here.
Reading the news this week about the Circle Partnership’s takeover of Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire it’s understandable that people might conclude that where a service is struggling the only viable alternative to public sector management is a solution involving significant private sector input. But in some cases community ownership can be the best answer.
Take the Battersea Arts Centre, for instance. A little while ago I was sitting there helping to facilitate an event about the future of health services in South West London. The venue had a ‘shabby chic’ feel to it and a cat (Pluto – on the staff list as Head of Security, Sleeping and Prowling) who strutted about checking everyone out. But I wondered if I was the only person at the event who was aware of the great transformation that had taken place there?
The Battersea Arts Centre is a shining example of how local people can take over the management of a public asset and not only save a service from possible closure, but also improve it. The building has been threatened with closure many times in its long history, but finally it seems to have found a sustainable future. Since taking over the asset the Centre has broadened its range of projects and seen an increasing number of visitors. Continue reading
By Clive Miller, OPM principal.
This is the latest in a series of posts in anticipation of new research from OPM about what local government can do to unlock local capacity. To find out more about the free evening seminar on Tuesday 21 February where the research will be launched, click here.
How can isolated older people be enabled to reconnect with and become active parts of their local communities again? Loss of a partner or increase in your own or your partner’s disability is often linked with a collapse of personal social networks. You can’t or don’t feel able to get out and about as before. Friends are diffident about contacting you. For older people in residential care this can be even more of an issue.
The usual answer to tackling isolation is to reach out to older people in their own homes through befriending services or enable them to come to social events. These are fine but they neglect the abilities of older people and the wish of many to be able to still help others and be a valued and active part of their communities.
There is a different approach: instead of starting with needs, focus on the assets that older people and the communities in which they live already possess. How can older people be enabled to make better use of them? This is the central question posed by the DWP / LGA Ageing Well programme. Continue reading
By Sarah McDonnell, OPM senior researcher, with an introduction from Phil Copestake, OPM principal.
At OPM we know that whatever councillors and officers in local government feel about ‘open public services’ and ‘the big society’, few disagree that with much less money available, local authorities must find a way of unlocking the energy and capacity of local people. Each council is tackling this in a different way.
On Tuesday 21st February we’ll be launching a report based on brand new research with councils across England. The report will give an in-depth, wide-ranging picture of the practical ways in which local authorities are going about the difficult but vital task of unlocking local capacity.
We’ve got a fantastic panel of speakers at the launch event, including the Mayor of Newham Robin Wales, Stuart Etherington from NCVO, the leader of Oxfordshire County Council Keith Mitchell, and Matthew Gott, a senior director from complex families pioneers Swindon. The seminar will be in the early evening, in Central London, and is free, but places are strictly limited. If you’re interested in coming then please email seminars@opm.co.uk.
In the run-up to the 21st February there will be lots of posts on this blog offering different perspectives on how best to unlock local capacity, from the point of view of councils, residents and communities themselves, and local voluntary groups. To kick things off (the first of many puns: you have been warned) we have OPM’s Sarah McDonnell asking: what can local councillors and officers learn from the leadership strategies of managers from the world of… Premier League football! Continue reading
By Phil Copestake, OPM principal.
The Deputy Prime Minister’s speech yesterday highlighted a paradox at the heart of the employee ownership business model. You can’t have a mutual without actual shared ownership, and yet owning shares does not in and of itself guarantee the benefits of being a mutual. As Mr Clegg said: sharing ownership means sharing power. But to really maximise the potential of mutual models the staff who own the business need guaranteed influence too. Continue reading
By Ewan King, OPM director, and Robin Clarke, OPM fellow
The mantra ‘no decision about me without me’ that underpins the Health and Social Care Bill is a good one – it tries to draw out in simple language the power and control patients will be afforded when it comes to decisions about their own healthcare. The goal of creating an NHS built upon shared decision making between clinician and patient cuts through many of the planned reforms, from improvements to front-line patient services (e.g. through the creation of patient reported outcomes and shared decision aids) through to much larger structural changes like the creation of clinical commissioning groups. Continue reading
By Ewan King, OPM director.
There 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:
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
By David Love, OPM principal
Coaching 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
By Deborah Rozansky, OPM principal
I 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
