Exposing the real deficit - Shiny new ideas display old behaviours

Despite the compelling case for involvement old behaviours are rife - with predictable consequences

Monday 8 March 2010 10:00 by Mark Butler (0 comments)

This should be a rich time for change with the public placed right at its centre. There are now more than enough reasons to re-imagine the relationship between the public and public services - not in a closed, inward-looking way but through the messy business of real involvement. The platform, as they say, is well and truly burning.

Instead the path to meaningful involvement seems largely and unnecessarily closed to the public. Leaders still feel it is legitimate to emerge from closed processes (at least now held in smoke-free rooms) to articulate the grim choices they have in store. Consultation in a neat and tidy form follows. Opinion in a controlled way is sought, maybe using new media to give a veneer of modern engagement. Listening is seen to be done. Decisions are made. An active public is thus excluded in the name of democratic legitimacy.

Much of this is down to the blight of public services generally - entrenched, learnt behaviour. Service leaders expect to hold on to control. They have been elected or appointed for that purpose, haven't they? The public are so used to being excluded they are not up in arms.

Even shiny new ideas still display old behaviours. One Place, the online central resource for performance data for a range of local public services which has been hatched in a modified version of the closed process, is some way off being the positive way forward it is claimed to be. Crucially there is still nothing of substance to offer on public involvement as a true definer and driver for change. It perpetuates a view that the new world is a matter for leaders using modified rules of old-style paternalism, built on a rock of legitimacy by proxy. One Place has a lot to recommend it but this still feels like a world where change is neat and has to be kept away from the public, with involvement limited mainly to engagement on lived experience.

Ironically the prevailing agenda is in part to change public behaviours. It is a shame this does not extend to changing the behaviours of the leaders themselves to embrace involvement - from which so much different and positive could flow.

But there is more to the story. The reluctance to open up is framed by the never-ending wrestling match for control of public services - even more of a war to the death when there are to be fewer services to control. There still seem to be far too many old scores to settle between councils and other less legitimate bodies. This hopeless waste of effort has been responsible also for Scrutiny limping forward at a snail's pace, with little sign across the divide of stirrings amongst the Non Executive community to advocate for dynamic governance and real involvement.

I doubt whether the public takes too keen an interest in who accounts to whom and all the cartwheels involved. They rightly want to have a reassuring sense of being able to trust services run on their behalf and to play a part in their design and delivery. Both desires are largely denied as things stand.

It would be disgraceful if a narrow tit-for-tat on legitimacy between different agencies in any way prevented public involvement coming to life at the time it is most needed. Ironically the current leaders of public sector thinking are using old behaviours to create the conditions where the bluff on involvement might just be called.

Mid-Staffordshire Hospitals, Francis Report – A wasted opportunity

The Francis Report fails to grasp the opportunity to promote measures that will generate renewed trust in local service by local people, giving us only more of the same - more professionalism and more regulation.

Monday 1 March 2010 10:00 by Graham English (0 comments)

Writing in the week the Francis report on Mid-Staffordshire was published I wondered whether I was alone in seeing a glaring hole in the report's conclusions and recommendations? Or alone at being both angry and saddened as a result?

One of the most striking aspects of the whole mess has surely been the failure of local systems to recognise the concerns of local people until too late, married with the driven campaigning by local self-organising people, which has persevered throughout, and may yet succeed in getting a formal public enquiry (although I doubt it). Involvement in decision-making, and especially the consequences of not involving, have been centre-stage. But would you know it from reading the report?

Only Recommendation 17 (of the 18 made) refers directly to the need to change the relationship with local people ("should consider steps to enhance the rebuilding of public confidence", is hardly a ringing call to action). The report suggests strengthening the role of Governors (of the Foundation Trust (FT)), and criticises the complacency and approach of the Board. Although the second recommendation is that the Government should review the hospital's FT status it sits on the fence about whether it should in fact be revoked - so there appears to be confusion, still, about how to deal with the failed governance and regulatory processes (hence the further report on regulatory and commissioning matters).

So, while the report explicitly and implicitly makes restoring the trust of local people a key issue, it is extraordinarily weak on what measures could be taken to do so that actually involve those same people. What has now been given to local managers is a set of clinical and operational management tasks, functioning entirely within the prevailing bureaucratic mindset. This is not a report which shifts the paradigm of 'professionals know best'. On the contrary it seems to re-enforce it, as it repeatedly stresses the failure to meet entirely appropriate minimum standards, especially clinical ones. And it seems likely to lead to further professionalisation of the management of services (we have no problem with the principle of that). However, it does so without equal weight on the engagement of local people in decision-making, for individual care or for 'big' decisions, or placing equal value in their contribution.

No doubt Mid Staffs represents failure of professionalism and of regulation - however, the answer doesn't simply lie in more professionalism or more regulation, it lies also in greater openness and more involvement of those who are affected by such decisions.

This is not in place of professionalism, but is essential if we are to achieve new levels of assurance about the quality of services and new relationships between people and their public services.

So, the lessons of Mid-Staffordshire are many, and they apply to many areas of public service. But the big lessons have surely been lost in the rush to add yet more 'professionalism' to the delivery of service. Doesnt that make YOU angry and sad?

Hearts Vs Minds?

Using Evidence to Persuade - worthwhile tactic or pandering to those with authority and power?

Monday 22 February 2010 13:05 by Mark Butler (0 comments)

"Lack of evidence" is a recurring theme in Think Tank and policy material on involvement. Reports on community engagement lament the thin and uneven evidence base, or over-state the value of the limited evidence they can marshal, before laying out a few small-scale examples where principles and policy appear to have sparked. Even the more buoyant "Engagement Ethic" report from the Innovation Exchange withdraws into a list of advice for "public services" on tactics for successful engagement. The audience for all this stuff is inward-looking - often, the very people who have power and authority and for whom an evidence base is really not the issue - for too many it is about what they need to do to retain the imbalance of power which prevents involvement. Keeping the status quo requires little effort on their part.

So this makes the real obstacle to greater involvement an inability to fight where it really matters - over authority and influence, right at the centre of participative democracy, fuelling social movements in action more than redefining a shift in what the state does. Social movements rarely look for a neat body of evidence, relying more on the unifying energy of the self-evident impact of the current state of things on people's lives. Such change happens more by securing hearts, than it does by cold, logical persuasion.

The impact of people not being fully involved in what matters to them is visible and evident enough. Given the profound lack of trust in public representatives the trick is surely to do rather than describe; to articulate issues which need to be changed with passion and then be at the forefront of making the change happen, rather than bloodlessly describing a few safe examples where involvement has worked, in the hope that this might inspire a mind-shift in well-embedded public leaders.

If we allow it, the hunt for an evidence base is a distraction. No equivalent evidence is required for the status quo or for staff engagement, or for many other policy developments. Fontis seeks better evidence for involvement, but the profound shift in power and models of accountability needed for profound and lasting change will be driven more by doing from outside than describing change for those already inside to adopt. So where do we start?

What does Marcus the lamb tell us about Involvement?

When Involvement leads to conflict and bizarre decisions are professioanls right to resist?

Monday 15 February 2010 09:05 by Graham English (0 comments)

Last week Andrea Charman, head-teacher of Lydd primary school in Kent, resigned for personal reasons months into a campaign heralded in the media, despite support from the school's Governors, Kent County Council, local MP Michael Howard and a positive OFSTED report about a school Mrs Charman had taken out of special measures. The campaign follows her decision to send a lamb reared by the school children to slaughter, a decision she took with the support of Governors, the school's pupil council (which voted 13 to 1 in favour last September) and from school parents, possibly a majority.

Mrs Charman did not help sweeten the pill by offering Marcus' meat in a fund-raising raffle, and arguably Marcus had been anthropomorphised and sentimentalised by being named and cared for as a pet.

Cue campaign by parents (a minority?), articles in the Mail and other media (for and against), an offer to house Marcus from celebrity Paul O'Grady. Cue righteous indignation at the intervention of sentimental approaches to animal husbandry and meat production. Cue complaints about Nanny-statism.

At the heart of this furore is a head-teacher trying to improve children's education and succeeding.

Also core are issues about involvement in decisions made by professionals over delivery of public services.

So is this an example of Involvement not working? Doesn't this illustrate why so many professionals fear and resist Involvement in their decision-making?

Well, 'Yes and No'. Those who advocate involved decision-making must deal with the potential for the 'wrong' answer, contradicting professional opinion. Our answer is that if the process has been properly involving, the full facts are available to those who are involved, and they have had good chance to really understand those facts, if people have come to trust the motives of professionals, have been involved from the start, understand the limits including what is 'safe' and what risks to accept, and there is good (involved) control of the process of involvement, (those are all important 'ifs') then who is to say the decision they support is 'wrong', even if it isn't the one experts would have taken alone? It would be bizarre if involving people in decision-making didn't affect the outcome of decisions, otherwise what is the point of involvement?

Involvement doesn't remove conflict and may highlight it, as in Kent. Managing that conflict and that Involvement is a high-order skill. And surely the problems in Kent have been as much to do with the impact of our media (feeding on conflict) on decision-making and on personal responses to the resulting fire-storm? The best response to the media impact is to ensure the criteria for Involvement set out above are met, that Involvement is strengthened, and that effective support is given to those involving others, or who are at the centre of a media fire-storm.

Making the Case for Involvement

How best to overcome political and other forms of resistance to involvement?

Monday 8 February 2010 10:00 by Mark Butler (0 comments)

Last year's Young Foundation Paper, "Citizen Engagement and Accountability" strains to make a case for a future built on public involvement. It leaps, with hope in its heart, from a short stock-take on engagement (where the police receive most praise - there's another blog or two about that to come) to the critical factors which it suggests underpin successful engagement - political support, responsive organisational culture, clever use of tools and tactics and working with enthusiasts. The conclusion, tailored presumably to fit its client, the Department for Communities and Local Government, is that local government will only deliver if the starting point is that citizens already have power. Do they? And isn't there something more practical?

If involvement is indeed to be one cornerstone of sustainable public services the agenda is different, in part a mirror image of the report. Success will involve overcoming political resistance (or indifference), keeping tools and techniques fresh and smart and gathering a true evidence-base about why involvement delivers (or at least a compelling critical mass of cases). But the most important challenge facing involvement missed in the Young Foundation paper is also the most problematic.

Involvement has to be of direct and immediate relevance to non-enthusiasts. Those advocating for involvement will have to be far more visible in achieving short-term change - an active, central, unequivocal contribution to doing more, better, for less. If involvement is relevant it has to address and lower the barriers to involvement amongst the sceptics and non-believers.

This requires involvement in practice, not involvement in theory - involvement which shapes investment and disinvestment decisions; which changes behaviour in measurable ways; which helps reshape services and facilities in tough environments. The Young Foundation are right to see a pivotal problem in the medium-term being about how to turn likely mobilisation against change to positive support for change. The report would however be more convincing and worthwhile if it really made the case for relevance now. It is action at the hard end of the spectrum, alongside the disbelievers and sceptics, where the case has to be made and more work done.

Dont ya just love to be asked to help?

Co-production in times of financial stress – manipulation and exploitation or essential and wanted progress?

Friday 29 January 2010 13:20 by Graham English (0 comments)

One of the ways public sector organisations are looking to reduce costs in straitened times is by gaining the support and help of their clients in the delivery of service, sometimes labelled 'co-production.' This term has become common managerial parlance - it's 22 years since flat-pack furniture first took its place in UK homes but it's not so long ago that the concept became an aspiration of service industries, even if the ideas can be traced to Richard Normann and others in the mid 90s. Perhaps the time-shift is one part of the problem - of language losing its original meaning.

Understood as a means to add new value to the generation of products and services, the concept of co-production is about involvement in all parts of the process of creating value, of designing efficient, effective, and wanted, systems, products and services.

Yet I fear a different reality in the public service, where 'experts' know best and little attention is paid to a true customer focus, and where the pressure to cut costs but not services is immense. I fear 'co-production' will just be about cutting the costs of production, by shifting costs, and time requirements, onto the consumer, whether explicitly and consensually or not. Meaning 'co-production' becomes potentially exploitative, taking advantage of people without the power to resist.

Yet used in its original context co-production is about co-design - in other words it is about joint decision-making and shared ownership of both the products and the ideas that lie behind them. It is enabling and creative. Which all sounds rather like the Fontis agenda.....

Where does the difference lie? In the ability of those asked to participate to trust the motives (correctly) and actions of those who initiate the work of co-production. To this end we think it would be helpful if those doing the asking are really explicit in their request, making it clear it is co-design as well as co-production that they are seeking, that they can be held to account over this distinction and that their (shared) actions will demonstrate the reality.

Fontis

making involvement happen

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