Note from a roundtable: Relationship centred policy
Better Way on-line roundtable on relationship-centred policy, 24 March 2020
1. BACKGROUND
Participants were welcomed by Caroline Slocock. She reminded us that in a Better Way one of our guiding principles is that relationships are better than transactions:
Deep value is generated through relationships between people and the commitments people make to each other. We find this first and foremost in families, communities and neighbourhoods, but organisations in every sector need to do more to treat people with humanity and as individuals and so generate deep value too.
Moreover, our November 2019 Call to Action called for:
Changes to practices in order to ‘put humanity and kindness into services’; and
Changes to organisations to ‘start creating connection and community, not just passive services, for people’.
At this time of national emergency, Caroline said, it has been impressive and encouraging that so many people have already found ways to connect and support each other within communities. But this support was still largely transactional (delivering groceries and medicine to high risk groups). Important though this is, she said that more attention needed to be paid to well-being and mental health; and she suggested we should create a national befriender service to provide personal contact and support to isolated people, not just physical supplies. She also thought that communities and volunteers needed not just to support the NHS but also the social care system; and that volunteers might help isolated people to become more empowered eg by helping them set up home delivery and other online services.
2. INTRODUCTORY PRESENTATIONS
INTRODUCTION (1) DAVID ROBINSON
David drew on his two recent blogs, Coronavirus and Social Disruption, and Inventing the Future. He spoke of his time as a community worker and his realisation that building good relationships is at the heart of effective responses to people whose lives are in difficulty. In recent years Hilary Cottam and Julia Unwin among many others have pointed out that services and policies have often lost sight of community and kindness and that this needs to change. We have seen some signs in recent years that relationship-based thinking is beginning to be taken up by politicians from the right and the left. In recent weeks, as coronavirus has spread, our world has started to change very rapidly:
We are re-neighbouring at pace. At least 2,700 covid-19 mutual aid groups have emerged in recent days.
We are learning to do things on-line in ways we couldn’t before.
There is a wealth of original activity, some of which will turn out to be superficial and will not last, but some will.
We may be seeing the signs of a fundamental shift towards a kinder society. After the lockdown, there will be a very long tail of difficulty and disruption to everyday life, but we will emerge with two new commodities:
Lists - of people we didn’t know before.
Trust – the discovery that we can do things for each other on trust.
In the coming weeks, David felt, we should identify the positives which are coming out of this crisis, the principles which underpin them, and what can be done to sustain the positives in more normal times.
INTRODUCTION (2) AVRIL MCINTYRE
In her recent blog Avril pointed out that community is alive and well, and she argued that we must learn through this crisis how to build tomorrow’s world, investing in relationally focused support, not the service-led approach we lived in yesterday. She spoke of her experience as a member of a church, as a charity leader in Barking and Dagenham, and as Chair of the Barking and Dagenham Collective, and how strong local support networks have been built.
A lot of people do have friends and families but many do not. The plan therefore was to establish a borough-wide network of community hubs, backed up by formal public services (not handing people over to services in ways that would lose community connection).
This has now been overtaken by the COVID 19 crisis and a new mechanism been put in place fast, with eight locality leads and clusters of people and agencies available to respond to needs, and willing and able not only to drop off shopping and medication but also to respond to people as human beings when doing so.
The important thing is to use this time to learn how to work better together, and build a positive environment, based on relationships, so that when this crisis ends, we have a new way of working that we can build on.
3. DISCUSSION: WHAT CAN BE DONE NOW AND IN THE FUTURE TO PUT RELATIONSHIPS AT THE HEART OF PUBLIC POLICY
3.1 CAPTURING THE LEARNING FROM THE COMMUNITY RESPONSE FOR THE FUTURE
The huge volume of unstructured and positive activity in communities in response to coronavirus is making a profound impression. This does, we felt, provide reasons to be optimistic about what the future might hold beyond the crisis.
We will need to ‘capture’ the capacity which is emerging now, so that it can be retained for the long term. This means capturing learning in real time, to help us understand the situation properly, as well as to help prepare for the longer term (some places are using citizen participatory evaluation/ 'detectorism' techniques).
Several contributors pointed out that organisations need to think not just about how they can deliver services in response to the coronavirus crisis, but also how they can help communities themselves be the response. They should encourage people to do the things they can do, not assume they can’t.
We realise that the shared sense of urgency and adversity will eventually wane, and priorities will shift from a collective effort to stop the spread of the virus to potentially an individual focus on getting back on your feet. We may have a return to blaming and targeting/scapegoating. So we need to find ways to make the positive legacy of meaningful relationships last.
3.2 BUILDING COLLABORATIVE LEADERSHIP INCLUDING BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND CIVIL SOCIETY
It was observed that within national government transactional methods are indeed dominant at present. The work of civil society will be critical to rebalancing this.
There is a risk that strategic agencies will fall over each other in the rush to design ways to co-ordinate neighbourhood action. One view – not shared by everyone - is that it will be best to allow the formal statutory agencies to lead the co-ordinating effort, with civil society agencies working in support, and allowing people at neighbourhood level to get on with what they can do best.
The quality of co-ordination will be very important – we may need systems at community level (perhaps equivalent to fire wardens in WWII) to ensure that necessary actions are taken and are effective.
However, Local Resilience Forums are dominated by statutory bodies, and community voices are not heard enough. This matters, because if the planning is confined to what the formal statutory agencies can do, it will fail to take account of what informal relational community activity can do. And if the statutory services are overwhelmed, community action will be needed more than ever.
Several of us felt that public agencies could consider what they can do to help mutual aid at neighbourhood level flourish and sustain. However, there was also a view that public agencies and support bodies should avoid the temptation to over-engineer; the tools for community action are actually very simple. In some cities/regions, support agencies have produced maps of community hubs or other sources of support and this was felt to be useful by some but not by everyone.
The need for effective and trusted conduits between national and local, between government and community, has become increasingly obvious.
All sides will need to work on relationships and trust. For example the initial Charity Commission guidance on coronavirus provoked an angry Twitterstorm, but this became a catalyst for better understanding and accommodation.
3.3 ADDRESSING INEQUALITY AND HELPING EVERYONE BE SAFE AND FLOURISH
There is danger, we felt, of an increasing class divide, with community action flourishing among relatively affluent groups and some poorer neighbourhoods left behind. For example there are many people who cannot afford to go on line, and so will miss out on the opportunity to build on-line relationships – in an effort to address this Community Organisers have launched #OperationWiFi calling for a free-to-use open WiFi network for communities during the outbreak.
While vulnerable children will still be offered places at school, many are not taking that up, and we should remember that home is not always a safe place to be.
We noted that Groundswell has produced advice for people sleeping rough, and for people in hostels or temporary accommodation as well as guidance for people planning a local response.
Access to welfare rights services is especially important at this time. While government has put in place measures to maintain a portion of the income of people whose work is affected by Coronavirus it is likely that many will fall through the cracks in the system, and will need help to get any support that is available.
Bridging social divides, building relationships, trust and support across people who are different as well as similar is important. We need to learn from the current situation about who is missing out, why, and what and who could help enable their inclusion?
Some tools to help people connect deeply might be useful, eg non-violent communication techniques.
The crisis is forcing us to reassess how we can create conditions for good mental health –good relationships, strong communities, establishing the conditions for people to be able to help each other, are all important contributors to mental well-being.
Civil society has a crucial role in surfacing the needs of groups who may otherwise be overlooked.
3.4 PROMOTING A POSITIVE STORY OF HOW PEOPLE CAN RESPOND TO THE CRISIS AND BEYOND
We believe we should talk about vulnerable people as contributors of support not just recipients, and talk about connection as strength rather than connection as contagion. The Frameworks Institute is producing a series of short newsletters to help advocates and experts be heard better, and help to reframe public discourse more positively.
We will need to support an inclusive culture shift which aligns with our population shifts, and emphasising 'us' and not 'them'.
We can celebrate people doing good things.
We can promote ‘love in a time of coronovirus’.
3.5 BUILDING THE CASE FOR DIFFERENT WAYS OF DOING THINGS
There is an opportunity to move decisively beyond new public management and build the evidence base for doing so. For example we should be able to discover whether those places where relational systems are strongest are most able to reduce the impact of the coronavirus.
One effect of the current crisis is a nationwide shift in perceptions of what work should be valued. Stackers of supermarket shelves, delivery drivers, front line and ancillary social care and health staff, for example, are suddenly much more appreciated than they were just a few weeks ago. Sustaining this shift beyond the crisis could have profound and positive consequences.
The Beveridge report which led to the creation of the welfare state emerged at a time of national crisis; the current crisis may provide the conditions in which a new version could win widespread support.
Some in our discussion(although not everyone) felt that the case for universal basic income is now even stronger, because it would provide a foundation for everyone to be able to participate fully within society, and there has been a call for a version of this to start now during the emergency.
3.6 THE ROLE OF THE BETTER WAY NETWORK
We need to direct our efforts to capture what is happening now, and comment with a view to influencing the medium and longer term.
Government is in crisis management so right now there is no thinking about what things could look like beyond the crisis. The Better Way network should join forces with others pushing in equivalent directions, for example the New Local Government Network, as well as think tanks across the political spectrum, putting aside tribal affiliations, to help form a future agenda for government.
Some felt we need to be more proactive to ensure that voices of different communities, including BAME communities, and social enterprises as well, are heard more within our own discussions.
4. SPECIFIC IDEAS FOR GOVERNMENT
This is a summary of ideas which emerged from the discussion which could help government and other institutions place relationships at the heart of public policy. Some relate particularly to this time of crisis, others to the longer term future we would like to see. (Not all ideas were necessarily supported by all participants in our discussion).
Introduce Universal Basic Income, and also universal access to free broadband, so that everyone has the core resources to participate in community life.
Establish a nationwide befriending service, to ensure that isolated people have a friend to talk to daily and who can also help them to develop online skills and links with others where needed.
Develop a volunteer social care support network to support the existing social care system, for people currently receiving care in their homes, akin to the one now established for the NHS, so that informal and formal carers can draw on their help.
Identify strengths and weaknesses in the community responses to coronavirus and share these so that we learn quickly how to do it better.
Develop collaborative leadership and learn to trust. Governments find it very difficult to trust, and especially to trust communities and voluntary organisations, but they will need to learn to do so.
Frame the national discourse in ways which avoid ‘them’ and ‘us’.
Work with individuals in ways that do not disempower them but build their skills and enable them to use their strengths.