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Playing by the Rules

May 13th, 2013

We’ve regularly noted on this blog how a surprisingly small amount (if you believe what you read in the papers) of the benefits budget is taken up by fraud, and how ministers and newspapers frequently conflate the amount lost to fraud each year with the amount lost to fraud and error, the latter costing considerably more. We make no apologies for repeating ourselves; the latest statistics back this up again, with fraud accounting for a mere 0.7% of the benefits budgets and error a further 1.4%.

To put this another way, almost all of the benefits paid last year were received by people ‘playing by the rules.’ That phrase is, of course, significant because it’s usually preceded by ‘hard working families who…’ and usually succeeded by announcement of some policy or other concerning the welfare system. The implication is that changes will only affect those people lazily breaking the rules and they, usually, are those of us on benefits.

Yet in actual fact, according to DWP’s own statistics, 99.3% of benefits go to people ‘playing by the rules’, which I’m sure Ministers will be keen to announce in their next speech.

Meanwhile a considerable proportion of people on benefits are actually working hard in a job for very low pay and in our experience most of the rest are working hard looking after children or disabled family members or looking for a job. And even the tiny minority who are working hard and not strictly playing by the rules aren’t necessarily to be blamed; cash in hand work is primarily motivated by need, not greed.

Iain Duncan Smith got into trouble last week for misusing statistics, so in order to set him a good example we should be rigorous and point out that the fraud rate is actually a bit higher for Jobseekers Allowance claims (2.9%), Income Support (2.6%), Pension Credit (2.0%) and Housing Benefit (1.5%). The overall fraud level is so much lower because the fraud rate for the state pension is (unsurprisingly, since it’s universal) 0.0%. And, as ministers occasionally and conveniently forget, the state pension consumes almost half the entire benefits bill.

So next time a Minister appeals to those ‘working hard and playing by the rules’ think those of us on benefits as well as those of us lucky enough not to need them just at the moment. We almost all play by the rules, and we almost all work hard; so say the statistics. And as Iain Duncan Smith knows, if you argue with the statistics too much, you get an angry letter from Andrew Dilnot.

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Working through THE FEAR….

April 30th, 2013

In this guest post James Crawley, advisor on the Community Links, Links 2 Enterprise programme sets-out how this new project is supporting and encouraging local people to establish their own business or new enterprise.

 

Links 2 Enterprise Boot CampSpiders, heights and clowns. All rational and valid fears that many of us suffer from, but success? Success won’t splat you on the ground, sink fangs into you or form a recurring trauma that has plagued you since your 5th birthday party. What could possibly keep you fearful of success, paralysed with self doubt and terrified to make the next move, especially when the focus is your recently started business?

More than enough, according to the first batch of fifteen participants of the Links to Enterprise Business Boot Camp.

The Business Boot Camp is part of our new Links 2 Enterprise project supporting enterprise amongst local people – particularly young people –by providing opportunities to develop and practice skills and build confidence to enhance employability.

The project is supported by Barclays and provides guidance to those wishing to set up a business or new enterprise. Our Business Boot Camp is a two day intensive workshop which equips budding entrepreneurs with the tools (research and business planning) to enable them to secure the growth and survival of a new-born business and in a challenging business environment.

Basing our support around an individual, not a business idea, we encourage all participants to gain vital enterprise and practical life skills, assisting them to become more independent and skilled. The ‘Campers’ are a mixed bunch with slightly more women than men and an age range of 17 to mid 50′s (my mum always said its rude to ask a woman her age so I guessed) and the business ideas they represent are just as varied including cosmetics made from food (www.skindeli.co.uk), bespoke jewellery (www.zayunubydesign.com) and designer cakes among them.

All of The Campers are creative and inspiring people with total focus on earning a living – but very little time on their hands to sit and reflect about their plans. Handily, this is exactly what we are here to do… The two days are split into sections (marketing, finance, etc) that together form a business plan with which to fight “THE FEAR”. This process of writing down the challenges, negative thoughts and actions that have to be addressed allows The Business Boot Campers to remove the unknown elements and re-take control.

The apprehensive feeling that permeated the room at the start of day one, the ‘how can I sit here for two days when I’ve got so much to do’ gave way to a much warmer atmosphere of support and cross pollination of ideas.

Community Links are running several Business Boot Camps throughout 2013, to find out more about the programme contact the Enterprise Team on 02074739643

e-mail James Crawley, for more information on Links 2 Enterprise.

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Resilience in Mind – early action for mental health

April 29th, 2013

A guest post from Mind‘s Sarah Holloway:

One in four people has a mental health problem.  But all of us have mental health – something which needs maintaining and looking after.  Our ambition as Mind is to do more to support people before they experience mental health problems, to improve our chances of staying well.  Some people call this early action, others call is prevention, some call it public mental health. It is all of those things, and for us it is about building the resilience of individuals and communities.

For Mind, resilience is not an inherent quality with which you are born. Resilience is not simply an ability to ‘bounce back’, but rather the capacity to adapt in the face of challenging circumstances and adversity, whilst maintaining a stable mental wellbeing.  We believe that this capacity for resilience needs to come from communities rather than just from individuals in isolation. And furthermore, we believe this capacity can be grown and developed with the right resources.

So what are the right resources? We have undertaken a review of the existing evidence base around prevention and early intervention in mental health. From this evidence review we identified three key elements which we believe should be part of any resilience building projects, as set out in the model below and the diagram above.

  • Promoting wellbeing  – Our resilience work will draw on everything we know from the 5 ways to wellbeing project and will include a particular focus on positive activities including gardening and exercising outdoors that are known to drive wellbeing.
  • Building social capital and networks – Good quality human relationships are key to our capacity to respond to adversity and challenge, while social isolation is a major risk factor for poor mental health.  Support from social networks and communities is so crucial to positive mental health that it merits a focus of its own in our model of resilience building.
  • Learning about mood and mind – Why do we wait until we are unwell to learn about how our minds work, what influences our mood, and how we can optimise our psychological functioning? We want to promote insight into the mind and psychological coping strategies and in order to do this will draw on different disciplines, such as mindfulness,  positive psychology and cognitive behaviour therapy.

Supported by Peoples Health Trust, our local Mind resilience programme will put these concepts into practice, piloting new ways of delivering all three resilience building blocks in one targeted intervention. The programme consists of nine pilot projects delivered by local Minds across England and Wales. The pilots are working with two groups of people who are likely to need additional support to look after their mental health and wellbeing:

  • unemployed men
  • pregnant women and new mothers.

What unites these two groups is the sense of transition and also a significant change in identity. These big life changes – either the loss of a job, or the transition to parenthood – also bring with them the prospect of isolation as people may lose touch with the social structures they are used to. While we recognise that the approaches needed to effectively reach out to and sustain the engagement of these two audiences are very different,  we believe the same three resilience building blocks will help them to stay well – engagement in positive activities, support to build social connections and support to learn about mood and mind.

And a key part of all these nine pilot projects will be outreach.  Early action involves taking support to where people are rather than waiting for them to come to you. In most cases, by the time people choose to approach a local Mind for support, it is already too late for early action.  Therefore the local Minds delivering these projects are collaborating with trusted community partners, for example Sure Start centres, housing associations and employment training providers.

In partnership with our evaluators (from Leeds Metropolitan University and University of Chester) we hope to draw valuable learning from each of the pilot projects about how best to support people before they become unwell. And we really want to share this learning with the Early Action community. We are also really interested in your ideas on how we can build on these pilots to improve the mental health of whole communities, and would welcome any questions, thoughts or queries you have on our work. Please get in touch via s.holloway@mind.org.uk

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Hockey legacy alive and well in east London

April 19th, 2013

Andy Halliday is Team Manager, England Hockey and was Great Britain Mens Olympic Hockey Team Manager at the 2012 Olympics. Andy had previously served 30 years as a London Metropolitan Police Officer. In this guest post he reports on a unique, cross-borough inclusive Hockey event  in Waltham Forest – and reflects on the Olympic legacy and the impact on sport and communities of east London. We are grateful to Andy for permission to reproduce this article which first appeared on his own blog.

 

The word legacy has reverberated since the curtains closed on the London Olympic experience. Sometimes overused, sometimes misunderstood. However, not for over 100 able bodied and disabled athletes in East London last week, beneficiaries of the true gold standard Olympic legacy experience and stamped with the ‘hockey nation” logo. In our minority sport, the England Hockey Board take the legacy project rather seriously and last weeks events at the Walthamstow Academy were indicative of the attempts to maximise the Olympic “glow”.

For many of the children participating in the event, the glow began well before the games in the Olympic Park. The brainchild of former Great Britain Men’s Coach, Jason Lee and Chris Grant, a member of Lord Coe’s legacy team, the foundations were laid on a cold March morning at Newham 6th form College in 2011. Thirty youngsters from Newham and Tower Hamlets were cajoled, mentored and taught the basics of hockey by the Great Britain Men’s Olympic training squad. It wasn’t just about the hockey and the benefits were mutual for both groups. For International athletes, listening to young people and learning that day to day life in this deprived area of London was tough, had a substantial impact. And so the relationship began, the FRE Flyers (named after three Olympic values, friendship, respect and excellence) were born and the bond has gone from strength to strength.

Incredibly, some three months later both groups were heading for a camp site and sharing a double decker bus on route to Nijmergen, Holland, where the Flyers tasted their first competitive hockey against youngsters from the local Union hockey club. Coached by the GB group, it became clear that this was a rather special bond.

And so to London 2012, for the Flyers, tickets to see the Olympic hockey were a fantastic reward. For the GB Men, the ultimate disappointment of finishing 4th and missing out on a medal was tough to take. However, if the Riverbank Arena had a roof, the noise created by the small band of Flyers (and Chris) would have surely raised it. In our hour of need, when times were tough, the Flyers were there, raucous, noisy on the terraces, supportive off the pitch. No chance that the end of the Olympics would see any reduction in activity for the Flyers. With continued support from Community Links and substantial financial help from Land Aid, paired with Chris Grant’s dedication and the appointment of Jo Melchior as group leader, the future was looking healthy. Regular Friday night training in Beckton followed under the watchful eye of coach, Allan Dick.

Their progress, both on and off the field has been remarkable. For four of the Flyers in particular, this was so evident on Wednesday. I ran a two-hour coaching session for some of the aspiring youngsters from Waltham Forest Hockey Club. Helping me were Flyers, Mike, Dawn, Stevie and Bradley. Two years ago, they hadn’t picked up a stick and here they were, encouraging, organising and passing on their tips to a willing enthused group of youngsters.

The next step is for the Flyers to start playing regular games next season, more recruitment and development is needed, but the glow is bright. And so to yesterday. The Fre Flyers were joined by youngsters from Arsenal Gunners, Waltham Forest Hockey Club and the Forest Flyerz, a disability hockey group. With 30 coaches and mentors from both GB squads running 12 six-a-side teams and providing a morning coaching masterclass, the day was a resounding success.

Many also took up the opportunity to fire a few balls at current GB squad member, Patrick Smith. 150 shots later, Pat described it as “the best workout he’d had all week!”

The atmosphere all day was electric, the enjoyment, palpable. None more so than amongst the Forest Flyerz. This hockey disability project is, I think, the first of its kind. Panny and her helpers (including Kate Walsh) had their hands full controlling the enthusiasm of their 17 strong squad. They were joined in the afternoon by Alex Danson, Georgie Twigg, Simon Mantell and Dan Fox. We have something very special in hockey when five iconic members of our International squads can spend two enjoyable hours mentoring and helping such a deserving group. To many of the able bodied, the challenge of working with disability groups is often difficult, but Panny immediately puts you at ease. “Forget any apprehension, they all just love playing hockey.” And so it proved, they are an inspiring bunch.

According to Panny, there are at least 20 clubs interested in setting up this sort of project. A long way off, but could we see hockey in the Paralympics in years to come?

For the remainder of the GB athletes, it was a six-a-side tournament, rounded off with presentations to all who took part. Not sure that anybody actually wanted to go home. As the GB athletes signed an unending batch of autographs, I caught a glimpse of our GB Head Coaches, Bobby Crutchley (Men) and Jason Lee (Women) packing away the inflatable goal and carrying it to the bus. (Take note, Roy Hodgson!) With EHB development officer, Charlie Farrow brilliantly overseeing the day, it went without a hitch. It wouldn’t have happened without the support of the staff at Walthamstow Academy, the financial support of Waltham Forest Council and help from Waltham Forest Hockey Club. The Fre Flyers would not be in existence had it not been for Community Links and the continued funding from Land Aid. With the proposed legacy Hockey centre at Eton Manor in the pipeline to host the 2015 European Cups, it looks like there could be a new batch of supporters ready to raise the roof and cheer our teams on to Gold.

The hockey future in this part of London is looking healthy and the seed sown by Jason Lee and Chris Grant continues to grow.

Personally, I have loved every minute of my involvement with the Flyers. Yes, the transition period at the end of the Olympics has been difficult for many involved at the performance end of the game. However, the personal involvement in this initiative really brings a smile to your face. I’ve witnessed and been involved in some bad events in London over the years and sometimes only seen things from one perspective. Seeing this evolve from an area where I was used to only meeting the bad guys has done me so much good. As we move forward, it is obvious that the benefits are reciprocal.

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Scotland’s progress on prevention: what can we learn?

April 18th, 2013

The last four blog posts have looked in detail at Scotland’s exciting progress on promoting prevention and early action, to accompany the short paper we produced after our visit. This final post draws out ten lessons we can learn for our efforts in Westminster and in England.

1) Political support is vital but not enough on its own

The Scottish Government’s embrace of the principle of prevention is very encouraging for those of us trying to convince Westminster parties of the same. Spurred on by the Christie Commission they have made prevention a pillar of public sector reform and committed substantial funds. They have gone far further than, for example, Tony Blair did in 1997 when he talked promisingly about early action. Their support is stronger because of the influence of major independent reviews including the Christie Commission, and the Independent Budget Review, and the Finance Committee Report. But even this is not enough to effect any significant change on the ground without mechanisms to overcome structural disincentives, change culture, and transform services.

2) Explicit shared outcome agreements can help

The coherence which the National Performance Framework offers ministers and civil servants across government seems to be an important backdrop to achieving progress. By providing a set of clear aims in common it helps to break down silos and organisational or departmental rivalries that are endemic to governments and ruinous to early action. The only equivalent for the Westminster coalition government might be agreement over the need to cut the deficit but by taking little account of the impact of investment decisions now on future deficits, this shared goal promotes late rather than early action.

3) Government structures matter

The reorganisation of the civil service which accompanied the national performance framework has promoted better integration within central government, a prerequisite for early action. Abolishing departments in Westminster seems unlikely, but perhaps the need to promote better integration across departments could lead to less dramatic civil service reforms, particularly at a senior level, in London. The Head of the Civil Service has indicated that reforms are underway to achieve greater cross-government working in Westminster.

4) It’s difficult, but vital, to better align incentives locally

Just as Total Place, then Community Budgets have struggled to make a dramatic impact in England, Community Planning Partnerships and Single Outcome Agreements have a patchy record in Scotland. But the aim, of better aligning incentives locally is integral to the success of early action. It is too early to tell whether the new guidance for CPPs will be enough to overcome their difficulties; if it works something similar should be strongly advocated in England, if not we must continue searching for what does.

5) New or rebadged funding isn’t enough on its own

£500m is a strong political statement and sends a powerful signal but does not necessarily transform. When it is cobbled together or reallocated from existing budgets and distributed piecemeal it can end up filling gaps in existing services or funding worthwhile projects that don’t change systems. Any shift in funding must be accompanied by specific ideas on what it aims to achieve and even more importantly clear mechanisms to promote the change.

6) Size matters

It is clear that size makes a big difference – not our conclusion but that of Scots inside and outside government. The implications for the UK are difficult, another attempt at regional government seems unlikely in the current context, but ultimately mechanisms for devolving power to the level at which all the relevant senior leadership have a chance to get to know each other might be one of the only ways to overcome some of the silos inherent to public service delivery.

7) New beginnings help

The novelty of devolution and prospect of independence open space for exciting debates in Scotland that seem much harder to have in Westminster, but we must find room for bold new ideas. New governments offer one such opportunity. So does crisis but often with little time to have the debate. One way or another these conversations must happen.

8) Don’t overpromise savings

It is tempting to make the case for early action on the basis of large future savings but there is also a chance these will soon be tested and the programme abandoned if they fail to materialise. While financial savings are inevitably a part of any pitch to Government early action cannot solely be promoted on this basis, particularly in the short term.

9) Change mechanisms matter

The palpable excitement among civil servants about improvement methodology was, perhaps, because they had been searching for several years for a way to implement changes that everyone agreed was necessary. We will soon begin to find out whether improvement methodologies work in this context; if they do they should be adopted across the public sector, if not we need other mechanisms.

10) Leadership is important but not just from directly within government

Change occurs ultimately because individuals advocate for it and this leadership has been as important in Scotland as it will be in England. These leaders do not necessarily sit directly within government – Harry Burns the Chief Medical Officer occupies a public role that he has used to great effect – but having the Finance Minister on side is a good start.

 This blog, and the paper attached, are the view of Community Links alone and do not necessarily represent the views of the Scottish Government or Scottish Ministers.

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Improvement methodologies – a route to early action?

April 17th, 2013

This is the fourth in a series of posts about Scotland’s exciting progress on promoting prevention and early action, following meetings with government officials and third sector organisations in March 2013. A full report is also available

The Early Action Task Force has concentrated on broad structural changes to systems, yet often noted the difficulty of implementing change on the ground even when incentives are better aligned. How often does a promising policy flounder once someone tries to apply it in practice?

Government officials and charity staff in Scotland certainly felt that the powerful ambition of the Christie Commission’s recommendations on prevention and the excitement of a £500m spending commitment have not yet led to dramatic change on the ground. One official suggested reforms have got ‘lost in the middle’ as the difficult details overcame middle management.

That’s perhaps why there is considerable excitement over a fledgling programme in the early years sector which focuses precisely on the difficult question of how to translate policy aim into real change.

Improvement methodologies were largely developed by industry (for example by Toyota, what became known as Lean) and have more recently been successfully applied to healthcare in the public sphere. Inspired by its success in, for example, reducing infections acquired during various medical procedures, the Scottish Government, COSLA (the Scottish equivalent of the LGA) and NHS Scotland have developed the Early Years Collaborative to test, for the first time, its effectiveness in early years work. The effort is unique: it is the first time the methodology has been applied across multiple agencies nationally.

A set of overaching ‘stretch aims’ (in the language of the collaborative) are agreed across the organisations taking part. Small changes in service design are then constantly implemented and tested for their impact on the stretch aims (or on a series of intermediate measures). This iterative process is based on four stages:

Plan - the change to be tested or implemented

Do - carry out the test or change

Study - data before and after the change and reflect on what was learned

Act - plan the next change cycle or full implementation

Learning on what does and does not work is openly shared across participating organisations so each can benefit from the sum of others’ efforts as well as their own.

By establishing a set of common aims and systemising the process of constant improvement in how to meet them, improvement methodologies provide a framework and support for the kind of progress that, for the best organisations, might seem like common sense. Crucially changes are driven to meet outcomes rather than forced by crises or external pressures.

The Early Years Collaborative

The organisers decided that in this context improvement methodology was best delivered at the level of Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs), the forum for local statutory and voluntary agencies in a local authority area. Participation is voluntary but when invitations were extended to all 32 CPPs every one accepted, and over 700 people attended the first meeting.

The Collaborative provides materials and training, a few opportunities to meet such as the first learning session in early 2013, and an online data-sharing platform for CPPs to share learning. However beyond that CPPs receive no funding, and indeed CPPs are forums not organisations so have no staff themselves. Participation was conditional on each CPP nominating a senior lead, project manger and data lead from amongst its members’ staff. The initiative is passionately led from within the three sponsoring bodies, and seemed very well thought-of within government despite being in its infancy.

The three stretch aims were chosen to span the early years age range: a reduction in stillbirth and infant mortality; a target for reaching developmental milestones at 27 months, and the same again when beginning primary school. Improvements in outcomes, particularly in the first aim, should start to show within a year or two, allowing reasonably rapid testing of its impact.

Does it work?

Improvement methodology could deliver earlier action without significant upfront investment in new services. It asks how existing services could perform better (or earlier) and demands rapid, small-scale changes within existing budgets. As an approach to detailed public service reform it seems extremely promising. Improvement methodologies applied in the right way could be a powerful way of bridging the gap between improved national incentives and real changes in services.

At the same time the concern is that it would rarely yield dramatic system change (for example the wholesale decommissioning of one service to replace it with another) because it demands small iterative changes that can be tested and reversed or improved, not grand irreversible shifts. There is still a role for largescale structural change to completely reshape a system. Officials recognised this and in another context the integration of health and social care was cited as example of willingness to make large scale structural change where incentives need radically restructuring.

It may seem like common sense but, like early action itself, constant improvement is rarely common practice. If the Early Years Collaborative is successful we should hope to see improvement methodologies widely adopted.

This blog, and the paper attached, are the view of Community Links alone and do not necessarily represent the views of the Scottish Government or Scottish Ministers.

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Ten reasons why Scotland has embraced early action

April 16th, 2013

This is the third in a series of posts about Scotland’s exciting progress on promoting prevention and early action, following meetings with government officials and third sector organisations in March 2013. A full report is also available

The Scottish government has enthusiastically embraced the principles of prevention, investing £500m over the course of this parliament, embedding it at the heart of public service reform and making it a core part of the relationship between central and local government. I suggest ten reasons why Scotland has made it this far:

1)      Politics: with an SNP government and Labour opposition, and every political debate framed by the issue of independence, politics is wholly different from Westminster. The novelty of Scotland’s devolved power, and the prospect of independence (and greater devolution of powers even if next year’s vote is in favour of the union) opens up far-reaching, open-ended questions: “what should a Scottish welfare system look like?” or “what would mark out Scottish public services?” They are exciting, refreshing debates which favour big ideas and prevention has become one of them.

2)      Size: “I’ve got no idea whyEngland doesn’t devolve into regions, about 5 million people in each, that’s a perfect size” remarked one official. Almost everyone we spoke to volunteered Scotland’s size as a reason why progress had been made on the prevention agenda. Being a country of 5 million makes it easier to implement reform and, crucially for an issue like this, to bring together disparate parts of the public and other sectors. The Chief Executives of all public sector organisations meet regularly at the Scottish Leaders Forum, are liable to know each other anyway and are often swapping jobs. There are 32 local authorities, 14 health boards, and from this year only one police service and one fire service. There are obvious benefits for public sector integration of operating at a scale where individual relationships can overcome some of the structural barriers to joint working between agencies.

Officials also felt it made them more accountable to parliament: most had appeared in front of parliamentary committees unlike their equivalents in Westminster who would be several rungs too junior. ‘There’s nowhere to hide,’ said one.

3)      Individual Leadership: Two names are mentioned over and over again in connection with prevention: Finance Minister John Swinney and Chief Medical Officer Harry Burns. It seems hard to imagine progress anything like Scotland has seen without them. Both are widely-admired, Harry Burns for his tireless enthusiasm and powerful advocacy for prevention, John Swinney for the thoughtful way he has led the agenda from within government. The appeal for John Swinney does not seem primarily political: prevention is not at the heart of political debate and if anything one of its strengths is its cross-party appeal. His commitment seems driven by a belief in its potential not only to improve lives but also to improve government finances. Harry Burns talks regularly about the intractability of Scotland’s health inequalities, for which he sees prevention and in particular the rebuilding of community as the only solution.

4)      Led from finance: The Scottish Government Finance Directorate is not a direct equivalent of the Treasury (and proud of it too, an overbearing Treasury function would sit uneasily in a civil service structure that aims to be collegiate), but nonetheless wields influence at the centre of government and has driven much of the focus on prevention. The Change Funds originate from the directorate, and the Scottish Government Advisory Group on Prevention is chaired by the Director for Finance. John Swinney regularly makes prevention a central part of his argument on public sector reform and the need to better spend public money. The Scottish Parliament’s Finance Committee is holding government to account, maintaining a strong interest in prevention including on how much money has actually been saved, and it was their inquiry into preventative spend that helped push the issue onto the agenda in the first place.

5)      A strong policy foundation: The Independent Budget Review, Finance Committee Inquiry into Prevention and the Christie Commission laid extremely strong foundations for Government’s subsequent adoption of prevention policies, adding considerable authority to the debate from positions of influence and some independence. The Christie Commission, in particular, is seen as integral to the extent that without it little would have happened on this agenda.

6)      National Performance Framework: Within Government, and perhaps more importantly outside it, the national performance framework was frequently cited as an important unifying force. After the 2007 Scottish election the new minority SNP government introduced the Framework outlining a set of five strategic objectives under which the work of the Scottish Government was aligned. These objectives – a Scotland that is wealthier and fairer, smarter, healthier, safer and stronger, and greener – deliberately cut across traditional departmental boundaries and are underpinned by 16 national outcomes and 50 national indicators to track progress. The existence, particularly, of strategic objectives and outcomes underpinning the whole public sector gives a solid base for starting conversations across organisations. ‘It has become like the bible’ said one Director, while another praised the ‘shared focus’ it gave public sector leaders.

7)      Civil service structure: At the same time as the National Performance Framework was introduced the civil service underwent wholescale reorganisation. Departments were abolished with the aim of having “government function as a single organisation, working towards a single defined government purpose based on outcomes,” according to the senior civil servant at the time Sir John Elvidge. Instead of departments there are six broad directorates each led by a Director-General, and about thirty Directors below these. One Director said that the task of shifting towards prevention is ‘beyond measure easier’ under this new structure. All Directors feel a level of responsibility for outcomes across government, freed from some of the rivalries and tensions inherent in departmental working. Ministerial portfolios do not map directly onto directorates, so factional fighting for budgets – as frequently witnessed inWestminster – seems less common.

8)      Agreement over the problem: Much of the comment on prevention we heard was framed in terms of the significant inequalities Scotland faces particularly in health. Drinking and smoking feature heavily. Scotland’s poor performance on many of these measures compared to similar countries is an obvious source of embarrassment, and drives change. Coupling this with a firm belief that public services have an important role in overcoming inequality strongly points to a focus on prevention. Interestingly two of the boldest steps Scotland has taken to address health inequalities in a preventative way – the smoking ban and a minimum price for alcohol – were actually agreed before prevention took on such a prominent role in policy.

9)      Commitment to public services: Scotland’s people and therefore its politics have a much deeper belief in the importance of maintaining public services than the UK as a whole. The debate therefore centres on how to save public services, through different ways of working such as prevention, rather than on how to cut them back. Indeed this underlying commitment leaves few choices other than a focus on acting earlier, since it is clear that efficiency savings can only yield so much, and that current spending is unsustainable.

10)  Recession: As in England and elsewhere, the sense that current spending trajectories are unsustainable is a powerful driver for change, inspiring the original budget review in 2010, the finance committee inquiry and the Christie Commission which between them laid the foundations for what has followed. The debate around prevention has been explicitly linked to cost savings although no major savings have yet been realised and the emergence of evidence either way will be crucial.

This blog, and the paper attached, are the view of Community Links alone and do not necessarily represent the views of the Scottish Government or Scottish Ministers.

Image thanks to Cyocum

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Scotland’s £500m prevention change funds – are they working?

April 10th, 2013

This is the first of a series of posts about Scotland’s exciting progress on promoting prevention and early action, following meetings with government officials and third sector organisations in March 2013. A full report is also available.

Eighteen months ago the Scottish Government announced it was earmarking £500m of public sector spending for prevention over the course of the parliament, the most high profile result of their making prevention one of four pillars of public sector reform as recommended in the influential Christie Commission on the Future of Public Services.

It signalled serious commitment to the issue and was a substantial sum redirected towards early action but was it enough to drive change? Does a shift in spending of this scale lead to a better service, acting earlier?

Between a third and half was central government money, the rest comprised local authority, health and other agency spend. It was to be distributed through three funds, one focusing on early years, one on reducing reoffending, and one on older people’s care. All three were constructed very differently.

Early Years Change Fund

Funding for the Early Years fund comes from central government, the NHS and local authorities and is overseen by an Early Years Task Force (doc) with co-chairs representing each organisation (the Minister for Children, the Chief Medical Officer, and the head of COSLA). Money for the fund is earmarked from within each budget and flows to a range of different initiatives, with Community Planning Partnerships (the forum for local statutory and voluntary agencies in a local authority area) playing an important role. The aim is that this money will stimulate better use of the £2.7bn spent onScotland’s children each year.

Reshaping Care for Older People Change Fund

The Reshaping Care for Older People Change Fund is the largest of the funds at £300m over 4 years. It is distributed by NHS boards, to 32 Change Fund Partnerships comprising NHS boards, Local Authorities, the third sector and the independent sector, all of whom must sign up to the plans for how it is to be spent. The fund aims to shift how the budget for older people’s health and social care – some £4.5bn per year – is used.

3) Reducing Reoffending Change Fund

The third fund is the smallest and the last to get off the ground, with applications for funding currently being considered. At only £7.5m over three years, mostly central government money, its ambitions are more modest. It funds evidence-based mentoring schemes delivered by ‘public social partnerships’ led by the third sector.

Do they work?

There was widespread agreement among officials and the third sector who we met in Scotland that the Change Funds had sent an important political signal about the importance of prevention and had in some areas spawned useful or innovative projects, but that a year in they had not yet brought about transformational or system change. In some areas genuinely new preventative activities were tried, in others existing services were reclassified (sometimes dubiously) as prevention, and in many the voluntary sector in particular felt left out of the decision making process despite their nominal inclusion.

The difficulties organisations faced will come as no surprise to anyone who has read the Deciding Time or worked in this field elsewhere in the UK: the pressure statutory organisations felt to plug gaps rather than innovate particularly when budgets are so squeezed; the difficulties for organisations of working well together at local level overcoming strong disincentives to collaborate; and the fragmentary way the funds were organised beneath the headline figures meant isolated projects were much easier to fund that a coherent strategy for change.

The change funds still have almost two years to run so it is too early to write them off, and their impact has undoubtedly been positive overall. Yet interestingly we noted as much if not more excitement about a much smaller project: the trialing of improvement methodologies in the early years work. That’s the subject of the next post.

This blog, and the paper attached, are the view of Community Links alone and do not necessarily represent the views of the Scottish Government or Scottish Ministers.

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Perseverance could pay off for Community Budgets

April 5th, 2013

Perseverance isn’t usually a quality associated with public sector reform: politicans are accused of being flighty and headline-grabbing, implementing grand schemes before they’ve been properly tested and cancelling promising ones just before the evaluation shows they’ve been working after all. But some ideas are too good to give up on, and few have been through the mill more than the concept we now call Community Budgets.

In the Deciding Time we weren’t the first to point out that rigid organisational silos at both central and local government level cause perverse incentives against early action because the costs and benefits of most policies don’t fall uniquely on one department or budget. What’s the incentive for the council to invest in youth services if it knows most of the savings from reduced offending would accrue to the police?

This has always been a problem within central government: the Public Accounts Committee were scathing recently in their assessment of the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review saying, “There were no incentives for departments to collaborate on cross-government issues. There was no evidence of clear thinking on how one decision to save money in one budget area might lead to an increase in expenditure elsewhere.”

Many argue this problem will never be solved from Westminster and focus instead on better integration of spending locally: “we’ll never stop government carving up budgets into departments and services but at least we can bring them all back together again where they’re actually being spent”. It’s a testament to the power of the idea that it survived burial in a series of dull-sounding initiatives stretching back to 2001: first Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs), then Local Area Agreements (LAAs) and Multi Area Agreements falling under the Local Performance Framework, then Total Place, and now Community Budgets.

The idea has been pursued despite a dearth of evidence on whether it works: the National Audit Office found 181 publications pre-dating Whole-Place Community Budgets, only ten of which had looked at actual outcomes for people using public services, seven of which reported a lack of evidence of impact.

But there are signs that this perseverance might be starting to pay off. Whole Place Community Budgets are being piloted in four areas with significant support from central government including via secondees directly placed in the Community Budget areas. The NAO describe Whole Place Community Budgets as “a different way of working, rather than a specific set of programmes or projects,” and the initial prospectus from Government just laid out some suggested activities including developing a shadow budget for a place, agreeing shared outcomes, and working on local structures and accountability mechanisms.

All four areas decided to focus on particular policy areas where they felt collaboration across public agencies was likely to be most beneficial, including early years intervention, criminal justice, health and social care, and employment support; all issues for which the costs of failure are high and much existing provision is reactive, expensive and complex. Arguments around prevention and early action were at the core of local partnerships’ thinking.

The four areas estimate they can save £800m over five years by implementing their plans, and a recent Ernst and Young report suggested savings of £4bn per year were possible if implemented nationally. A National Audit Office report published last month provides a concise summary of what has happened so far and is broadly positive in its assessment.

The four areas have taken different approaches but within a common framework, focussing on outcomes specific to their region. In a sign that momentum is (slowly) building, last month’s budget included the announcement of a new ‘multi-agency network’ to support the extension of community budgeting across the country, and promised more details in the spending review later this year. The LGA and Government also released a guide for other local authorities interested in pursuing the approach.

After 12 years of trying, we still don’t know whether better integration of spending locally improves outcomes and crucially incentivises early action. But progress feels more promising now than it has in the past and as public spending is squeezed and the easy cuts have mostly been made, alternatives to radical restructuring of this kind look thin on the ground. Perhaps this unusual example of perseverance in public policy will soon pay off.

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