Building community capacity to put people first

Summary of 15th September 2009 discussion

We agreed that

·  The project is timely - social care and traditional service models are going to fail if they do not understand social capital.

·  To date we have not transformed social care co-productively

·  Talking about social capital and coproduction is neither a panacea, nor a way to ‘palm off’ people out of the formal care system

·  We can’t meaningfully talk about the role of social capital and coproduction in the care system in isolation – it must be in the context of a wider ‘values base’ for our society and communities (i.e. what do we want citizenship to mean in the 21st century) - It must be more than an adult social care agenda

You said of the framework & other programme materials

·  It felt like it was ‘cystalising prematurely’ and needed to stay conceptually open at this stage

·  We had too much of a focus on public services – we needed to ‘think beyond the care package’ and think instead about what the best way to enable outcomes was.

·  We have to get away from the concept of social capital or even outcomes being something that we can procure for people on a consumerist model or ‘do unto’ people. Nor is social capital a product – it is an outcome

·  We should be careful about language such as ‘us’, ‘we’ (i.e. DH or PPF) and ‘them’ the citizen or service user – we are citizens, we are all part of social capital and already engaged in coproduction

·  We should be clearer about the core fundamental importance of putting more power into people’s hands - recognising citizenship and rejecting the ‘gift model’ of care

·  Need to more explicitly reference the role of education – and think too how we start to build social capital from birth

And in the way we presented or talked about social capital and coproduction…

·  It made more sense to have the individual at the centre of diagrams, showing their central role benefiting from / contributing to social capital & coproduction across families, groups, services, and communities.

·  Getting the language right was crucial – e.g. ‘growing and enabling’ social capital not centralisic, cynical or controlling terminology such as ‘harnessing, exploting, using’

·  The vocabulary of ‘good’ or ‘poor’ social capital is paternalistic and laden with value judgements. We should think about using better terms, perhaps ‘low & high’ or other ways.

·  What is social capital? Can we ‘have it’ in a meaningful way? Is there a difference between latent social capital and social capital we use?

·  It wasn’t just about what we do for others or for ourselves, either on our won or with others, it was what others do for us. (i.e. accepting help can be stigmatised – a major barrier to the potential of social capital and coproduction)

·  You also helped us think of examples of different types of activities to help us broaden our understanding of social capital and coproduction (see appendix.)

You helped us think about the nature of social capital and co-production and how we might most meaningfully approach it:

·  We are all part of social capital.

·  We must consider social capital over the life course. Segregation and the harm that this causes to social capital starts very early in excluded groups.

·  Is it artificial to talk about social capital in isolation? Does it make more sense to ask ‘What is a good community?’ or ‘What is a good school’

·  There is a huge amount of social capital out there (e.g. just look at a local paper) – is it really about ‘growing’ social capital or more about better recognition, engagement, encouragement and connectivity?

·  We should ask what factors are needed to promote social capital – e.g. relationships / valuing of them / impact on others

·  We shouldn’t just stick to stories coming from professionals – for example we should be asking ULOs what’s working

We asked what the role of the state in social capital and coproduction should be, you said:

·  How do we create the circumstances in which social capital thrives?

·  This is about empowering communities, a reversal of patriarchal care provision

·  Removing the barriers to social capital and facilitating the growth of social capital

·  Communities already know what they want very well, the important thing is empowering them to be able to achieve it.

·  Ensuring access to advice and information

·  The central QA language of ‘vetting, barring, safeguarding, vulnerable’ in services is a problem – no wonder services are apprehensive about renegotiating power to the citizen

·  If giving power to people and communities helps create better outcomes – what are the consequences for the traditional local authority ‘empire’? How will established powers react to devolution, how will they react to an increasingly strategic, enabling role?

·  What aspects of public services can the state disaggregated or handed down to the community level? Which things seem to work well? (e.g,. aesthetics, plantings, maintenance?) Which are more complex? (Roads, water, electricity?)

…and what should be state beware of doing?

·  Be careful about ‘professionalising’and formalising something that happens naturally.

·  Attempts to bring social capital ‘into the system’ may inadvertently damage it, which is often about spontaneous initiatives, individual exchange & informal and implicit relationships

·  Thinking that good practice in one area can be bought or replicated into another – the best examples of empowerment and coproduction are due to local leadership & consensus, these must grow organically

You gave us some food for thought in other areas:

·  Is the term ‘vulnerable people’ unhelpful?

·  Could people with personal budgets set up a cooperative approach for mutual advantage?

·  We shouldn’t forget about BME third sector groups

·  We need to acknowledge the role that volunteering plays in building social capital

·  Carers have particular dual role – they are people who need support in their own right, especially around the impact of caring on their own social capital, as well as a critical part of other people’s social capital (especially for the care receiver) that we must protect

We asked you about a learning network and communications / dissemination, you said:

·  We should link to other learning communities, including think about a IDeA Community of practice platform alongside the learning network

·  Learning networks need prodding and coaxing

·  We should showcase good practice via events

·  We need to make sure we use a language that all can understand, so we could explain it to people in the pub if needs be

·  We should gather learning from ‘lowest possible’ grass roots level

You have us some good practice examples to go and look at:

·  Southwark Circle Project

·  Shop 4 Support could be a technical hub for communities

·  Participating budgets – CLG- see Newcastle

·  NEF work with Housing Association Charitable Trust (funded by CLG) – HA tenants pooling IBs

·  Village agents

·  NEF NESTA coproduction network and funding for new good practice

·  Regional empowerment partnerships

·  Community Development Foundation

·  LAs who prioritised NI 4 (% of residents who feel they can influence decisions in their locality)

We asked who we needed to link to:

·  CLG work on empowerment and the social inclusion agenda

·  DSCF

·  Commissioners in LA and NHS

·  Total Place

·  ULOs and other processes that enable a collective voice (e.g. Working Together For Change)

·  NEF – and cost benefit issues, social return on investment network (indicator banks)

·  NCIL and ‘Personalisation and Peer Support’

·  Housing and developing communities agenda

·  LAC

Having thought about what you told us, we think that:

·  We need to be about the outcomes we wish from the project

·  Although the programme is not exclusively about adult social care nor only about people who use traditional care services, we need to also retain some focus & development work on how services can be redesigned so that their delivery process do not waste people's social capital and, where possible, enables them to further develop it.

·  The project must be careful not to think it can commission or ‘do unto’ people, communities, or groups of innovators and learning (e.g. attempting to decide centrally what social capital is or how it should be used)

·  It should identify the key barriers to local leadership and innovation around social capital and coproduction and attempt to remove or disable them wherever possible

·  It should help localities think about social capital and coproduction – e.g. valuing and understanding social capital and ensuring you don’t inadvertently damage it

·  It should aim to facilitate and enable those already engaged in transformational relationships with public services to learn and communicate with others – i.e. hosting learning communities, exploring linkages

·  Different communities of learning will emerge with different interests, they are unlikely to agree on everything. We hope to support all of them through our activities – the important thing is that we help leaders communicate, participate and disseminate

·  We need to stick to practical approaches where possible

·  We have a role in communicating social capital and coproduction to senior, executive and director level in local authorities and the NHS

And finally we gave you the following timelines for progress in our work:

Programme Launch Sept
Online community Oct
Learning Community event November / Gather examples
Draft materials
Expert event review / Publish materials April / Development of next steps
Further case study
Continuing to support learning network
Further dissemination
September –October – November 2009 / December 2009 – February 2010 / March – April 2010 / May – October 2010

Appendix:

Social Capital and co-production – what do we already do?

You also helped us think of examples of different types of activities to broaden our understanding of social capital and coproduction. We thought it would be useful to consider things we do by ourselves or with others, as well as things we do for ourselves or for others.

Rubbish and recycling

Go shopping

Ask advice

Take part in a support plan

Visit GP

Health maintenance – exercise etc

Facebook

Race for life

Get advice from friends and family

With others

Mental health first action

I have capacity to spare

Parent

Self help

Running a business

Babysitting circles

Credit union

Residential association

Community contracts

Blog

Reorganising local church care system

Babysitting/informal childcare

Complaining

Recommending a service

Maintain property considerate to neighbours

Check elderly neighbours

Responding to consultation

Commitments to comments on other work sites

Getting my kids to do homework

Campaigning/online/petition

Medium of exchange is available

Group composting

Timebanks

Blood donors

Sports

Connector – “do you know anyone who”

Mentoring – prisoner

Household tasks – support

User reference group involvement

Volunteer

Facilitate and create networks of collaborative support

Community spaces

Helping out at children’s sports clubs etc

Trustee for voluntary organisations

Local bonfire