Future of Local Services to the Public

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Future of Local Services to the Public

• Tim Allen and Jill Mortimer
• LGA Analysis and Research

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Local Government and Local Public Service

• 388 Local Councils in England
• 100s of services
• 100 billion annual budget
• 25 of public spending
• Partnership with other public services e.g.
  health and police and voluntary sector key
  driving concept since 1990s

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LGA/HSC Future of Services to the Public Project

• Research carried out April to September 09
• Qualitative view of sector leaders
• On line brainstorm for wider input
• Desk research on wiki
• Part of a process to build forward looking
  capacity of the sector
• Emphasis upon usefulness key drivers to create
  a desirable future

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Context

• Transition from the welfare state designed in
  30s and 40s to one fit for the 21st century
• Role of the national state pulled between
  global and local
• What can the state really deliver?
• Complexity personalised cross sector services,
  partnerships with diverse communities hard
  choices.
• Demographic trends living longer and increased
  diversity.
• Generational differences.
• Geographical differences.
• Public Expenditure shift from services to
  infrastructure
• Current economic crisis / substantial public debt
• Eroded public trust political process and
  institutions
• Climate change, mitigation and severe weather
  events
• Population growth and demand for resources
• Getting on the front foot with technology and
  innovation

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Objectives of todays presentation

• Stimulate debate
• Hear about relevant work
• Explore possiblilities for future joint working
• Encourage you to use our wiki!

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Overview of the findings

• Evidence drawn widely approx 200 experts chief
  executives / heads of service / partners.
• Current structures struggling accountabilty and
  community involvement.
• Embed public policy making in the complex social
  systems it needs to influence.
• Develop resilience and adaptive capacity.
• Develop capacity in strategic forward planning
  and risk assessment.
• 8 prospects to seize the opportunities and deal
  with formidable challenges.

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The prospects Never Mind the Terminology Feel
the Meaning

• Powershare.
• Applying ergonomics to service design.
• Leadersphere.
• Systems thinking.
• Diverse, resilient places.
• Innovative autonomy.
• Smart growth.
• Collective intelligence.
• Familiar possibly but taken together they add up
  to a major recipe for change?

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Prospects 1 Powershare

• New relationship between local citizens, leaders
  and institutions
• Defining feature over next 10 years
• Local people influencing serious local policy
  (less party politics?), better links between
  community and civil society Positive postcode
  lottery?
• Accepting bureaucratic limits where is value
  added.
• More spontaneity / freedom to experiment.
• Harnessing new technologies to deliver.
• Challenges
• Uncertainty about how / devaluing existing
  political arrangements / will the public fill the
  void left by a potentially retreating state
• Not over promising (erodes trust) engaging
  public in difficult decisions
• Reputation / public apathy
• Division between public, local and national
  government, and wider partners not adaptive
• Clean it / sweep it mentality, not getting
  people to do it for themselves.
• Changing context economic conditions / resource
  pressures (s, fuel, energy and food), climate
  change extreme weather / flooding, and
  demography.

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Prospects 2 Ergonomics

• Designing services to maximise productivity, user
  involvement and satisfaction at minimum possible
  outlay
• Local services designed with the same attention
  to ergonomics - design, usability and
  customer-satisfaction - as consumer products,
  technology or the best examples of architecture.
• Personalisation and working with other services
  and resources
• Spur to greater ingenuity and innovation in the
  local services over the next decade better
  exploiting technology.
• Anticipation and prevention i.e. intervening in
  low-cost ways today to avert bigger clean-up
  costs tomorrow.
• Challenges
• Risk of paralysis among decision-makers who feel
  overwhelmed?
• Managing demand e.g. care services fewer people
  receiving treatment / stricter prioritising
  severe cases increased carer responsibilities
  (6m).
• Helped but hindered by managerialism good at
  identifying and meeting objectives but how far
  are we managing the wrong things much better?.
• Managing expectations of the role of the state re
  the individual.
• Sharing expertise
• Public funded services that complement other paid
  for and community services.

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Prospects 3 Leadersphere

• Facilitative, charismatic and consensual leaders
• Increasing role of informal networks,
  neighbourhoods etc.
• Learning from the front line
• Collective working.
• Use of social marketing and other tools to
  influence behaviour on complex issues obesity /
  environmentally responsible behaviour / parent
  responsibility.
• Challenges
• General acceptance but questing to find make
  facilitative leadership work.
• Complexity of partnership working
• Cultural change without losing public service
  ethos.
• Performance frameworks stimulus to improvement
  or encouraging perverse results?
• Central govt / local govt relationship earned
  autonomy?
• Risk averse culture Growing culture of
  empowering the citizen yet increasing pressure to
  conform

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Prospects 4 Systems thinking

• Applying systems thinking to solve complex
  problems.
• Enabling role / harnessing complex
  inter-relationships.
• Tackling longer term problems demographic
  change, migration, employment and skills,
  infrastructure / environmental change.
• Creating an environment in which local
  partnerships work.
• Growth of self-forming networks around some
  generally defined set of problems and challenges.
• Using new technologies e.g. computer mapping
  software / social networking technology to
  collect an ongoing stream of user experiences
  intelligent technology development
• turn your organisation from traditional command
  and control into a systems thinking one.
• front office/back office split driven by
  arbitrary targets is SO disappointing and
  misguided
• Green Systems 21st century Rag and Bone
  collection

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Prospects 5 Pro-social places

• Places in which people live at ease with each
  other
• Building resilient and prosperous communities
  bridging between communities.
• Success would be crime down, skills up,
  education standards high, residents happy with
  their places and society at ease.
• Essentially a local issue.
• Understanding the effect of difference, variation
  and diversity on the happiness and social
  cohesion of local areas.
• Responding to a complex society people often
  simultaneously belong to different communities /
  hold different identities demands flexible
  services.
• Working with those failed by the system e.g.
  NEETs.
• A broader wellbeing measures of success.
• Challenges
• Emphasis on global terrorism / ethnicity and
  faith yet differences created by demographic
  shifts, social and economic make up and / or
  differential success and history also key.
• Bonding capital tends to be stronger than than
  bridging capital
• Tensions develop (e.g. around housing), when
  certain communities feel less able to access
  these services over others.
• A strong place needs strong local government but
  partnership working too
• Technological perversity reinforcing rather then
  negating differences

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Prospects 6 Aware Autonomy

• Greater freedom to be independent and
  experimental
• Lots of innovation and forward thinking but
  default passive towards the future - a more
  radical and entrepreneurial mindset.
• More responsive organisations, open to horizon
  scanning and forward strategy as early warning
  systems.
• Central government loosens the reins
  rediscovering the local state.
• Enabling local people to find solutions.
• Building resilience e.g. environment - Our
  area is at risk of coastal flooding so the events
  are more likely to occur... rethinking our
  approaches to contingency planning so .. the
  public service and the local community will be
  better prepared
• Challenges
• Split view on whether performance management
  constrains or force for good
• Slow and unresponsive.
• Middle management permafrost
• Improvement learning, RD and innovation that
  seem to work for private sector.
• Crisis-management and repair not anticipation /
  early intervention /prevention Policing,
  healthcare and mop up after the event, not
  preventing problems.

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Prospects 7 Smart Growth

• Local areas with growing but green economies
• Successful local green industries energy
  efficiency, reduced CO2 and waste.
• Climate change, and also pollution, water, waste,
  agriculture, biodiversity, sustainable housing,
  parks, green businesses shaping the local
  environment alongside the future economy.
• Turning impact of recession into a positive e.g.
  influencing and changing behaviour.
• Creating / thriving local green industries the
  21st century rag and bone service?
• Challenges
• Climate change most pervasive concern
• Secondary impacts e.g. of pollution on health
• Waste costs, penalties and getting agreement to
  solutions no one wants in their back yard.
• Food supply
• Potential shocks and events that could prove
  devastating for localities.
• Housing new homes carbon neutral by 2016 yet
  biggest source of carbon emissions is from
  existing stock.
• Getting residents to play their part.

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Prospects 8 Collective Intelligence

• Achieving success with Prospects 1-7 through
  cooperation and knowledge sharing?
• Communication / collaboration across localities,
  regions, and sectors.
• Developing local horizon scanning and strategy
  work
• Developing shared resources sharing ideas and
  learning including internationally.
• More innovative, anticipatory and exploratory
  local government culture
• Reduced duplication and effort
• Involved local public people able to deliberate
  and feedback to local decision-makers less
  formal consultation
• Challenges
• Lack of incentives to share information across
  organisational boundaries.
• Compatibility, cost and suitability of
  technology.
• Creating spaces for self-organisation around
  common objectives / pooling of resources.
• Attracting funding and investment / developing
  expertise.
• Unlocking talent and creativity and fostering
  bottom-up scanning and innovation
• Cultures and structures
• Pressures of short term delivery.

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For example Adult Social Care

• 2m people over 85 in less than 20 years
• On current model of provision staff would need
  to increase by 25
• Already public funding issues eligibility
  criteria tightening funding fewer people with
  greater dependency needs
• Social workers assessing to deny eligibility
• Mixed economy of services but monopoly providers
  stifling creativity
• 6 million informal carers
• Getting more efficient at the wrong things

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Adult Social Care Green shoots

• Direct payments trialled by 60,000 younger
  disabled people
• Individual budgets piloted and now rolling out
• Evidence based commissioning
• Market management and development
• Outcome based contracts more of an aspiration so
  far
• Recognising the potential in the design of the
  built environment, including intelligent houses
  and retirement villages but what are the
  barriers?
• Potential of further innovations in IT but who
  would promote the Research and Development?

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Powershare

• Powershare
• Strategic local planning Council and PCT, in
  planning loop with users and carers, and services
  providers
• Market leverage Direct payments and individual
  budgets introduce a real market linked to
  individual (user and/or carer) choice

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Service design

• Personalised care services complementing those
  provided by community and carer
• Access to wider social networking opportunities,
  including with peers
• Access to wider community services including
  through planning of the built environment and
  transport
• Intelligent houses through to retirement villages
• Further developments in technology health
  checks communication and mobility.
• Issues around risk assessments eg
  responsibility for risks employment checks

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Leadersphere

• Drawing on community resources and other social
  networks to identify the needs and aspirations of
  the service users and carers, and potential
  solutions eg voluntary sector, churches and
  faith communities, residents associations.
• Learning from front line staff
• Robust risk assessment, maximising delegation to
  users and carers and to the front line

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Systems thinking

• Accurate mapping of current population, using
  local demographic and health information and
  supplementing with soft information from local
  services
• Forward population projections taking account of
  trends in population mobility, economic trends
  etc
• Draw from other plans/pictures of the future
  place housing, infrastructure, transport,
  economic development, labour market
• Mapping current practices and identifying
  shortcomings.
• Looking for future opportunities
• Involve all the key players
• Check how systems fit together

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Pro-social places

• Diversity of needs e.g hair and skin care
  language requirements Alzheimers and reverting
  to first language courtesy and manners faith
  requirements diet.
• Creative lateral thinking about how needs can be
  met
• Involving across communities a lever for
  building social capital all faiths put a high
  value on respect and dignityfor the elderly
• Impact assessments for those requiring care, and
  the communities around them.
• Infrastructural development to underpin community
  integration

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Aware Autonomies

• DH and national inspectorates assess where add
  value maximise delegation identify perverse
  consequences of regulation
• Culture of experimentation and learning
• Fit for purpose risk assessments

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Collective Intelligence

• Lots of good practice advice available
  nationally.
• Moving from good practice case studies to
  networking.
• Is it joined up enough?
• Is it forward thinking enough?
• LARCI research on assistive technology and
  independent living.
• LGA hosted events to debate and develop possible
  future scenarios.

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Early wins

• LGA Group
• National Association of Regional Employers
• Local Government Workforce Strategy
• Sector Risk Assessment
• Sustainable Communities conference
• Future of Adult Social Care
• Next
• Dissemination across the sector
• Promoting our tool kit
• Promoting the wiki
• Identifying opportunities to engage with the
  sector

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Over to you ..

• Stimulate debate
• Hear about relevant work
• Explore possiblilities for future joint working
• Encourage you to use our wiki!