LocalGov Camp 2022; Systems, SEND and Social Care
My week was really punctuated by #LocalGov Camp22 and my first LocalCamp, as having come from the slightly more traditional side of local government it was one of the events in my calendar that I never managed to get to when I was working in the sector.
It’s been a super interesting week either side of that but still leaving #weeknotes until we get to the other side of October and the new Client Services Team at TPX gets its formal inauguration.
It was super exciting heading up to Birmingham on Wednesday to get one of the first face-to-face meetings events conferences and seminars of the autumn schedule spend IRL time with the awesome Linda and Sam in our team who were also leading our Adult Social Care (ASC) workshop on the Thursday afternoon.
We had an ad hoc thought to try and record the ASC session so we could pull together some highlights and wider clips from the event so I dragged up my (far to big) condenser mic, a second laptop with a mixing desk and, sound-card, in addition to Linda‘s video camera on the train in the hope we could do a bit of ad hoc podcasting vlogging, vox pops and record the session. You’ll have to wait until next week for results on the success of this as we have a load on content recorded but not sure of the quality until we get to the editing desk (prob over the weekend with a glass of red)
One of the things I was really looking forward to was just meeting some peeps that I have virtual relationships with through socials or other channels or those I hear a lot of in convos with colleagues and on my Twitter feed but never actually met in real life.
Big shout out to those I got around to meeting and having a good natter with; Glen, Kat, Phil, Thomas, and lots of others (to many to shout) who a got intros and hi’s with because it was really good to start putting names to faces in post Covid. Amazing how different people look IRL right?
Three big highlights of the event for me
One
Actually the day before (Wednesday) was the first highlight tbh. Just the whole process of getting ready to go do something like this, especially when you’re not just going to network and attend workshops and you’ve got some purpose as well (in my case being the sound mixer for the ASC workshop) gives a real different vibe to the build up!
Arriving at the hotel and getting a working lunch with Linda was really fun we just threw some ideas about on prepping the event (and talked a lot). Then just spending the afternoon sitting in the lobby of the hotel on a comfy sofa working on client bits in different location (to office or home) is always nice and stimulates your brain in different ways.
Two
The event itself on Thursday was just generally really awesome (thanks to Nick, Dave and the rest of the LocalGovDigital Crew.
It was also really good to meet some other suppliers to and make connections from other similar minded peeps. This is often a tricky balance as ultimately sometimes these guys are your competition, but the funny thing with digital and change is that a lot of the people in these spaces are genuine collaborators and understand we can’t do this on our own. There’s so much work to do that everyone’s needs to have a stake in the game and we just have to work effective ways of collaborating in best interests of solving the challenges.
Three
This was really about some of the big themes overarching the digital and technology aspects of the day. By this I mean the wicked cross sector/industry/ issues which drive the need for system's change which can be enabled by ensuring digital transformation is embedded in the thinking from the start.
I was really interested to see how colleagues from a technology and digital background were coming to the same themes that we have been coming to from more a more organisational design and social systems perspective and this recombination of experience could be the the emerging super power IMHO.
Three of the big ones really emerged for me (there are more) at the workshops and unconference I attended on Thursday PM;
Adult Social Care (ASC)
More of an obvious one with the known challenges and also one that we were here to begin convening thoughts around. Linda and Sam ran a super workshop on this and some great conversations and story’s began to emerge. More on this when we pull together the summary. but you can access the slides here and sign up for the community of interest here.
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Local Offer.
I went to this unconference run by Leila at Invuse in the afternoon. This is subject close to my heart having two out of three of my own children in the SEND system with Educational Health Care Plans (EHCP), my wife is also a Headteacher and SENDCo (so you can imagine our fun round the dinner table nerd outs!!!!)
Big shout out to the little group here we had a super discussion on this and could have gone on for another 3 hours.
This, and the wider systems (children’s social care, mental health, education and schools provision/structures etc.) feels like a really big complex systems challenge too (which we love at TPX) and one where we really need to convene lived experiences, and collective intelligence from a broad range of sectors, disciplines and backgrounds to begin moving towards new approaches to improving outcomes, process and systems in this space.
Don’t be surprised if you get a reach out from me in the next few weeks to get involved in a community of interest/practice along with others in the TPX family including James, Holly and others who have both creds and skin in the game this area to get things moving and begin some systems mapping. If you are interested in getting involved in this then shout me through any channel until we get something more formal sorted.
Cost of Living
The obvious big one which loomed like a dark shadow over the whole LocalGov Camp was around the cost of living crisis; whilst the pound was tanking, pensions and mortgages moved into increasingly precarious positions without even talking energy and inflation, during the course of the conference it became more apparent that this could be the guiding thread for much these big themes to be framed against.
This is a truly four dimensional issue crosscutting all aspects of our local, national and global world. Local Government, Central, NHS , third, charities and the private sector (see the blog that I wrote on this last week for a flavour). I really believe that we can use this as an overarching economic case for change if we just pull out the narrative properly which is sometimes what we’re not so good at (usually to busy doing the important good stuff), but unfortunately the reality is that everything has a financial lens and we need to be better at understanding costs from a whole organisational perspectives in public sector (sometimes across different institutions even) and not look at service budgets.
For example; schools budgets are often mopping up social care failure demand, and cuts in community support might raise your temporary accommodation costs exponentially from lack of early understanding/intervention (this is a big one btw especially in light of this winters dark outlook). More to come in this space as thoughts develop.
Overall the conference was amazing and I really enjoyed the fun and informality of it; even trying to set up an ad hoc recording studio at the side of our adult social care session (much of which I will try and edit out today) and recording and putting together content fro the vox pops, BIG thanks to those of you who came and had a chat with us. Also couldn’t not mention the brilliant Ben Holliday Multiplied book which we shifted may copies of as a foundation for thinking transformation systems. (Those lucky enough to get a copy, make sure you send a pic of you reading it!!!)
Train journey home was long after a long day too (Five Guys and a Brooklyn Beer to accompany me) and didn’t get home till 10 o’clock. So reflecting thoughts on the train try not to doomscroll on Twitter; Fantastic couple of days and I can thoroughly say my first LocalGov Camp was amazing and great to see everybody in real life again.
Pivoting to now being part of a community of practice which extends beyond those digital and technology change folk embracing those who come from a variety of places, services, experience and views is what made this special.
Happy Friday you lovely people…..
