Engaging Users in Systems Working
On 29th January 2020 we hosted the National Leadership Forum, bringing together 400 public service leaders for discussions about how we are Working Together; as a system.
In the spirit of sharing the insights from the day, we have written blog posts describing the content of the discussions.
One of the panel sessions at the National Leadership Forum, the NLC’s inaugural national conference, was ‘Engaging Users in Systems Working’. Chaired by BBC presenter Naga Munchetty, our panellists came from across the country, each having led a transformative local project built collaboratively with the communities they served:
· Professor Donna Hall CBE, Chair of Bolton NHS Foundation Trust & New Local Government Network
· Katie Kelly, Deputy Chief Executive, East Ayrshire Council
· Immy Kaur, Co-Founder and Director, Impact Hub Birmingham
· Mark Smith, Director of Public Service Reform, Gateshead Council
Each of the panellists have experience of leading citizen engagement in the creation and implementation of bespoke public services. To them, no citizen is truly hard to reach; when we ensure that community is at the heart of how we approach public services, we are able to provide the best services possible.
Each panellist provided their case study of innovative, people-focused projects. Donna’s ‘Wigan Deal’ has been lauded for its multifaceted partnerships throughout the region, forming major and minor deals with businesses, civil society, social services, healthcare , community funding organisations and residents to reduce waste and improve outcomes for citizens. Despite severe funding cuts, Wigan Council was able to freeze council tax, invest £12million into the community and reduce the life expectancy gap between the poorest and wealthiest parts of Wigan by seven years.
Katie spoke about the transformative work of her council’s ‘Vibrant Communities’ project, whereby the Council worked with all sectors of the community, including children, young people and the elderly, to simplify the approach to public services and significantly empower the community in deciding how it is run. The council approved 55 asset transfers to the community, allowing them to build their own civic spaces, enabled 21 community led action plans and consequently saw £5.6million attracted in external funding.
Immy’s work in Birmingham unleashed the radical creative power of the people. The Birmingham Mission has built multiple spaces of collaboration and invention through Project 00, such as an ‘Impact Hub’, ‘Dark Matter Laboratories’ and, more recently, investment for a Children’s Hub as part of the #RadicalChildcare initiative. The Birmingham Mission has brought community people and their skills together to understand the systematic issues of their area and jointly create the solutions.
For Mark, the leading sentiment of the major reform he led in Gateshead was discovering the power and efficiency of bespoke services. The Gateshead Public Service Reform Team totally remodelled the approach to public services, focusing on the early signals that indicate citizens’ needs and leading the work with a solutions-focus, rather than problems-focus. The team were given a budget that they were able to do anything they wanted with as long as it caused no harm and was legal. For example, rather than sending an expensive bailiff to make demands to citizens not paying their council tax, the Local Authority used council tax debt as a signal of a citizen in need. They contacted the person to simply ask how they were. Seeking to understand the situation, the Council were able to then target the root cause of the citizen’s arrears and thus provide a much more effective and often significantly cheaper solution.
Start with the solution, not the problem
The panellists were strikingly unanimous in the lessons they drew from their work. All noted that the traditional approach has often been assessing the problem and deploying the predetermined ‘solutions’ available to them, often not acknowledging the human behind the system. As one panellist stated, in a period of restricted funding, this situation increasingly equated to telling citizens in need “come back to us when you’re worse”. Further, with society rapidly changing and demands growing, we are at risk of ‘over-engineering the solutions’.
Instead, our panellists advocated the idea to simplify the way we serve. Instead of focusing on the solution, focus on the mission. Listen to the people rather than prescribe, as when the community is truly engaged and included, the solution is often much simpler and more efficiently achieved.
Communities and neighbourhoods must be at the heart of services
All panellists expressed that when people and communities were at the centre of the projects, the creativity and impact of the services was always more powerful. One panellist stated, “neighbourhoods are a unit of change” and another reminded us that the line between the people we serve and the people who have the honour to serve is blurred — we are often from the same community. Spaces — civic, community, public — are a critical factor for this: with communal spaces, people and service practitioners have somewhere they can come together, learn and nourish collaborative projects. When the community is engaged, our understanding of systematic issues can be much deeper and the people most in need are easier to discover.
Empower people over process
Engaging users in the system requires a rebalance of power away from the authorities to the teams, local organisations and people. This is what collaboration is, and with it you can unleash the creative potential of communities and people. Councils and other local service providers must be enablers rather than prescribers. When questioned how to reconcile this with the reality of regulatory and political power structures that govern them, the panellists advocated actively integrating elected members and regulators into the work that you do.
Get in touch
The panel highlighted how, more often than not, the people, energy and creativity to improve public services are all there. It is about approaching this context openly and optimistically with the community.
Let us know your thoughts on the question on user engagement or any other issues around leadership, systems working and collaboration in public services. Get in touch by email on NLC@CabinetOffice.gov.uk or by Twitter @NLC_HQ
