When Jam & Justice Meets Collaborating Out Loud
During the last year I’ve been volunteering with a research project called Jam & Justice. We’re exploring how the city can benefit from increasing participation and engagement in decision making. I’ve been getting increasingly excited about a project looking at how social care supports people in their homes. If we took a more collaborative approach would we get a different type of service? What would a different approach look like? Would the people involved think that it made any difference?
On Wednesday night three of us involved with Jam & Justice were invited to attend a Collaborating Out Loud meeting. My description of Collaborating Out Loud is simple — a place for people with skills of all kinds, enthusiasm and an interest in innovation, improvement and community to come together to explore collaborating. I’d been interested for a while — especially because I’d thought Collaborating Out Loud might be a place where people who work for the public sector, and innovators in charities and the private sector can come together first and foremost as equal citizens.
The first part of our meeting was an opportunity to check-in and reflect on our different perspectives about what Collaborating Out Loud is. Collaborate Out Loud wants to be inclusive and diverse — within minutes I met a home care registered manager, a coach and facilitator, a campaigner, and someone who works for NESTA. People threw different ideas into the room: “We want to have different conversations”, “We want to trust each other”, “We want to have fun”, “We want to meet in different times and different spaces”. It was refreshing to be in a collaborative space which isn’t strictly defined by commissioner — provider relationships.
We were then invited to ask the group how they could help with our question. *Could* a different conversation produce a useful outcome? An hour later we left Collaborating Out Loud with a sense that “we might actually be onto something here”. With enough passionate people in the room we quickly realised that we knew about relevant pieces of work in three local authorities. Would there be an opportunity to join this up? A colleague working in a Greater Manchester role could see an immediate link to their work, and offered to meet afterwards. One manager of a home care service offered to pilot the approach around their service.
Most importantly, together we identified a wealth of ideas about how the work could be done and who might want to be involved. I can see potential tensions about wearing different hats and working in different spaces, especially out of your formal job role and comfort zone — I’m a Programme Manager in a Social Care role. I also think that Collaborating Out Loud has to stay as inclusive as possible, which might mean reaching out to ensure diversity. But I’d see these as interesting challenges to navigate rather than barriers. So — come on and get involved!
