Neighbourhoods

Mutual support and ‘primary care’

In Eindhoven the other day I had the privilege to meet co-ordinators of an extensive self-help network, hear about some of the ways in which the groups work, and gain insight into the importance of the experience for sufferers. There are about 80 mutual support groups in the network, covering a range of shareable problems including mental health, addiction, sexuality, and so on. One of the promotional leaflets proclaims:

‘Secretly, many tea parties are self-help support groups’.

Our discussion was framed by the broad social policy context of how a society provides care for its citizens; what are the responsibilities of individual and state, what is the role of the professional, and so on.

Someone mentioned ‘primary care’. What ironic language, in the circumstances. There we sat at a focal point for several hundred people who come together semi-formally to help themselves and others as fellow-sufferers to just about function, not disparaging professional care but claiming and reserving an independent space. And we were using the language that characterises part of the problem.

I suggested a while ago that most 'primary care' is self-administered by individuals or administered within households. It was suggested that perhaps that’s ‘zero care’. Fair enough. Listening to the members of the self help network, I thought, this is primary care.

So it would be helpful if the care system were re-oriented to acknowledge, structurally and constructively, the role that people themselves play in co-producing each others' health and care and quality of life. That would also be likely to save money, though not for the insurance and drug companies.

 

Social networks and informal support: the big shift for policy

It’s obvious that informal support and social networks can be critical to the way society looks after its members. When people can use their social networks to get support without going through formal agencies, there are social and economic benefits. Has the time finally come for this logic to be recognised in policy? (Image from Viil Lid).

I happen to think this is quite a big deal. I’m just back from an utterly absorbing study tour in the Netherlands, organised by my friend Jan Steyaert for researchers from the Centre for Social Justice in the UK. We were exploring policy issues around the changing nature of social care in the post-welfare society, and Eindhoven is replete with thought-provoking initiatives and articulate people who have been reflecting on the significant shifts implied for practitioners and citizens. I tagged along to make wonky observations in the background, a role to which I seem to be peculiarly suited.

The basis of lots of urgent fresh thinking is the 2007 Social Support Act (known as the Wmo) which requires a shift in care work and social work towards what is known as ‘welfare new style’. Of course, as in the UK and elsewhere, much of this is driven by the mismatch between increasing care costs and shrinking public funds; but here, unlike with big society, there is immediate and valuing recognition of people's pre-existing connections.

The main points that dominated discussion of Dutch care practice were these:

• Focus on the strengths and resources of the individual, not on their problems
• Map, stimulate and involve the individual’s social network as a key resource
• Emphasise collective rather than individual support solutions
• Use professional care is a ‘last resort’.

I think this is both radical and exemplary. Quite apart from the community development principle of bringing collective solutions into the frame, here we have at last got governmental justification for stimulating social networks, with policy makers pushing care agencies of all kinds to pay due attention to people’s social connections. For example, one disability adviser who visits people with particular needs begins with a conversation based on a simple social network mapping template. Expect to see rapid standardisation of social network mapping in the Dutch public sector.

No-one seemed to know how the idea came so marvellously to be given such primacy, but here it is. And the logic is straightforward. For a long time it has been apparent that formal care is too dominant, has unacknowledged negative effects, and is provided at unaffordable levels. Ergo, we need to recognise and invest in informal support; ergo, we need to emphasise and encourage social networks – especially at local level. Why has this not happened before or elsewhere? Is it because we don’t make measureable claims for the part played by social networks, because we can’t see the results? Is it because no budget gets attached to them, so no-one with influence wants to ‘own’ them? Incidentally, this is not about consigning professional care to insignificance, but about re-establishing an appropriate balance between formal and informal.

In theory the Wmo seems to use the term ‘informal care’ with reference mainly to long term intensive carers. But the term seemed also to be used to imply what we might call informal support, thus covering a broad spectrum from low-commitment, dip-in dip-out five minute neighbouring; through something regular perhaps like weekly shopping with or for a frail elderly person; to high-intensity 24x7 unpaid care for someone with physical disabilities. This breadth of meaning may reflect developments in thinking since the act, and would account for the emphasis on social networks.

One advice worker rationalised the process by saying that as a society,

‘We have to go back to normal and look after each other.’

And so philosophical and anthropological questions about ‘community’ get raised. On what scale and under what circumstances is it 'normal' to provide informal support to others? The nostalgic plea doesn’t work very well, I suggest: some people challenge the mythology of the close-knit community, others point to the downsides and the basis in necessity neighbouring, and so on. Against that, we need some basis on which to establish the levels of trust that can in turn give rise to useable network connections.

An acknowledged problem for the Dutch approach is that many people are reluctant to ask for support, to make claims on their social network, to invest in their social network or exploit it for such purposes. One observation we heard was that in some cases ‘the social network is broken’. Another story concerned an individual who appeared at first to have no appropriate sources of support, then when they went out onto the street with the social worker there was plenty of recognition by others and the individual acknowledged,

‘yes of course I have a network, but I didn’t want the network to know my situation’.

We heard about this on several occasions and in particular in the significant research of Lilian Linders – which I happen to know a little about and which I will describe in a separate post in the near future.

 

 

Informal volunteering continues to decline

I missed this when it came out a month ago but it's worth going back to. We now have Citizenship survey figures for informal volunteering for the first half of the present year (April - September) and the decline ought to be of real concern to policy makers.

Over a year ago I pointed out a five per cent decline within the space of a year. The proportion saying that they volunteer informally at least once per month is now down to 27 per cent; and once per year, 54 per cent. These compare with 37 per cent and 68 per cent respectively in the bumper year of 2005. I devised this chart from data supplied in Table 5 here.

I've suggested before that this trend might just be a bit critical in terms of care for older people. I'm writing this in the plush comfort of the night ferry (yes, free reliable wifi) on my way back from an insightful study visit to the Netherlands. Two intensive days of learning have clarified the argument for me sharply. The Dutch are well in front of us: their Social Support Act (2007) has led to a radical emphasis on informal support and social networks, which I want to cover in my next post.

'You can’t use a hierarchy to create a network'

Although we share similar views, Julian Dobson is much more patient and tenacious than I when it comes to analysing big society rhetoric. Last week I was invited to yet another event designed for the prime minister to transfer energy to the sycophanti, but thought it was more honest to spend the time walking with a toddler in the park - investing in the future, I call it.

But while I'm increasingly reluctant to give publicity and credence to the brand, Julian is admirably determined to squeeze some good from it (and indeed is already doing so, over on Our Society). Check out his post on the top-down language and attitudes that underlie it. As I noted recently, that language reveals the ways in which power relations are culturally-embedded. Nothing resembling big society will emerge until the people who talk about doing things to 'communities' either get the point or get out of the way.

The XXL Society. Wear it with pride

Should you wish to, you can now show support for the XXL society.

My good friend Alison Gilchrist has produced 'Does my society look big in this?' T-shirts, which you can buy for just £15, including postage and packing. They're high quality, ethically sourced, and sweat-shop free - it says so here on the CDX site. If you buy via CDX, a percentage will go to helping keep the Community Development Exchange going: unfortunately big society policy doesn't mean that support for community development will be continued. Odd that.

This is more like localism: a thousand flowers

I’m not really interested in service-oriented models of localism. A resident’s view of being local tends to look different to that of a service provider. It's curious for example how policy has appropriated the word 'neighbourhood' in the last five years or so, to refer to a locality with typically a population of several thousand inhabitants.

Now suddenly there are programmes of linked officially-approved local initiatives working on an area basis around the country. The Big Local Trust is helping to get things going in an initial tranche of 50 areas. Today NESTA announced sixteen local projects as part of the 'Neighbourhood Challenge' (Yes I know, the language. I expressed some doubts about the attitudes back in October). And in the next few days we should learn a little about how the government’s ‘community organisers’ scheme is to work (previously 5,000 of them: now, er, 500. Well done Dave, what’s a dropped zero here and there?) (Whether such a scheme is needed is another matter of course).

It’s reassuring to think that these projects, legitimated by policy, will bring momentum to the age-old task of articulating localism from a local resident’s perspective.

If we ask what’s new here, I think it’s that ‘bottom-up rhetoric’ – the language of local people taking action over local issues – is legitimated. In this sense some of our leaders are right: the shadow of government has dominated the local ecology and stifled growth.

Now we all have permission to have conversations in policy contexts that acknowledge, even celebrate, the validity of the most local approach. As if no-one had been trying to have such conversations ever before. Now it’s fashionable. Of course, some agencies will continue to try to discredit those voices, out of habit, misunderstanding and addiction to power, but they already sound out of touch.

So what about those localities where people haven’t had a sniff of these funding awards, and where residents haven’t had encouragement from their local authority to test empowerment, or haven’t managed to galvanise enough interest among others around them? What about those places where community groups may not have the resources to access and absorb the lessons from the fortunate funded few?

There will as usual be inflated expectations about how the lessons from these large-scale programmes will be transferred. By all means the experience should be bottled, and disseminated in accessible form. But let’s not adopt a template mentality which implies that success is so readily replicable.

In my experience, the awkward obstacles to community development are usually relationship problems, not about the mechanics of how you do this or that.

Which is why the present culture change is so important. Worthy ambitions to transfer lessons and clone processes from one locality to another won’t be fulfilled. Community development is not carpentry; it's more like nurturing an ecology. Sometimes you need to leave things alone, sometimes you need to root things out or cut them back.

And now that it's legitimate to challenge the dismissive dominant top-down culture, light and air can get through to the smallest shoots, and they may have space to flourish.

 

 

 

'What were people like where you used to live?'

Here's a little parable, offered in a blog comment here by Steve DeSanto:

A man moved to a new town. He asked a local resident whether the people there were friendly or not.

The resident asked the man, “What were people like where you used to live?”

The newcomer scowled and said, “They were really an unfriendly and rude bunch, and I couldn’t wait to get away from that place.”

The resident said, “Well, I’m afraid you’ll find the people here are pretty much the same.”

A week later, another man came to town. He happened to meet the same resident and asked him the same question. The local asked this second newcomer the same question: “What were the people like in the town where you used to live?”

This newcomer smiled and said, “Oh, that town was the friendliest place you could ever imagine.”

The local returned the smile and said, “Well, I’m glad to hear it, I think you’ll find people here are very friendly too.”

Moving unconsciously in the same direction

The other day I wrote a little about arrogance and power. This evening we had a masterful display from Hosni Mubarak, an awesome example of the patronising superior stupidity of someone inexcusably detached from ordinary life.

Exceptional though his bizarre, tasteless speech was in that particular quality, its basics are hardly unfamiliar. The tone is not much different to what we are accustomed to from Westminster and many of our town halls: I know best, I have the power, you are young and enthusiastic, jolly well done in that respect, and it's nice to think about change, gosh yes quite right, but not just now.

The style is characterised by patronising half-compliment, damning with faint praise, miserably-minor concessions, ignoring the real issues, selective deafness, and measured encouragement to keep on keeping on for the common cause - but on status quo terms, otherwise there could be recriminations, I think you know what I mean.

More than once I have heard the same tone of unjustifiable, in-the-face-of-reason arrogance from the chair of a community group or residents' association, from a housing officer, once I remember from a senior council officer who thought she could play politics with everyone.

How does this come about? Scientists, help us: where is the disempowering gene, can it be isolated? What is it in humans that drives them to demean others in this pathetic and incendiary way? What is it about arrogant people in power that fails to stop them behaving like History's Total Dickheads?

I want to ask, is it really necessary to be detached from the everyday to have power? If you attain power, do you have to sever ties with the ordinary? Why? What could be more inapproriate?

And let's just note that, as with the London disturbances in December, this is a network society moment. A moment focused by the democratising lens of technologies, with people able to network together in a way which is no longer inferior to the networking power of the Haves. One BBC correspondent said of the people in Tahrir Square,

'This is the twitter generation, they know what's going on.'

Other comments I heard on the BBC's coverage:

'What matters in this is the street, the people on the street... These young people are too smart...'

Of Mubarak's inner circle: 'They don't know what democracy is'.

And from within the crowd, the crowd itself described as 'Moving unconsciously in the same direction'.

 

On invitations to conversations

To Cambridge for a meeting on nieghbourhoods today, as a guest of a theological college at the university. A novel environment for me, exploring the role of faith (not faith groups, necessarily) in local life.

My take on that, FWIW, was to draw attention to the interesting tension between, on the one hand, people's suspicions of religion as a form of social control; and on the other, the fact that people of faith tend to go round wearing a badge saying 'values' very clearly. You might or might not agree with them, but it helps enormously to know that values matter to this person.

Two things in particular I brought away with me to ponder. The first was the direct consequence of having several Americans in the room. What, it was asked, is the English equivalent of the American front porch? This is a use of semi-private space close to the home where everyday conversations can be started without threat or awkwardness.

The response of Hank Dittmar of the Prince's Trust, was to say we should look for precedents elsewhere in the English way of doing things, and build on those. But I'm not sure that gets us much further than dogwalking. We've surrendered the street, and the cars are all over our front gardens as well. I'd like to see more communal waste and recycling bins, with the greater likelihood of neighbourhood encounters around them; but it doesn't exactly have romantic charm as a design solution, does it? (Better suggestions over on 50 Ways to Meet Your Neighbour please).

My second takeaway came from a remark made by Indy Johar which got me thinking about the difference between having opportunities to participate in local initiatives, and being invited to participate. Often enough people have cause to complain about how opportunities have been created through community work or action, for people to just get together or roll their sleeves up and do something, and people haven't taken them up for whatever reason.

Success can depend on creating an invitation in which people's interests or needs are aligned with whatever might be going on. It doesn't have to be personal but it does need to be more than an announcement of an opportunity. I remember a good example from talking to someone at a community centre in Shipley. He had never previously been to a community centre and was telling me how he went along to a school of an evening to hear a talk about doing classes at the centre, in this case on digital photography: he said, 'it was as if she were talking just to me'.

'Communities! Seize your opportunities!'

I try not to be negative all the time, honestly, but these are strange times. Here's an unfortunate post on the ResPublica blog which exemplifies the peculiar cultural gap in understanding that divides the country. Matt Leach comes straight out and admits that big society is top-down: but version 2.0 is emerging which will be - wait for it -

'the start of a transfer of responsibility for mobilising and leading the project from central government downward to our neighbourhoods and communities.'

Stand well back, here comes big society 2.0 (or 'Big Society' as these people like to frame it: the initial capitals presumably intended to give some cred just in case it struggles to merit it).

It strikes me that version 2.0 will probably accelerate the tendency to retrospective or lateral branding. Expect more desperate or subtle attempts (like this one previously) to capture and badge 'initiatives like Lambeth's Co-operative Council, emerging plans around housing in Rochdale...' as evidence of big soc.

Among the give-away remarks in the article - Big Soc Two Dot Nought, we are told, is going to be

'an open source project defined by the extent to which communities are willing to seize the opportunities available.'

I know it's just one throw-away piece of weak rhetoric but it does exemplify the problem I think. It's not nice to accuse people of arrogance but when they are in a position of influence it may be justified. I'm prepared to believe that much of BS thinking was conceived with good intentions and it's not all consciously politically manipuated. But are we to expect that 'thought leaders' will get any less arrogant in version 2.0?

I've spent enough time over the past 25 years on the edge of London think-tanks, and in quite a few meetings in Westminster, in addition to time spent listening to people in community groups in various places around the country and beyond - people tryng to do stuff themselves against the odds. Those 'odds' don't just include overly-bureaucratic local government. They also include deeply-embedded class-based 'us-and-them' language breathed night and day by people in positions of power. We are the officer class, we govern, it's a tremendous responsibility you know. Your role is to be, well er, energetic, when we finally get the conditions right for you.

The lesson I'm finally having to accept is that arrogance is inevitably found in positions of power and doesn't know itself. Anyone who can write 'the extent to which communities are willing to seize the opportunities available' without self-parody is so manifestly part of the problem, perhaps we just have to be patient until they go away.

 

Intelligence versus racism

The other night I sat in on a session with four boys who are looked-after, attending a museum-based programme in an English town. It’s a super project which they began some weeks ago, looking at the topic of public campaigns. They've gone on to design various elements (T shirts, badges, posters, bags, drama) of a campaign of their own choice, namely anti-racism.

The boys are all aged about 12 and you can be sure none has had an easy childhood. The conversation was all over the place and the behaviour relentlessly disruptive, but sporadically they discussed the topic with impressive maturity.

One lad said with unfussed confidence that if he was asked to speak about racism, he would talk in terms of objectification. There are five more syllables there than his peers are usually comfortable with in one blast. Without pausing, he told us all precisely what he meant by that – treating people of different ethnic groups as if they were objects.

This young black man is growing up in a town which today will host a march and demonstration by an overtly racist group of people who simply are not in his league.

 

Over here: big society. And over here: funding cuts

Here (from about 53 mins) is Philip Blond on R4 last night telling us that big society has to be separated from the public sector cuts agenda:

'they're not related and they come from different places.'

Today we have the leader of Liverpool City Council withdrawing the city's involvement as one of the four national pilot areas for big society schemes, because government cuts have threatened the future of many voluntary organisations, hence jeopardising, entirely predictably, activities carried out under the aegis of big society:

'How can the city council support the big society and its aim to help communities do more for themselves when we will have to cut the lifeline to hundreds of these vital and worthwhile groups?'

In the past week or so I've run two workshops with voluntary sector organisations in a crisis context. These are rugged organisations accustomed to working on the edge, they don't squeal easily; but this crisis is different. And these are people who have put passion, energy, values and skills into developing services for people in need - the kinds of people for whom the government shows contemptuous indifference.

You can try telling them that what they're doing is a crucial, valued part of big society. And/or you can try telling them that no no, the big society ethos (polite coughing) is not at all related to the public sector funding cuts. It's ok, go ahead, you won't get howls of derision or abuse.

They won't take you that seriously. Because the part of big society rhetoric that is meaningful - like the importance of association and 'community' - they already know, they're already familiar with it, most of them are expert at it. The rest is perceived as vacuous and, believe it or not, they're a bit busy right now.

Nor are you likely to hear people suggesting that this government might just be making the effects of the financial crisis considerably worse than is justifiable, and effecting cuts in a vindictive and unequal way. Most spotted that some time ago and are reconciled to it. There's stuff to do. Sorry, the conceptual separation of economics from cultural change will have to wait.

Community and archeaology: streets and people

Here's a sound idea neatly presented, the Streets Museum, tracing lost streets of Salford. Apparently over 1500 streets have been demolished in central Salford in the past fifty years. (Why?)

'We focus on  our lost cultural and architectural heritage, which are intricately related. We gather together fragments of the past, placing them in active spaces of dialogue and encouraging social networking between fragmented families.'

Presumably what this could lead onto is a redefinition of 'lost' and some archiving of the way many streets have changed from being community places to spaces reserved for privatised mobility. And from there, hopefully, to more widespread recognition of the social damage caused by the loss of streets.

But don't expect much soon - remember we have a government that pretends, laughably, that there has been a 'war on motorists' which in brain-free populist mode it wants to 'end'.

Smuggled into the new year blur was this press release announcing the abolition of parking space limits for new homes and guidance encouraging higher parking charges. More evidence of rampant anti-social policy to put the charming rhetoric of big society into perspective.