Creative Gates.

@WendyLansdown on Twitter                 Photo Credit: Donna Hall

When Donna Hall made the call for a Rebel Alliance last year, I wasn’t convinced.  I believed that whilst our team’s work falls into her frame of reference, what we do is basically common sense.  We get alongside communities to help them make the stuff they care about, and want to put their passion into, happen.  It doesn’t feel rebellious or radical….

But my colleagues across the system ‘got it’ whilst I was still catching up…and I realise now that what I’ve found compelling about Donna’s work is how relatable she is, encapsulating the nuanced learning from years of experience in a way which so many of us feel viscerally is right – those of us who came into our roles in the public and community sector because we care and want to be part of making a positive difference.  We share values – believing in people and grassroots action. Donna galvanises those of us who believe in Community Power.

It’s helped me reflect on how the ordinary can be extraordinary and as Social Care Futures say, the true value of ‘a gloriously ordinary life’.

In Neighbourhood Cares, my role evolved a bit differently to the rest of the team, there was room for us to flex and for me to explore community strength through a Neighbourhood lens.  It was so much fun, the Soham community is a treasure trove of talent, and we could be useful supporters of their emerging ideas, particularly through sharing our home, the library (see this previous blog).

Most of our Neighbourhood Cares team were trained Social Workers.  I already had an admiration for the profession.  In those three years it grew and grew, the way my colleagues took their encyclopaedic knowledge of law and translated that into practice, with people at the heart was extraordinary.

From their perspective using the Buurtzorg model through Neighbourhood Cares was liberating, in a way I hadn’t previously understood. Charlotte talked about how in traditional services the system tended to have high padlocked gates which were hard to get through if you needed help, and if you were having a ‘bad enough’ time to get through the menu of options was small and strictly defined.  In her own words:

‘Coming to the Neighbourhood Cares Team after nearly 20 years as a Social Worker, I loved that we were doing all we could to bring people in rather than keep them out. Removing access criteria and thresholds meant we could respond to people at the point that they were telling us things were feeling difficult, so that we made the links and relationships when they were needed and through a conversation, rather than when a waiting list dictated and via an assessment. What we were offering in those situations wasn’t an assessment, leading to a decision about what could be funded. It was information, support, links, practical help, an invitation to be part of what had grown out of our space in the library. And of course, in ensuring the gate was open, we became the place where offers of support and gifts of items to be shared could be left, so that we became better resourced, more of a community.

We were also able to utilise legislation as part of how we understood people in the context of their neighbourhood, with our focus always on the person, their family and community, in a way that had never felt possible from an office behind the walls of the organisation.

Sometimes the people we met did have needs that meant us considering a more statutory route to support. This meant people being considered not only by us, as the individuals we had got to know, but by panels and brokerage teams and commissioners, and we knew that some of the people shaped magic that we felt would be lost in that journey through the system.

I think what we’re starting to see, and what makes me feel hopeful for a ‘rebel alliance’ is that the reaction of people who sit on the panels, lead brokerage teams, commission services is changing. The gatekeepers are becoming more creative. There is still a spark of the rebel who wants to change the world in most Social Workers, I hope. We need people who move into positions of corporate power to retain that rebel spark, even though they are further away from the neighbourhoods we support.‘

‘The gate’ became shorthand for us in our daily conversations.  ‘Which side of the gate are we here?’

It made me appreciate how unusual my role is.  How increasingly rare in the cash-strapped public sector to preserve some roles whose primary focus isn’t on statutory duty.   That said, our aims are the same, to enable people to live their happiest healthiest lives, and as a consequence, needing our statutory services less. 

In Neighbourhood Cares this meant exploring how our statutory and community worlds could join hands over the gate. It felt magical.  We saw people in really tricky life situations supporting each other in a way I’ve never seen before.  An unlikely friendship between a formidable and lonely woman in her 80’s and a young animal loving woman who had an alcohol addiction, who helped build each other up through friendship, and sometimes stern words.

Community development mingled with social work helps create the conditions for people to thrive.  And whilst it felt magical, most of the fairy dust was simple; connecting people, creating a warm and welcoming atmosphere (kettle, room, kindness), people getting support when they needed it and celebrating the good stuff that happened together.

So, it made me smile to see Donna share a picture of her own gate on Twitter (see top)

A gate which embodies creativity… It felt like a metaphor for Neighbourhood Cares.   Using our collective imagination to carve and hone local community solutions through friendship, coffee, Repair cafes and dog sitting.… becoming co-carpenters of our mini-society.

Neighbourhood Cares gave us a protected bubble in which to co-create.  An amazing one where we lived in a parallel universe for a few years, trying out how things could be different if we acted differently

It worked, people loved it, we loved working this way, but it was small and it wasn’t in the real world. 

So, it was exciting to watch the Radical Place Leadership webinar  in which Andrew Laird from Mutual Ventures skilfully facilitated an hour session exploring the ‘Liberated Method’ with Mark Smith and Donna Hall.  Mark has pioneered the method in Gateshead, I won’t try to explain it in depth here, watch the recording, it’s an hour well spent. 

For Charlotte (who talked about the gates) it was reminiscent of the Three Conversations work she had been involved in. In this, much like both Mark’s work and the work led by my colleague Ashling in our Integrated Neighbourhood, small amounts of funding are made available, free from bureaucratic strings, to help unlock people’s personal capacity.  With skills and trusted colleagues (including Social Prescribers, Support Workers, Social workers) working alongside, this helps catalyse the most phenomenal outcomes; the additional vacuum cleaner which prevents a daily precarious stair climb, or the slow cooker that means someone can make changes to their diet.  Small human shaped things that you won’t find on a drop-down menu.

What I took away is how the Liberated Method starts with the person and all their unique strengths, foibles and complexities and enables them to build their life in a practical way, with the person in the driving seat, and a trusted staff member alongside, providing support and challenge in equal measure, and, crucially, having permission to do what’s needed to help the person thrive, with just two rules – don’t break the law and do no harm.

What’s exciting about the work both Mark and Donna have led is that it’s big, bold, built on relationships, trust and critically, it plays out in the real world, amongst the existing hierarchies, siloes and less than perfect partnerships.

We don’t need system transformation to get started.  In Mark’s words ‘we can do 60% of this on Monday’.

Sure, speeding up our journey to breaking down silos and integrating systems will help.  But it will inevitably take time.  I’m so pleased to have bright and brilliant colleagues in senior management and policy roles and the politicians who dedicate their time to make big system change happen for the benefit of the communities they represent.  For example, I’m proud to work for a county council who choose to include individuals who experience socio-economic disadvantage and those with care experience as having protected characteristics. 

Where I feel the Communities team that I work in can be most valuable, is in oiling the wheels to help make the 60% happen. 

Confidence is developing for our team to work beside communities and our internal and external, junior, and senior partners.  Weaving the networks and opportunities for connection which help build the relationships from which emerges the trust. 

We can work in concert with our senior colleagues when they hear, feel, experience and respond to what’s happening in our communities – shaping the big picture to enable the 60% to grow.  A shared value base between us all.

Working towards 70% on Tuesday. 

My heart is warmed by the growing sense of togetherness, how we’re increasingly working hand-in-hand over multiple gates and fences in our places and neighbourhoods. And a growing respect across our hierarchies, a recognition that inspiration and leadership can come from far and wide.

In this vein, I was delighted to learn that our organisation is embracing coaching.  I believe it’s a sign of a progressive county council, who trust in the agency of their people and believe that solutions can come from everywhere.

I’m excited too that our coaches are not only drawn from our L & D team. I’m undertaking the training to learn to coach alongside and as part of my day job, becoming a member of a coaching pool available to all at the council.  It’s been wonderful to meet amazing colleagues from other parts of the system on the training… including Danielle who is PA to one of our Service directors; young, bright and deeply insightful.  And Lucy who heads up our Family Group Conference Team, we think there could be some exciting ways for our teams to collaborate.

However trite it sounds, we are all partners taking steps on a shared journey. What I find refreshing in Donna, Mark and Charlotte’s work, is the open-hearted humility.  Donna comments on ‘spark plugs’, the people with passion and vision scattered across systems who need to be connected, she cherishes and champions them.  Mark recognises that at the heart of the Liberated Method are ideas that are ‘as old as time’ and Charlotte, that Three Conversations ‘wasn’t new, it was the next iteration of the best bits of wonderful stuff that came before’.

In a similar spirit Donna wrote this recent article in the Local Government Chronicle, highlighting the need for organisations to really know the people they support, and emphasising the importance of prevention in the frightening context we find ourselves:

‘£4 in every £5 of this additional spending is on “late intervention services” with a spiralling number of children going into residential care whilst preventative support in children’s services has been reduced by 46% in the last 13 years’

Donna gives us 10 brilliant questions as a system provocation which we’re planning to take to our next Integrated Neighbourhood Board to think about together, there’s no time to lose.

Her clarion call is perfectly pitched to galvanise us all, bring on the Rebel Alliance!