Note from Changing Practices Cell 1
Note of a first Better Way cell on ‘Changing practices through relationship-centred practices and policies,’ held online on 10th June 2020
SUMMARY
Covid-19 has strengthened relationships, including local partnerships, given more agency to employees and led to professionals working in new ways that are giving the people they work with more agency. Online relationships have worked well for some people but not all, and we’ll need blended services in future. There is a short window in which to embed these changes as we come out of the pandemic and, amongst other things, we need to tell the story so that we inspire others to do more. Building stronger relationships involves a different power relationship between the individual, civil society and the state which is one of the issues we will be exploring next time.
1. AIMS OF THE CELL
Caroline Slocock, co-convenor of the Better Way, introduced the cell. We hope to build on an earlier Better Way roundtable about relationship-centred public policy in the coronavirus emergency and beyond. Before Covid-19 Caroline wrote a report on deep value relationships bringing together the insights from many sources, including David Robinson’s Relationships Project, and one of the conclusions was that we have a moment where potentially we could redesign existing services around relationships, and that we can build on existing practice, but need to do more together to build the case to make this widespread. Our Call to Action for a Better Way includes ideas around changing practices, putting humanity and kindness into services and building connection and community through relationships, not just passive services.
This cell is a working group which will meet several times, to explore these questions in some depth, to help its members share their insights and experience, and develop new strategies which we can turn into a document to share across our network and beyond.
2. OPENING PRESENTATIONS
We started the meeting with two presentations:
DAVID ROBINSON
David introduced the Relationships Project. This is exploring a big question: how do we build a better society by building better relationships? In specific terms this might include, for example, a better neighbourhood, a better community group, a better health service, a better school. Those involved in the Relationships Project are asking themselves how their own place (their neighbourhood, their team, their classroom) would change, if relationships were the central operating principle.
The Relationships Project has set up an Observatory to publish ‘sightings’ and take stock of what of what is being learned. Within much current activity around Covid-19, not least the thousands of Whats App groups, several undercurrents in attitudes and behaviours are emerging:
From doubting to trusting (neighbours are shopping for people they hardly know, front-line staff have budgets and responsibilities they didn’t have before);
From controlling to enabling (this includes more equal partnerships between independent organisations and the state, more sharing of leadership and power, more enabling styles of support);
From competing to co-operating (this is driven by an awareness that no single organisation or department or individual can fix the problems);
From standardised methods to personalised methods (this is found in many disparate practices, not least teaching, shopping, worship, and domiciliary care, and is engaging people who have been overlooked for a long time);
From me to we (a tide of good will has been generated by the crisis and by permission to behave differently).
David noted that there has been inconsistency from place to place, and a shift backwards in recent weeks: bonding capital (between ‘people like us’) is still strong but bridging capital (between ‘people less like us’) is becoming weaker. But nevertheless there has been an emergence of behaviours which are principle-led, more can-do, kinder, more emotionally responsive, personal and human.
A key question is how to ‘bank’ these gains in ways which also preserve that which was good before? Developments in technology have worked for many people but do not replace the preceding models of face-to-face contact. So how do we integrate and combine the best of the old and the best of the new into our work? David believes there may be a window of six months to do that well, before the pendulum swings back.
Ten million people have been involved in caring for others (for more than three hours a week) and 78% say they intend to continue. So, how do we enable and support that to happen without killing what makes it special and beautiful? The answer, said David, is not for the state to establish a volunteer army, nor to simply stand by and say let’s see what happens. We will need to design a light touch framework that doesn’t rely on chance but fills in the gaps and consciously seeks to embed the change in the years ahead.
PAUL FARMER
Paul is CEO of national charity MIND, and he shared several reflections.
Because the lockdown rules set at a national level were clear this has allowed permission and flexibility at a local level, street by street. The regulatory structure largely disappeared, with little backlash. While there will always be some abuses, the prevailing story has not been one of safeguarding breaches, nor of high volumes of scamming.
Paul pointed out that the voluntary sector has demonstrated that it is possible to reach a mature stage of relationships characterised by co-opetition (competing and co-operating at the same time). Many organisations have recognised the benefits of working co-operatively for the greater good or common cause, while also competing in some instances.
He also noted that the voluntary sector as employers had developed a new relationship with their own staff, giving them permission to get on with the task as many worked at home during the lockdown, and relying on trust, rather than oversight. This had worked well.
There appears to have been a shift from the selfish to the selfless. We have taken more notice of the people who live next door, and have benefited from deeper human interaction. Relationships between the individual, community, state, and employers are all changing. Many people who are working at home have been given permission to get on with things, and there is no sign of a productivity problem as a result. Employers are discovering they can trust more.
We have seen coalitions emerge to promote connectivity, for example the Connection Coalition, and the Together Coalition – perhaps these could themselves connect up with us?
There are, Paul noted, many serious concerns about the mental health of people in the emergency, but building resilience during the much longer and messier period of emerging from the crisis may prove to be a still harder task. National initiatives to date, including the NHS Volunteering Scheme, have adopted a largely transactional model, but haven’t addressed the need for a deeper set of relationships.
Some people are able to access digital services and really like them, and online therapy works for some, but many others don’t have that access or are uncomfortable with on-line methods. The future, said Paul, will be a blend of on-line and offline services, but what that looks like is not yet clear.
Above all we must not lose sight of the fundamental need for human connection. We have been hyper-local for three months, and we have lost some of the connections between places, and across communities. The recent Black Lives Matter debate about race and identity has been challenging but also gives some grounds for hopefulness, if we can bring people together into a better connected space.
3. DISCUSSION
Participants broke into smaller groups to discuss the questions, ‘What are you doing to create connection and community and what can be done to make this more widespread?’ Feedback from the breakout sessions, and the subsequent discussion facilitated by Steve Wyler, Better Way co-convenor, included the following points:
We need to understand the catalysts and preconditions for people to come together and build relationships, recognising for example the importance of social infrastructure and behind-the-scenes systems.
Professionals have been working in new ways with their ‘clients’, and despite the distancing created by IT this has sometimes led to a subtle shift in power away from professionals to their clients and to better relationships. There were lessons, but these need to be articulated clearly, so that the recent shift in behaviour can be maintained.
We cannot underestimate the importance of telling the story, not least of how institutional and professional worlds have changed and can change.
We always had it in us to do this together and we have proved that, but there were particular conditions, there was an emergency, we had more time, and we were at home. But we now need to prepare for the time when one or more of these conditions is no longer present.
New ways of working, founded on human relationships, can flourish where we recognise a shared purpose, for example when a group of agencies decide to work together to improve life chances for young people. On the other hand, compartmentalised ways of working (with different agencies offering support on addiction, mental health, homelessness, for example) makes it harder to build relationships.
The state has conditioned people and communities to expect a certain type of relationship for decades. But this can change. For example John Alexander has set out ideas for how local authorities can step into a ‘Citizen future’.
We will need to consider carefully how power operates in relationships, and the tensions inherent in that. There is often an imbalance of power in relationships. That is not in itself bad, for example a doctor/patient relationship is never equal, but can nevertheless work well. But in some circumstances the imbalance can become poisonous.
People are stepping up in neighbourhoods, and discovering their power, but there is also a desire from centralised institutions to take back control, for example in managing volunteering.
The building of relationships can help to overcome deeply entrenched inequalities, but that needs to start with humility, a willingness to learn and to be exposed to vulnerability.
We also noted that within the Better Way network we have missed face-to-face contact but the experience of Zoom has helped us connect with each other in some ways better than before, removing geographic barriers, and allowing wider participation, in ways we had not anticipated.
4. TOPICS FOR FURTHER MEETINGS OF THE GROUP
The following were suggested as topics for the group to address in future meetings:
What are the implications of digital platforms for relationship building?
What relationships would we like to see between individuals, civil society and the state?
What is a good relationship when there is a power imbalance?
How we can anticipate the impact of the impending recession on relationships?
Having discovered each other in an emergency, how can we now discover capacity to do other things together?
It was felt that our future meetings should ground our discussions in practical examples, such as the work of Wevolution in establishing self-reliant groups, or the experience of relationship-building across sectors in Camden, for example.
We agreed that in the meantime blogs and video interviews would be helpful for the work of the group, and to help share our thinking more widely. All members of the group are encouraged to contribute in this way.
5. NEXT MEETINGS
Thursday 16th July, 3.00pm-4.30pm
Thursday 17th September, 3.00pm-4.30pm