Participle: P'articles Feed

The Families that Struggle

2011-09-21T12:35:00+00:00

Author: Nicola Marshall

Ella (not her real name) lives in Swindon. She is the mother within one of Britain’s so called chaotic families. The government estimates that there were over 120,000 families like Ella’s in Britain, struggling to break a cycle of social, economic and emotional deprivation. The treasury has focused on these families under both the last and the current government, due to their cost, estimated to be £35 billion annually. Ella lives in a mean and cramped house on a run-down estate - there are no shops, the pub closed years ago, the playground is desolate and never used. Inside Ella’s house the tension is palpable and the noise levels deafening. The TV is on at full volume, Ella’s older son is fighting with one of her daughters, another keeps up a constant stream of abuse from the kitchen. The dogs are locked behind a bedroom door. Ella is stuck - she has lived with crisis for forty years - she knows nothing else and she knows no way out. Abused by her father, she has since lived with four abusive partners of her own. One of her children has been removed by social services and the three who remain with her suffer from a range of problems. None are in full-time education or working. Ella, rather like the welfare state she knows so well, desperately needs a radical plan to build a way out so her children do not repeat the cycle, as she is repeating her own mother’s history. It is only a matter of time before grandchildren appear - whether they can expect a different future is the real question we might ask of welfare reform. Members of the Participle team have spent time living alongside Ella and other families like hers over the last two years because we are interested in what we can learn from the places where the need is greatest, and where the welfare state in its current form seems most challenged. We have found again and again that if we can design solutions that work with those most in need, we can create solutions that will work for many. Ella’s family and the many others like hers are a manifestation of the breakdown between the state and the citizen. The constant visits and delivery of messages do not constitute a conversation, and the families do not feel properly listened to or understood. Asked to change, the families have no lived experience of what this might feel like; and, worse still, they know that these commands are accompanied by the dead weight of expectation that they can’t change - ‘this family will never change’, it was explained to us. To read our approach on how to support Ella's families, read more here.

Engineering a Brighter Future - Loops

2010-06-14T14:41:00+00:00

Author: Cherie Fullerton

Alice Rawsthorn, writing in the New York Times on 13 June 2010, profiles Participle's Loops project for young people. “We’d wanted to help young people for some time, but the urgency came when Unicef published a study showing that the UK was the worst country in the Western world to grow up in,” explained Hilary Cottam, co-founder of Participle. “The government’s response was to build new youth centers and to encourage young people to avoid risk — not drinking, not getting pregnant, not doing drugs. All the research shows that locking them up in schools and youth centers doesn’t work. Youth development comes out of having lots of experiences and engaging with risk. We felt there had to be a better way.” See the full article here

Ten Points for a Social Renaissance

2010-02-25T14:17:00+00:00

Author: Hilary Cottam

What should a new government do? At Participle, we believe that public services must provide new ways for people to shape their lives in a more meaningful way. We work with and for the public to make this happen. The current system isn’t working. It is both failing to support people and failing to address the major issues of modern society. This has little to do with money – most of our solutions are cheaper. Working with the public means that we have lived for six months on council estates to spend time with ‘families in chronic crisis.’ We spent most of 2007 intensively living and experiencing the lives of over 250 older people in South London. We have also spent six months living through the lives of over 60 young people. Through working in this unique way, immersing ourselves in some of the biggest issues of our time, we are fortunate to receive unique insights into particular parts of the population. Those who have seen our work have asked, what should a new government do to allow these bottom up, low cost approaches to flourish nationally. Here are our 10 points for a Social Renaissance.

Learning from the Extremes - Charlie Leadbeater & Annika Wong

2010-01-26T13:49:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders

Commissioned by Cisco, Charles Leadbeater interviewed 100 social entrepreneurs seeking to meet huge needs without the advantage of traditional resources. What we can learn from social entrepreneurs are innovating radically new ways to take learning into the poorest places in to the world. That kind of disruptive innovation may not come from the best schools. It is much more likely to come from social entrepreneurs who often seek to meet huge need without the resources for traditional solutions: teachers, text books and schools. Disruptive innovation frequently starts in the margins rather than the mainstream. Governments should continue to look to the very best school systems to guide improvement strategies. But increasingly they should also look to social entrepreneurs working at the extremes who may well create the low-cost, mass, participatory models of learning that will be needed in future. To find out more download the Learning from the Extremes White Paper here

Get-Together

2010-01-18T11:32:00+00:00

Author: Hugo Manassei

In 2008, we piloted a wonderful service we call Get-Together. It's aim is to reduce some truly horrific statistics. Currently, in the UK, 3.1 million people over 65 do not see a friend, neighbour or family member, at least once a week and 1.8 million have no contact with friends, family or neighbours at least once a month. The link between social isolation and mental health is very strong, highlighted well in Daniel Goleman's book, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships - “Studies done over two decades involving more than thirty-seven thousand people show that social isolation - the sense that you have nobody with whom you can share your private feelings or have close contact - doubles the chance of sickness or death. Isolation itself, a 1987 report in Science concluded, "is as significant to mortality rates as smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity and lack of physical exercise." Indeed, smoking increases mortality risk by a factor of just 1.6, while social isolation does so by a factor of 2.0, making it a greater health risk." So, Participle, in conjunction with Westminster Council, developed this service called Get Together. For the past year, we have been developing a business case, and getting partners on board to finance and launch Get-Together across London. This is planned for 2010, so watch this space. In the meantime, watch this great film made of the pilot: For more information on Get-Together, view the case study. Also, read this article here written by Jonathan Freedland.

Trying to Be Responsible and Cutting-Edge, Too

2009-12-27T13:58:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders

LONDON — Let’s look back at what design was like a decade ago. If I’d mentioned the “S word” you’d have thought it meant “style,” not “sustainability.” See the full article here

Seven ways to protect public services

2009-12-16T11:30:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders

Seven ways to protect public services There are alternatives to Ryanair-style public services cut back to a basic low-cost offering, says Charles Leadbeater. See the full article here

Social Health Early Insights

2011-08-30T09:55:00+00:00

Author: Jake Garber

In our work on the ground in Lambeth and Southwark we spent time with a range of households to find out what ‘living well’ meant to them. We’ve uncovered some insights that point the way towards how a social model of health should work, and we wanted to share some of them. Here are some of the stories of the people we met under the themes: medicine, social influences and desire for community.

Lunch Conversation 1: Whose Health? Hosted by Charles Leadbeater

2011-08-30T09:25:00+00:00

Author: Jake Garber

In the first of our lunch conversations on social health we met with a diverse group of inspiring and innovative people to discuss how we could move from a medical to a social approach to health. In conversation with Charles Leadbeater was Geoff Wedgwood, Programme Director for digital health care; Luke Bretherton, Senior Lecturer in theology and politics, Kings College London; Peter Gibson, technology entrepreneur; Peter Greengross, Medical Director, The Learning Clinic; Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA; Conor Burke, Director of Commissioning for GP cluster in North East London; Jenny Hyatt, founder of The Big White Wall; Nigel Hartley, Director of Supportive Care at St. Christopher’s Hospice; Lara Carmona, Head of Strategy and Policy at Marie Curie Cancer Care. Before we met we asked people to consider: To what extent can we de-medicalise our approach to long-term conditions? What would happen if we came at this through a purely social lens? What would be the biggest opportunities and challenges, and to where might we look for solutions?” As it was the conversation ranged widely and covered both how we might support social functions that lead to better medical outcomes, and whether we should consider social health as worth pursuing for its own sake. Below are just a few thoughts and comments that start to point the way towards a new approach to social health. 1 How to support changes in behaviour If living well means changing how we live, how should we support people to change their behaviour? Peter Gibson suggested that we encourage people to monitor aspects of their health that they are interested in, collect that data and represent it visually to help people make their own decisions about what they’d like to work on. He also shared his experience that much of the best evidence shows that the best way to change behaviour is to build on how people already act. We could create or influence a culture so that it would be supportive of self-reflection and openness. Jenny’s experience with the Big White Wall has shown that creating the right (online) environment is a crucial factor in behaviour change. Matthew suggested that the best approach is to support people to engage as citizens where they live. Active and critical engagement in civic activities may be an important component of social health in itself. The process also ensures services are created in partnership with the people that receive them. The RSA’s work with drug and alcohol users supports this approach. 2 A big conversation? But does this necessitate having a ‘big conversation’ with people and organisations about what social health is and what their roles in it should be? As Conor pointed out, we need to define at what levels our goals operate. Is social health a political, economic or personal challenge? We might need to have several, parallel ‘big conversations’ if the change is to incorporate all of these levels, as it appears to need to. At the level of ordinary people’s lives, the people we met in our user research did often appear to be lacking an overarching narrative that could otherwise bring people together around social health. We could undertake a large ‘listening exercise’ to find out what people think and work to align interests. But the question is, do we need to do that? Perhaps it is better to engage people on a level that is already relevant to them and then build civic participation on top of this. The idea of a local community may also be a convenient fiction. It may be that the way we use the word local is actually a placeholder for shared interests, understanding and relationships. In fact none of these may exist strongly in a local area. Luke advocated an approach that would involve working to build and rebuild local communities. Jenny’s work suggests that online networks provide a good option for non-local communities that are united by a common interest. 3 Paternalism In asking people to engage in social health, are we in danger of telling people how to live? Opinion was divided on this. One half of the table felt it is a shame that we can’t tell people what would be best for them while the other half felt that telling people what to do doesn’t work anyway. The following suggestions might point the way forward. Creating space for people to be open, explore and be critical is a powerful method to help people make changes in the way they want to in Jenny’s experience. Separately, Nigel has found that providing a menu of options is a useful way of opening a conversation since people often don’t know what they want or what is possible. As well as those things, we might also have to support people to develop new narratives about who has the capacity to influence their health, in order for people not to automatically look outside of themselves and their communities for a paternalistic service. 4 Over-reliance on professionals There was a consensus around the table that we need to find ways to move away from over-dependence on professionals. In Nigel’s opinion some of the people in the hospice expect doctors to solve all their problems of social agency and he sees this as indicative of the wider over reliance on medical professionals. Luke described the mission creep of a health system that is perceived as value-neutral; that people are looking for relationships and reassurance, which the health service is not designed to provide, but ends up trying to anyway. Matthew pointed out that since the health system is designed around interventions for sick people there are incentives built in for people to play a sick role in order to receive care and attention. In Jenny’s work, experienced therapists working in a new public way on the Big White Wall decided they needed new training to cope with a new set of social dynamics. This hints at how a move to a social model of health could alter the relationships between people and professionals and open up new forms of interaction. In moving forward we could work to support people and professionals to redefine their narratives. Another support we could provide people with to help them take control over their health is digestible, real-time, useable information, as Think Banking does with finance. 5 Social death Throughout the conversation there was a link made between social and medical health that can’t be ignored. In one direction, Nigel talked about hospice patients experiencing ‘social death’ after having a terminal diagnosis that meant not wanting to see people, not knowing how to talk to others and their friends cutting them off. We suspect that this occurs in other cases of ill-health, outside of terminal diagnoses causing a sort of loss of social flow. In the other direction, Peter Greengloss told us that that prescription of anti-depressants is the strongest predictor of future emergency hospital admissions. Spiraling debt is also known to impact badly on medical health. Social ill-health and medical ill-health have a mutually reinforcing effect on each other that the current system is not well placed to deal with. We could work to help people to support each other through ill-health. We could also support people to develop social resistance to prompts that lead them into unhealthy behaviour, such as advertising of high interest credit cards and loans. 6 The model There was agreement that whatever we do to improve social health, the starting point should be outside of the current system as it is framed now. Alongside this we now have a set of further questions that can guide the development of an organisation for social health: Can social health ever be some kind of business without leaving out important social and civic dimensions? Will people pay, or will the state? Will big business be interested in aligning their models with people’s best interests? What other resources might we be able to unlock? We turned to some of these points in our next lunch conversational in the series: ‘Collectivising Health’, hosted by Robin Murray. Click here to read a summary of that conversation. There were many, many more interesting points and we’re in the process of digesting them all, ready to create something new later this year. So a big thank you to everyone who took part in this discussion!

Networks and Employability

2011-08-16T13:45:00+00:00

Author: Jake Garber

We suspected when we started working on employability that networks would be important, but we didn’t know how important. People’s networks and their attitudes towards it strongly affect people’s abilities to find opportunities for employment, self-development and to explore new avenues and options. Despite that, the current system does next to nothing to improve people’s networks or how they use them, and in many cases inadvertently makes it all worse. Our employability work included a dedicated piece of research on networks and you can download some of the visualisations we developed here. We wanted to share a little of where we’re up to in thinking about the connection between networks and employability, so below are a few observations and ideas that we’ve been exploring along the way. 1 Networks are limited People’s networks shrink at a surprising rate from the point when they become unemployed. People cut themselves off, and are cut off quickly through social shame and not being able to participate in what were perceived as normal activities. Routines change and separate people from their working peers. Simultaneously, people’s networks shrink, as they get older, as do their opportunities for meeting new people. 2 Networking is alien Most people we met did not have an intuitive understanding of how they might access opportunities for work or self-development through their networks. When prompted some people could think of who they might go to for particular things, but for most people there were specific network functions which could be supportive of employability that were missing. The longer people had been out of work, the less likely they were to see their networks in terms of opportunities. 3 Networks can be built to enhance employability We met inspiring people who were doing just that. One mother we met was also doing this on behalf of her school age son, explicitly so that he would be connected to good opportunities when he left education. In sharp contrast, for one of the people we met, networking meant cutting off negative connections that kept dragging him back into crime, so social capital isn’t all useful. In general, very few people had ever thought of, let alone tried to, actively build and shape their networks in order to thrive. 4 Vouching Vouching emerged as a key concept from the networks research. Most of the people we met who had positive experiences of finding, changing or exploring work had had someone vouching for them. People don’t vouch for people that they have never met, but in the cases we saw, it doesn’t take much for someone to feel confident enough to make a recommendation. People furthest from work usually had the fewest people who would be able to vouch for them in something they wanted to do. 5 Employed and unemployed don’t mix Of the people we met, those who were unemployed mostly had unemployed people in their networks, while those who were employed knew mostly employed people. As a result, most work related opportunities are accessible only to people who are already employed. The current system conducts activities that group unemployed people together compounding this. At the same time the unemployed people we met were very suspicious of other people’s reasons for being out of work. There is little sense of community and unemployed people often fall back on family groups, increasing their distance from work. Participle will be developing this work as Employability 2 in September. To find out more

Loops

2011-07-14T12:06:00+00:00

Author: Nicola Marshall

Young people in Britain fare worse than their international peers: academically, behaviorally, economically, and emotionally. Young people don’t fare much better in public opinion polls. Adults deem young people ‘hanging around’ a top threat to community safety. This is despite ten years of major youth policy reform. We have new targets, new strategies, new structures, new services and new standards. Where is the disconnect? We live in an age where ‘teenagers hanging around’ is named as a top threat to community safety. We cannot pick up a morning newspaper without being confronted by headlines about youth gangs, ASBOs, suicide, violence, binge-drinking, obesity, and educational failure. It is hard to ignore the message that young people are ‘out of control.’ Yet, since 1997, the UK government has invested heavily in programmes and services for young people, spending hundreds of millions of pounds on out-of-school youth provision. So, why does the public’s negative perception of young people persist despite such unparalleled investment? Why does Britain rank last on international measures of child and youth wellbeing? How can we change this ‘us’ versus ‘them’ society? In the UK today young people experience more acute problems than young people in any other Western country. Recent decades have seen a plethora of new initiatives and pilots yet, despite these well meaning gestures and policies, outcomes have proved remarkably stubborn. Today our young people are not thriving. In November 2008 Participle formed a partnership with the Aldridge Foundation, Brighton and Hove Council and Croydon Council. Our mission was to understand why outcomes are so often poor and how to meaningfully engage young people in their communities. The result was a new approach called Loops, a social enterprise that aims to expand young people’s purpose and possibility. Loops was piloted in 2009, and is now going live in 2 locations, Croydon and Brighton, and preparing to roll out nationally. Loops starts from a new place. We see young people, not as a costly group at risk of negative experiences, to be protected, but rather as a potential resource, for each other, the wider community and society. Through our work with young people, their families and communities, and drawing on international best practice and research we have developed a clear perspective on what constitutes the ‘good’ adolescence. The good adolescence is not just about young people – it is about relationships and connections to the world around young people. It is about building a broad set of capabilities rather than a narrow set of attainments and it is about the capacity to put these relationships and capabilities within a bigger frame – to tell a story about yourself and where you are going. Take Jo and Calvin, two 19-year-old boys we met in the early stages of our project. Current policy would not deem Jo at-risk: he shows up at college, comes from a dual-parent household, and doesn’t often smoke, drink or truant. But Jo isn’t thriving. He’s flatlining. Three years ago, Jo was at exactly the same place he is now. He struggles to read and write, has no sense of purpose, and relies on his father for employment. Current policy would say Calvin is no longer in risk: he is studying sociology at university, working part-time in a greeting card factory, running several youth mentoring initiatives, and embedded in a supportive faith community. Calvin is now thriving, but he wasn’t always. Three years ago, he was entrenched in gang life, witnessed his best friend’s murder, and was truanting from school. Calvin’s transformation isn’t just about a reduction in risk, but about the enhancement of protective factors. Protective factors are the internal strengths and external supports that enable resiliency and positive living. They are factors like agency, sense of possibility and purpose, control over decision-making, and connectedness to community. They are what give young people a reason to invest in their future, and the future of their communities. International research confirms the value of protective factors in ensuring young people thrive. Protective factors come from meaningful experiences; experiences that start with young people, enable them to feel useful and valued, introduce them to new possibilities, build new capabilities, and forge new relationships. Our work with young people suggests that there is a widespread lack of ‘experiences’ that lead to building these new capabilities. Young people spend most of their time in school or in youth-only services & settings, isolated from their communities and limited in their exposure to different ways of living, doing, and being. They also have little time and space to make sense of what they are seeing, and chart out a different life direction. Loops provides young people with new types of experiences and connections, such as taking on a role, running a campaign, creating their own enterprises, engaging with the community in new ways. These new experiences are complemented by reflection to enable active learning and development. Loops has been designed bottom up to appeal even to those who are currently most disengaged. Loops is not a new service in the traditional sense. It is a process of community transformation in which young people have a stake and ownership. Such a process entails not only drawing diverse organisations and people of all generations into a new social compact and set of activities it implies deep changes in culture, thought patterns and behaviour. Loops is different to the youth service - It has a different purpose: connecting young people to the community, not containing them in a youth centre. It has different success metrics: young people’s sense of self, future and community, not just attendance at a youth club or a reduction in risk behavior. It has a different resource base: people in the community, not buildings or professionals. It uses its resources purposefully—everything Loops does connects to a unifying model about how change happens; Loops is different for young people - In school, young people spend time with peers their same age and perform to benchmarks set by other people. In youth clubs, they show up and take part in whatever is on offer that night. With loops, they interact with adults and peers of different ages in new environments. They build on their strengths and interests. They make intentional choices. They form community contacts. They explore the unfamiliar; Simply put, Loops gets young people to go through new types of experiences, and then reflect on those experiences. This relies on two primary activities: In Community Experiences – These are the heart of Loops. To grow young people’s sense of purpose and possibility, they need to experience their community in new, compelling ways. The young people we’ve met in our work have limited exposure to different perspectives, career pathways and life trajectories. They do not know what ‘could be.’ At the same time, they don’t believe they have the capabilities or networks to actually live out different lives. The first activity carried out by Loops is to find experiences. This is done by asking businesses, organization and individuals within a specific community to open their doors, and spend time with young people around. In a six week prototype, Participle put together over 160 experience in Brighton and Croydon, from being shown how a large hotel works, to helping organise a music festival to meeting a novelist. 90% of these experiences were offered for free. Experiences come from the community—from family-run businesses to large companies to public sector agencies, arts agencies to voluntary groups. Loops works directly with these organisations and individuals to find easy, mutually beneficial ways to engage. Processes of Reflection - Experiences, by themselves, do not lead to transformation. How young people prepare for and interact during experiences influences the value they derive from them. Practicing independence, initiative, and insight (the 3i s) directly affects the lessons they extract and the kinds of connections they make. As a result, Loops supports young people to go on as many experiences as possible, both through one-on-one and group sessions. The adults and older young people who facilitate loop groups are not acting as teachers or parents or experts. They are ‘the same’ as the young people--they’ve just had more experiences in the community and practiced reflection for a longer period. They model curiosity, critical thinking, and open exploration. In addition, unless you receive feedback after you’ve adopted these thriving behaviors, it’s unlikely you know why they matter. Feedback is critical for validating what you do, and building a strong self-concept. Loops have developed extensive tools, training and support processes for the above processes. For more information on this project, or to get Loops up and running in your community, please

EmployAbility

2011-07-14T11:59:00+00:00

Author: Nicola Marshall

As I wrote last year, the current approach to unemployment is a complex, transactional service that only responds to market failure. The services available can succeed in getting some people into work for a period of time. However, there is no support for those in work to move up the skills curve and there is a failure to effectively reach population groups in need. Three groups in particular are failed by the current system: the young, the long-term unemployed and the older 50 + generation. These failings are multiplied in geographic areas and neighbourhoods, where there is a spatial and historic concentration of unemployment. Vast swathes of Britain are being left behind. Working on the ground, we have been developing an alternative approach. We start from people and culture. At the heart of our proposition is an idea for a new social organisation – a sort of 21C trades union – that would be rooted in the local community to support individuals and families to acquire the aptitudes, relationships, confidence, soft and hard skills that make for employability. Once in work, this organisation would continue to support its members to move up the skills curve. Our model draws on our existing work with young people, families in crisis and the 50 plus generation. We have learnt how to address the wider issues around employability, support extreme micro enterprises and open people up to thinking differently about themselves and their futures. We have also seen how new forms of social organisations can lead to radical new solutions and the generation of resources. As with all our projects, we cannot at this stage describe exactly what our solutions would look like. If we had all of the answers, the project would not be necessary. Therefore, with the support of central government and the opposition, we are looking to partner with Local Authority’s to invest in creating this new approach with us. At the moment we are in close discussions with partners in very different and diverse parts of Britain.

Social Health

2011-07-14T09:39:00+00:00

Author: Nicola Marshall

We know that the UK is facing an epidemic of chronic disease and that current approaches are economically unsustainable. With so many people suffering from a long-term condition, (60% and set to grow exponentially), it’s no longer about treatment: it’s about supporting a new way of life. And to be sustainable, that life must be lived in society, not inside a medical framework. We just don’t think this can work with more of the same – improving clinical pathways is just tinkering at a system that is flawed in its very nature: an industrial, acute, condition-focused model being personalised to fit a situation that is all about the individual emotions, motivations and relationships that drive or hinder lifestyle change. We believe that a move from a system burdened by demand to one strengthened by participation will depend on a significant paradigm shift: from medicine to motivation, needs to capabilities and clinical expertise to self-determination and peer support. From our previous work on conditions such as diabetes and on broader preventative wellbeing, we have a practical understanding of the tools and techniques that work to uncover motivations, influence behaviours and lift barriers to lifestyle change. We believe that a new model of ‘social health’ could be designed to make this happen on the ground in a way that is both financially sustainable and rapidly scalable. A new model would: • Cut across conditions to provide new forms of support for the emotional, psychological, physical and social issues all those learning to live with a chronic condition experience; • Employ the best lifestyle change and self management techniques and technologies, additionally creating a legacy of preventative wellbeing activity that becomes ubiquitous in everyday life; • Grow resource by marrying professional expertise with peer support, mixing the formal and informal, making use of non medical resources, drawing on the untapped expertise and resources found in family and social networks; • Be situated in the fabric of people’s everyday lives, distributing tools out to them, building on social dynamics, spreading through social networks, allowing people to opt in and ensuring early adopters draw others along; • Work with people not as conditions or as isolated individuals but in the context of their families and social networks and towards outcomes that are holistic: for many the end goal will be a good social life, vitality and continued opportunities for work and learning rather than good condition management. It would also take a new form – one that engenders a new way of interacting, that allows for new forms of ownership, and new flows of resources and expertise. Participle’s work shows that radically different kinds of organisation can unlock new, low cost, effective solutions that engage meaningfully with people’s every day lives. (See Circle and Loops). Something similar is needed in this area. Up until now, the debate has been largely academic – no-one really knows how to move this into practice against the current ongoing investment in old infrastructure, where the essential features of western medicine: scientific discovery, greater professionalism, commercial innovation and massively increased funding – are so invested in maintaining and developing old models of delivery and behaviour that they have themselves become part of the problem. In effect, we have lacked a structural opening that could crack open the existing system. The new proposal for GP-led commissioning could be just that. The danger is that what is created is more of the same, provision that still sits within a clinical, rather than social, paradigm, and still fails to have the impact required both in terms of health outcomes and a shift in responsibility to people themselves. We are proposing a model that sits squarely in the new - that is low cost, relational, works with the grain of existing networks, motivational - joins soft stuff to hard, formal to informal: a platform into which GPs could refer their patients at low cost, that meshes with people’s every day lives and leads to both sustained lifestyle change and appropriate management of long term conditions. We don’t know yet what shape this will take; as in all our projects, it will develop in collaboration with people, through a deep understanding of their real lives and robust economic analysis of Our social enterprise for older people, Circle, is a good example of what it could look like in practice. Circle takes the existing model of social care – rationing care according to need – and turns it on its head, taking the premise that connecting older people in a way that allows then to build social connections, increase their contributions, creates a network of support will both save costs initially and reduce the demand on services later on. By creating a new kind of platform – a cross between a mutual, a social club and a concierge service Circle makes it possible to increase the resources available, pooling public, private and voluntary resource. A supporting operating system essentially slides the new offer between formal services and people’s every day lives – their work places, kitchens and community spaces. This in turn allows new propositions to develop which are member led, and which mesh with every day lives in a dynamic ongoing system. The technology we have developed for Circle makes it possible to be flexible locally, and grow ‘applications’ that are supported by a simple but intelligent back end system. We have also understood how to design the social fabric of Circle in order to make it attractive to join and contribute to, and allows social dynamics – early adopters pull other along to work in terms of changing the culture of dependency and need that the current alternative has created. We believe that many of these aspects would be applicable to long-term conditions, and so we’re looking for partners to build the first of what we intend will be a new, national approach to Social Health. Watch this space, and if you are interested in investing or contributing please contact us! Contact us: Hilary Cottam hilaryc@participle.net http://www.participle.net

Madeleine Bunting writes about the LIFE project in the Guardian

2011-02-09T12:35:00+00:00

Author: Nicola Marshall

See the full article here. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/feb/09/tough-love-troubled-families-swindon-participle

Madeleine Bunting writes about Participle in today’s Guardian

2010-06-28T11:41:00+00:00

Author: Cherie Fullerton

See the full article here http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/27/new-model-welfare-state

Get Together design work on show at the National Design Triennial: Why Design Now? New York

2010-06-15T15:15:00+00:00

Author: Cherie Fullerton

Why Design Now? Designers around the world are answering this question by creating products, prototypes, buildings, landscapes, messages, and more that address social and environmental challenges. How can we power the world with clean energy? How can we move people and products safely and efficiently? How can we shelter communities in sustainable environments? How can we close the loop of materials extraction and disposal? How can we enable people around the globe to generate and share wealth? How can we improve the quality of life for all people through health-care innovations? How can we communicate ideas effectively and creatively? How can we discover beauty and wisdom in simple forms that use minimal resources? Collectively, designers are seeking to enhance human health, prosperity, and comfort while diminishing the conflicts between people and the global ecosystems we inhabit. Participle's Get Together work is now showing as part of this exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. See the full article here

Putting the Social Back Into Services

2010-05-15T14:08:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders

Is there an alternative to the seemingly inevitable cuts to public services? Hilary Cottam of Participle poses the question. See the full article here

Interim report launch of Beyond Beveridge: Principles for 2020 Public Services

2010-03-19T17:04:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders

'Beyond Beveridge' is the interim report of the Commission on 2020 Public Services. It sets out the urgency for change, the limits of our current public services settlement, and the need for a systematic and long-term approach to reform. The report offers a positive vision for 2020 public services, and three policy building blocks to get us there: a shift in culture, a shift in power, and a shift in finance. The report represents the interim findings of our diverse and experienced commission, and the principles on which it will base its final conclusions in summer 2010. Hilary Cottam, Principal Partner or Participle is one of the 20 cross party commissioners tasked with looking into the future of Britain's public services. This week Hilary was on the panel launching the Commission's interim report Beyond Beveridge: Principles for 2020 Public Services.

Participatory Systems, Moving Beyond 20th Century Institutions, by Hilary Cottam

2010-03-19T09:53:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders

BIG IDEAS for the next decade: Participatory Systems, Moving Beyond 20th Century Institutions by Hilary Cottam. Featured in the Winter 2010 - Vol.XXXI. No 4 - Harvard International Review. Read the full article here.

The World’s Most Influential Designers

2010-02-03T09:55:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders

Not only is "influential" difficult to measure, but "design" is also nigh on impossible to define neatly... From design thinkers to hands-on design doers in industries from graphics to industrial to auto design, our chosen 27 luminaries represent a diverse cross-section of design disciplines. But all those selected have one thing in common: They are in some way responsible for shaping the world around us. Business Week names Hilary Cottam as one of the World's Most Influential Designers .

On the Big Society

2009-11-19T13:44:00+00:00

Author: Hilary Cottam

This week David Cameron gave his big ‘poverty’ speech. The press are still chewing it over and profoundly disagreeing about its implications. A ‘meaty’ speech, was the verdict of Ben Brogan in the Telegraph. ‘Incoherent’ and ‘utterly duplicitous’, claimed Madeleine Bunting on the left. From Participle’s perspective, David Cameron’s speech is welcome. Firstly because he has brought centre stage the big social challenges we are focused on. Secondly because he has put his finger on a number of issues that are so evident to the families and communities we work with. Current models of both service delivery and welfare reform are failing to connect to people’s lives in ways that foster and support deep and meaningful change. That said, there seem to me to be two central flaws in his argument. They matter because the way we frame the problem is likely to determine the solutions proposed. Cameron writes about the suffocating state, but he is absolutely silent on the rapacious market, to which the New Labour state has been so subservient and so closely connected. It is too simplistic to say that human kindness has been squeezed out by the state. Certainly target driven public services have squeezed out the space and time for human relationships. Their relentless, palliative focus has also forced people to categorise themselves as needy in order to receive support, which can squeeze out resilience and responsibility. Cameron is also right that feverish social engineering commanded by Westminster will not bring about change, but neither will ‘nudging’ in the context of entrenched poverty and increasing inequality. Ultimately all our current service targets are economic – they support an overarching market objective of economic growth. Human factors – the non-measurable elements of trust, time, friendship, human relationships are squeezed out within this market driven framework, no matter who is responsible for delivery – the state or the private sector. This brings me to the second problem with Cameron’s thesis – his views on inequality. Inequality is at the heart of the matter. Cameron approvingly quotes Wilkinson, author of the Spirit Level whose work shows that the more unequal a society, the worse every quality of life indicator. Bizarrely in his speech, Cameron then goes on to discuss how it is about redistribution between the middle and the bottom. But, as Wilkinson himself has commented, in reaction to the speech; ‘Bringing down the top incomes is very important.’ Wilkinson imagines income distribution in society as if we are all points on a piece of elastic, explaining that, if you pull out the top further, then everyone below gets spread further apart. Longitudinal research shows there is a clear correlation between income inequality and social glue. Britain is one of the most unequal societies in the world. Unless we are willing to talk about and address this disparity, neither a re-imagined state nor an army of social entrepreneurs can build Cameron’s big society. These are some of the structural issues that Participle seeks to address with our mission statement (Beveridge 4.0) and our work with families and communities across Britain. We have argued for a capabilities approach – a model that would invest in fostering a different value set including relationships. And in our practical work we are learning what it takes to bring this about – often with the most troubled families in the most isolated communities. In this context we welcome Cameron’s support for social enterprises such as the ones we are growing, but we would like to push him on the framework in which these enterprises are currently expected to operate. We find in our work that the community energy Cameron seeks to foster is alive and well. Circle – our enterprise providing a new form of elder support in London cannot handle the numbers who want to work and volunteer for us. Loops – our new universal youth service has shown in an early pilot stage that businesses and communities are prepared to contribute to providing experiences and reflection sessions for all young people – they have just never been asked before. To thrive and sustain themselves over time, these and other initiatives across Britain need a different framework in which to operate. Embedding change within communities takes time and cannot only be measured by economic indicators. It is all too easily strangled by expensive bureaucratic frameworks - protection policies for example, that actively work against transparent, caring human inter-action. We need a culture that welcomes a broader set of ideas about problem solving – not a centralised, one solution fits all approach that we have seen over the last 20 years. It is difficult work and those who support change at the front line need to be properly paid and emotionally supported – not fobbed off with the trappings of ‘professionalisation’. This will not make it more expensive – quite the contrary Participle’s work shows that significant financial savings can be made but resources need to be distributed right to the community level and again we need frameworks that facilitate this. Ultimately however all these ideas, the efforts of Participle and our activist siblings can only act as sticking plaster in a nation of increasing inequality. Let’s hope that Cameron really is listening to Richard Wilkinson and his colleagues

State of Loneliness

2009-07-01T08:20:00+00:00

Author: Melanie Beasley

The government's new public services reforms focus on rights and entitlements, but, argues Charles Leadbeater in the Guardian, supportive relationships are key to tackling social ills See the full article here

Beveridge, Welfare Reform, Voluntary Action and Participle in The Times

2009-06-20T10:48:00+00:00

Author: Nicola Marshall

Whilst William Beveridge's pioneering 1948 report on welfare reform asked for "room, opportunity and encouragement for voluntary action in seeking new ways of social advance," current welfare systems manage a 'one way' relationship between the state and individuals in need. Today's Times article mentions Participle's involvement in community based initiatives to 'help people help themselves,' a motto of current Participle project Southwark Circle. Communities do not need to be reduced to simply 'people with needs,' rather that there are individuals who also have skills and knowledge to share. By expanding social networks to facilitate these skills into the community, the state need not expensively intervene, and we can indeed 'help people help themselves.' See Camilla's full editorial

Only the Lonely: Public Service Reform, the Individual and the State

2009-04-08T07:09:00+00:00

Author: Melanie Beasley

In 2008, Participle worked with a diverse group of over 200 older people and their families in Westminster and Southwark. We spent time in their homes, going shopping with them, helping with the odd job and introducing them to one another, gaining insight into how individuals and families see themselves, their aspirations, their dreams. The aim of our work was to ensure a rich third age, one that every citizen, regardless of income level or assets might live: a life less ordinary. Specifically, in Southwark our goal was the design of a new universal service that might be replicated nationally - supporting older people to live in a way of their choosing as they age. In Westminster our work has been more closely focused, we have worked only with those who define themselves as lonely, the majority of whom are over 80 and housebound with the goal of facilitating rich social lives. This article briefly tells the story of this work, the affordable solutions we have designed and the nascent lessons for how we might re-think a welfare state, its relationship to individuals and most importantly of all to wider social bonds. To read the article click here

Unbelievable?

2008-09-24T17:31:00+00:00

Author: Hilary Cottam

We're launching our mission statement this week, we call it Beveridge 4.0. It is a brief but fundamental critique of the current condition of the UK's welfare state. At Participle, we believe as many others do, that its condition is critical. An outdated system, that cannot solve the problems we now face. A system dominated by large institutions, not the individuals who use them. Things are not going to get better. What hurts the most, is that the man widely regarded as the architect of our welfare state, William Beveridge, in the later part of his life, predicted the situation we now find ourselves in. And, what a situation we are in. At the time of writing, last week, one of America's largest financial institutions went bust, and another was effectively nationalised. In Britain, similar events were/are unfolding. Global stocks are making record falls, oil prices are rising in unprecedented daily jumps. A financial crisis has unveiled the short falls of capitalism. In the process, capitalism and the state have had an almost unprecedented strain put on their relationship. As we experience the unease of watching apparently solid institutional foundations all too easily turn liquid, we're revisiting our faith in the state. In times of trouble, we look to the state for support, from heavy intervention to new regulations. But, for many of us, our faith in the state took a similar bashing some years ago. For Britain's growing inequality and social recession have revealed the short falls in our welfare state. Shortfalls that have not been met by introducing elements of the market, or by trying to make the state more 'personal'. What is needed we argue is a very different set of arrangements which start from a local perspective with individuals and families, building a new set of capabilities, drawing on a wider set of resources and supported by very different institutions. Participle runs large scale projects that address the big social issues of our time, while demonstrating how a new welfare settlement might operate. Our work has made a big difference in some communities, but Participle is a small group of designers, policy analysts, social scientists and entrepreneurs based in South London. We need the help of others to inform our thinking, and doing. This document draws on our work with and for the public at the community level - it is in this broadest sense collaborative, and it will evolve collaboratively. Therefore, this document is written with an Open Source process in mind. It is just version 1. In 2009, we will launch Version 2, including all the relevant opinions, suggestions and contributions from people like you. This is the spirit of Beveridge 4.0. This document outlines a starting point, no more. Be part of this journey. We will be developing different ways to canvas involvement in Beveridge 4.0. For now, we ask you to comment on this blog. We promise to collate all comments, and where relevant develop them as themes in Version 2. The size of the task seems daunting, but at Participle, we see the giant Capitalism evolving before us, and see no reason why a similar transformation cannot take place within the welfare state. It's not unbelievable. Download Beveridge 4.0 here.