The Equality Strategy released last week is to be welcomed. The real challenge is for the public sector to make it happen. By remarkable coincidence ‘Making it Happen’ is one of the core principles of the strategy.
The light touch pragmatic monitoring is especially welcome but must not be used by organisations to avoid full implementation.
Legislation cannot achieve a fairer Britain that can only be achieved by people caring.
The High Court has refused permission to the Fawcett Society to challenge the legality of the government’s emergency budget. The challenge was on the grounds of discrimination against women as they would bear the brunt of the cuts. The challenge was perhaps doomed to fail as it is not clear what the remedy would have been. Declaring the budget unlawful does not seem useful.
Interesting to note that the government did concede that it should have carried out equality impact assessments on the budget. Hopefully this important assessment process will now get more backing from the public sector in order to deliver better services for all members of society.
This document sets out a new way of framing the responsibilities that Local Authorities and other public bodies have in relation to equality, diversity and cohesion. It is based on new thinking concerning identity and fairness. It seeks to reconcile these “specialist” agendas with the realities of managing large public sector organisations – and, in so doing, to produce better and more efficient results.
Fairness is central to the public sector’s role as it seeks to ensure that those in need get the support they require. It is both a moral imperative and a legal requirement. There is a compelling argument that the public are more interested in fairness than in favour: individuals are more concerned that public servants demonstrate fair (and accountable) decision making than that their own concerns are prioritised.
In order to organise itself, and how it should respond to the needs of its citizens and clients, the public sector has always categorised people. These categories can be powerful, in highlighting patterns of injustice and unfairness. But they can also be severely inhibiting, by imposing identities on people that just do not fit who they actually are and which consequently fail to understand what they actually need.
Britain is now diverse in more diverse ways than ever before. And, socially in the last decade, it is a changed country. So the equalities agenda needs to be refreshed; to be made more sophisticated; to become more relevant to the super-diversity and fluid identities which characterise the people of modern Britain. Existing equalities concepts, laws and vocabulary, which have proved useful in addressing gross challenges of prejudice and exclusion, have served us well in the past but need now to take account of the change they have brought about. They are now less suited to the new circumstances of a changed Britain and consequently they are less effective. In some cases they may even worsen the issues they are there to solve.
In addition disadvantage does not simply stem from single identities, even though people who ‘belong’ to certain groups may experience persistent bias. There is an emerging consensus that disadvantage is created by a convergence of circumstances.
Our analysis and the way we deliver services needs to take account of this more complex understanding.
The new Equalities Bill seeks to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations. It states the need for public authorities to have “due regard” to the needs of particular equalities strands or groups, and extends the existing six strands enshrined in law to a total of nine (adding gender reassignment, marriage/civil partnerships and pregnancy/maternity). It also makes local authorities responsible for addressing inequality resulting from social background.
In practice, these requirements reaffirm the need for an Equalities Impact Assessment (EIA) -like device in order to demonstrate that “due regard” of the needs of specific groups has been taken into account in the design and delivery of services.
However EIAs, based simply on predetermined groups (or a slavish adherence to the strands) only ever work at the gross or summary level. By demonstrating due regard across nine strands, a public authority can show compliance. It will not, through such a mechanism, demonstrate real responsiveness to the particular composition and dynamic of its population, nor the nuanced need of the individuals within it. It will tick boxes, but will it get to the heart of any problems?
Across public services, from healthcare to policing or education, there is strong recognition that we need to drop a standardised, centrally prescribed model of service provision in favour of personalisation; the shaping and coordination of the service provided to the citizen in response to that individual’s needs.
There is also an increased recognition that, alongside public services, social capital is key to addressing needs. In short, the more people connect with one another, the better their well-being (measureable in positive crime, health, economic, educational and other outcomes).
The personalisation agenda is potentially extremely powerful in addressing unfairness, as it allows us to fine tune support to the aspirations and needs of individuals. It does not sit neatly, however, with the existing mainstream equalities concepts, where service design is shaped centrally in response to crude categorisations (e.g. ethnicity). The personalisation agenda, which is still evolving in practice, needs to be underpinned by a more refined fairness framework to ensure that service design is genuinely able to respond to real vulnerabilities and opportunities for individuals.
If the state, locally or centrally, treats people in ways that we do not recognise as relevant to ourselves, we come to distrust it. If central or local government makes assumptions about us that bear little or no relation to our lives, we disregard it. If the state seeks representation on our behalf from “leaders” that we do not recognise, then we feel no part of the process. Typically this is seen in attempts by government to relate to “muslims”, or “BME communities”, but it is as true when applied to young men, for instance, or to the elderly. Public Services need to learn new ways to talk to us as individuals. How far does the current system of “consultation” serve only the formal needs of government and long established vested interests, rather than developing public service responsiveness in a dynamic way that matches the aspirations of individuals?
A more sophisticated approach to fairness and the ‘democracy’ of consultation is required: one that builds on Britain’s compromised, layered, muddled but robust governance system, but which allows for different models of involvement with, and responsiveness to, different cultural norms and the needs of individuals.
The existing equality framework is potentially expensive, allowing for the rather blunt assumption that, by virtue of a person’s belonging to a particular ethnic or religious group, that person needs additional support from the public purse or has a set of pre-determined needs
The trouble with the current equality framework is that while the principle is admirable – to recognise that certain groups of people suffer disadvantage disproportionately in certain circumstances – the effect is all to often to apply resources with a blunderbuss inaccurately aimed not at the problem but at the groups. This is very wasteful. Resources need to be more accurately focused. It also potentially leads to a reinforcing of the tensions between groups, as particular ethnic groups, for instance, are seen to receive more public support than others, regardless of the levels of individual need.
A more sophisticated approach, building on the emerging thinking associated with the personalisation approach, the convergence that causes disadvantage, and the progress made in the past period, focuses resources on the most needy, as defined by their circumstances rather than their broad categorisation, allowing for a more targeted and efficient service. At a time of immense pressure on the public purse, such focusing is necessary to avoid either unsustainable spending levels or resources being spread too thinly.
This more sophisticated approach calls for three elements. These are:
The vocabulary and logic with which a more sophisticated analysis of equality, diversity, and fairness can be progressed;
A set of methodologies, processes and mechanisms which recognise that the particular qualities of equality and diversity flow from local character and circumstance, and from existing organisational strengths/weaknesses;
An agreed process about how to reshape services to achieve the effectiveness, efficiency and focus.
Each area and each organisation is different. There can be no easy answers and no glib change manuals. Instead, the framework acts as a prompt and support for management, seeking to identify opportunities to improve customer service, institutional effectiveness and efficiency.
The public sector has, especially during this phase of the economic cycle, three over-riding aims. These can be summarised as:
Providing good service to the service user; and solving social problems effectively;
Connecting with the citizen; making decisions fairly and transparently; meeting legal and other compliance/assessment frameworks;
Stripping out unnecessary costs, improving value for money.
In implementing a more sophisticated approach to fairness, three distinct forms of identity need to be separated:
What the data show about the pattern of local people’s behaviours and needs (need).
How the individual chooses to categorise him or herself (individual);
How society categorises each of us (group).
The challenge for public service is to progress each of the three aims in ways which take account of, and respond to, the different forms of identity. The heart of the framework is therefore a cross referencing of the three aims with the three forms of identity. This produces a checklist of imperatives, which, the organisation or partnership can use to drive priorities and actions.
The core framework is a checklist of nine imperatives set out under the three aims. These should be used as the basis for assessing and improving the fairness of a location, partnership or organisation.
Aim A: Customer benefit
Support is prioritised for those whose need is greatest
Support is shaped by the involvement and the needs of the recipient
Managers focus as much on the quality of support relationships, particularly with the customer, as on process and target-based performance
Aim B: Institutional effectiveness
Management structures and performance measures are designed to encourage cross-functional cooperation in support of the customer
Consultative and accountability mechanisms are aligned with the ways the citizens see themselves
Systems are in place to ensure demonstrated compliance with equalities, human rights and cohesion standards/laws
Aim C: Efficiency
The way in which resources are used to address the requirements of the most in need is continually reviewed and improved
Minimal resources are expended on responding to unrepresentative lobbying groups/individuals
Throughout all services, there is an emphasis on preventing the escalation of problems, reducing dependency, and increasing community self-help
This brief document is part of a major piece of work on fairness and identity, led by Black Radley and Simon Fanshawe, and supported by a wide range of public sector organisations across the UK. The outputs from this work include networks of like minded organisations, at the most senior level, and methodologies to support the effective use of the framework. For more details, please contact Black Radley.
It’s the scene in a movie. A tornado sweeps in, death and destruction rules , then the dust settles and the lucky survivors emerge with their families from their bunkers. Those who get to the bunkers survive, those without bunkers do not.
With everyone in the public sector resigned to the inevitable cuts in budgets and all the consequent threats to staff and services, there is a tendency for public servants to rush with their valuables to the bunkers – to protect core budgets and staff, as the budget storms blow. The consequence is that the damage is done to those services and service users that are left behind. And the risk we run is that the consequences are unfair: that the most needy suffer the most, and that social tensions and other problems go through the roof. This is not, unlike the tornado, a natural and inevitable phenomenon.
Over the last few months, there have been many thousands of meetings across the country, nervously anticipating budget cuts, examining options, selecting preferred responses. And few of those meetings will have show the required imagination and leadership. As more information emerges from Whitehall concerning the actual cuts, it is predictable that the hatches will be battened down to protect the orthodox ideas of what is important, rather than on some of the better innovations that did start to emerge during more prosperous times.
In times of plenty, with considerable additional funding from government, many local authorities experimented with new services and new forms of service delivery. These included neighbourhood management, town centre management and regeneration schemes, environmental wardens, job creation schemes, new affordable housing developments – some of which were highly effective. The successful ones did not do things to people (“interventions”); they recognised that the most sustainable solutions come when you help people take charge for themselves.
The problem with these “softer” approaches is that the successes are less immediate, less easily attributed to the programme itself, and less easily photographed for the front pages. They also don’t fit well with the masculine management orthodoxy of public services. Though the results of this approach – call it empowerment, co-production, community development, social capital, or (if you will) Big Society – are extraordinary, they are not as easily managed and justified as a top-down masterplan or a new housing development. So it is difficult to make the case for their continuation, even though the savings achieved, because they are all in the prevention game, are considerable.
These approaches, with the active support and leadership of local people, have been used to powerful effect in some of our most challenging settings: Lozells, Birmingham, for instance. This super-diverse area, home to people from 170 of the world’s 193 countries, has suffered from pronounced deprivation and social tension. But in the last three years, during which time there has been a concerted effort to take this more responsive approach, the areas has seen a significant drop in crime rates and an increase in the attractiveness of the area, as measured by the relative rise in house prices.
But what can we do? If the budgets have to be cut – which they probably do – then what alternative is there than to stop doing some things?
Well, the first thing to ensure is that we are stopping the right things, rather than those things which don’t sit well with the public sector comfort zone. There is too much happening the way it does because that is the way we have always done it. A brutal instrumentalism has not delivered results and must be replaced by a different, more relationship-oriented perspective.
And the second opportunity is to bring some innovative thinking to the way we do what we do. This means getting away from an obsession with optimising our in-year cash revenue and capital spend, and realising that there are revenue and capital budgets out there which dwarf even Labour’s public spending. I mean, of course, the whole voluntary and community economy which is not cash based, and the whole of the private sector economy, which is. The real question for public budgets is, How can they help to optimise the effectiveness of these wider systems? By freeing our public sector budgets from the constraints of the instrumentalist orthodoxy, we can spend smaller amounts on achieving more. We could even call it “Big Society”. The following are some examples.
Adopt-a-service campaign – This can be part of a general mobilisation campaign. Examples include neighbourhood managers, town centre managers, local libraries, park maintenance. Why not launch a campaign for public and business support to adopt some of these services? The recent campaign to secure the Staffordshire Hoard is a parallel example.
Set-up social enterprises – Instead of making staff redundant, why not use an equivalent expenditure to help them to set up social enterprises? Some will fail, but will have picked up powerful skills and attitudes on the way.
Transfer assets on licence to voluntary and community groups to use them to attract private sector funding to develop housing and other amenities and generate income to pay for some local services.
We are still one of the wealthiest societies on earth. We have learnt enough about human psychology and sociology to know that individual and general well-being (which is the purpose of public services) results not from cash but from a sense of purpose and from strong relationships. Why don’t we use our cash to support those things? The last place to find them is in the bunker.