By RedQuadrant consultant, Claire Bethel

RedQuadrant has successfully worked with two police forces in the last year to carry out feasibility studies into the roll-out of DRIVE[1], an intensive intervention for perpetrators of high risk high harm domestic abuse. The Home Office announced £10 million of funding in the Budget this year for interventions working with perpetrators of domestic abuse. This includes £1.1 million for implementation of the Drive project to expand it into new areas. Any Police and Crime Commissioner in England and Wales can apply.

Domestic abuse is thought to cost in the region of £66 billion a year in England and Wales[2]. Although both men and women experience abuse, it remains a gendered crime, more commonly inflicted on women by men, with at least 27% of all women experiencing partner abuse since the age of 16[3]. Traditional approaches to tackling domestic abuse in this country have for years focused on providing support to victim-survivors and their children. This has changed in recent years with recognition that, if we are to stop domestic abuse in its tracks, we have to do something to challenge the behaviour of perpetrators of high risk or serial abuse. Failing to do so allows them to move from one relationship to another, wreaking havoc until the victim-survivor manages to get away or the authorities take action.

Support is frequently provided by local agencies in the form of refuges; providing sanctuary in the victim-survivor’s home (eg: strengthening locks, installing stronger doors); a range of criminal justice measures and helping victims to seek safety. Much of the caseload of a Children’s Services Department is taken up with addressing the consequences of domestic abuse – frequently leading to child protection plans or, in extreme cases, children being taken into care.

It was recognised that criminal justice interventions punished the offender but did little to change their behaviour which is frequently entrenched, stemming from adverse childhood experiences, including witnessing domestic abuse in childhood. Evaluation of traditional perpetrator programmes has been inconclusive, with high rates of recidivism by participants. Concern that this approach, whilst both worthy and necessary, didn’t help to address the behaviour and mindset of the perpetrator led to greater efforts to find a longer term solution.

In response, a number of programmes have been developed to tackle the root cause of domestic abuse perpetrators’ behaviour. DRIVE, developed by a consortium of voluntary sector organisations[4], aims to tackle high harm and serial perpetrators by challenging behaviour and preventing abuse. This is a truly multi-agency approach, relying on collaboration between police, voluntary and community sector, local authority, housing, probation and many other agencies. An evaluation of a pilot project found that it has led to the number of participating service users reducing their use of each type of domestic violence and abuse behaviour – for example, physical abuse reduced by 82% and sexual abuse by 88%[5]. It is a three-pronged approach consisting of engaging with the perpetrator, supporting the victim and using disruption to penalise any ongoing abusive behaviour.

A RedQuadrant team, with a range of expertise on domestic abuse and interventions to address it, has worked with two Police and Crime Commissioners – one urban and one in a more rural area – to evaluate the effectiveness of their DRIVE pilot and to examine the feasibility of rolling it out across the whole police force area. Taking both a quantitative and a qualitative approach, our work has involved interviewing a wide range of stakeholders to find out their views on what difference a pilot of DRIVE has made in their area; an economic analysis into the costs and benefits of the scheme and potential ways of rolling it out, and an analysis of their initial findings to see if these were likely to match those produced by the original pilot being evaluated by the University of Bristol (spoiler: it does).   

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[1] http://driveproject.org.uk/

[2] Oliver R, Alexander B, Roe S et al, The economic and social costs of domestic abuse, Research Report 107, Home Office, January 2019.

[3] Smith et al, 2012, cited in NICE guideline, Domestic abuse and violence: multi-agency working, page 28.

[4] Respect, SafeLives and Social Finance.

[5] Hester M, Eisenstadt N, et al, Evaluation of the Drive Project – a three-year pilot to address high-risk high- harm perpetrators of domestic abuse, University of Bristol, Executive Summary, January 2020, page 2.

By RedQuadrant consultant Charley Maher

In my blog in April I discussed how, because of COVID-19, local authorities have experienced a significant increase in demand for packages of support and an increase in people requiring support in the community as they lost access to their informal networks of families, friends and communities.  To enable local authorities to respond to the most urgent and serious cases, volunteers, charities and third sector organisations have come together to respond to the crisis; food banks, befriending services, distributing packages, sharing creative ideas to reduce social isolation, etc.  Organisations unified as we started trusting one another, and relationships between sectors are strengthening.  This newfound trust has resulted in quicker and smoother solutions to immediate need as we see conversations between individuals and those who know them best. We can see communities, volunteers and third sector organisations being trusted to engage and respond with people they know.

There is the question of how councils will cope in the post-COVID world of adult social care, with the increase in demand, in business as usual community reviews and in people who use services? My suggested answer is to build on these new approaches of trusting providers, trusting care agencies and third sectors who have existing relationships with people.  If we can trust them in a crisis, can we extend this trust into the future thereby extending and continuing this sense of community and togetherness we see now?  As we utilise the resources and knowledge these organisations and providers have to respond to the crisis, can we see this as a new approach to implement in our services and practice? Can we simplify processes and remove some of the formalities and structures that serve as time-consuming and potential blockers to true conversation-based approaches?

Before the Covid crisis, we did some work with a London borough to research, coproduce and test a model whereby the third sector was able to carry out some of the statutory functions of adult social care. A public consultation with people who used services, carers and families were open to the concept, with reassurances around training and quality assurance with the local authority maintaining oversight and responsibility.  Ongoing consultation with the third sector demonstrated an appetite for providers and voluntary organisations to be more involved in the statutory functions and the belief that doing so would improve outcomes for individuals that use services. Piloting, with high levels of face to face training, ongoing support, point of contacts for advice and training,  provided evidence of the capabilities of the third sector to produce person centred, strengths based assessments and reviews with individuals which resulted in creative support plans and increased use of community resources as opposed to the default approach of formal services.

Public consultation and provider engagement and piloting shows us it is possible to develop and build on trusting relationships with care agencies and the third sector.  The COVID – 19 crisis has shown that local authorities have turned to providers and the third sector to support them and it has been this joined-up approach which has helped meet the increased needs.  Yet we can still see some hesitation around continuing with these trusting relationships.  Why?  Assessments and reviews are statutory functions.  They are important pieces of work with individuals which require skilled conversations and person-centred interactions, a broad knowledge base to encompass,  direct payments and financial considerations. And ultimately Local authorities remain responsible for these functions therefore it is understandable there may be hesitations around using providers and the third sector to complete them. The question then became; how do we reduce these uncertainties and support the development of these relationships with providers and the third sector?

As we suggested in the previous blog, this would require training and upskilling of voluntary and third sectors: the Care Act is clear that those undertaking assessments and reviews should have the skills to do so.  We have created a qualification specification with clear learning outcomes and training modules to as part of an accredited qualification to upskill providers, care agencies, and the third sector across adult social care. Before we progress this any further, we would like to engage with local authorities, providers, commissioners who are potentially interested in making greater use of the third sector for assessments and reviews: we are interested in working in a couple of areas to refine and develop the work we have undertaken to date on qualifications in this space.

Output from groupwork at the second ‘build back better in the days after’ virtual round table.

The days after – a learning community to build back better – join now: www.publicservicetransformation.org/2020/04/the-days-after-a-learning-community-to-build-back-better

Reflections of the ideas expressed: Stephen Moss, Senior Consultant, RedQuadrant

In our second build back better in the days after session as part of an online gathering using ‘open space’ methodology, an interest group formed around this question:

What kind of leadership is needed in public services and how localised will it need to become?

A complementary question was merged with the first to stimulate the discussion:

What future culture, leadership attributes and governance is going to be required for local authorities where large scale remote working is a new reality?

The discussion was conducted online via zoom in a breakout room with participants with a range of perspectives on public services. The main points were captured on a ‘jamboard’ – a virtual whiteboard set up to support the group discussion (sidebar). This blog builds on the discussion.

Four broad themes of leadership capability emerged:

• System leadership of place
• (Leaders) willing to work with community empowerment and sustainability
• Relationship-based leadership
• Safe working: psychological and physical

This blog expands on the post-its (highlighted in italics) to define a place-based, relational leadership approach emerging from the lockdown.

System leadership of place

Street level support networks eg Wigan What does this mean for how we lead? How do we lead on a strengths-based model?

empowering communities and families to support parents and children

Public service leaders need to create a different relationship with communities in the places they serve. This suggests greater emphasis on asset-based approaches to development and building capacity in local communities to strengthen local support networks and economies. Assets include people, physical natural and build environments, knowledge, businesses and goodwill. Studies such as ‘Born in Bradford’ point towards the need to create ‘community readiness’ to tackle local social issues impacting safety, health and well-being.

In places like Wigan, this is also about re-defining the social contract between local authority and communities it serves and how decision-making and power are distributed. We have seen during Covid many examples of people and their communities creating new support networks for more vulnerable people. We also cannot yet measure the impact of lockdown on health outcomes in local populations; we have seen health inequalities cruelly exposed, and the collapse of many SMEs and increases in unemployment on the economic horizon. In this time of transition then, public service leaders have little choice but to let go of power, regroup to ensure the safety of the most vulnerable and look at how to work with each other and their communities in new ways.

(Leaders) willing to work with community empowerment and sustainability

The discussion here focused on local authority leadership however the principles apply to public services in general, as the focus moves on to what is needed in a locality.

Willingness for LAs to do things differently and focus on empowering communities – Need right skills and values to do this

Understanding communities and building relationships

Local authorities as facilitators of services not delivering services

Leadership capabilities across the system/place – values based

Developing leadership across the locality – in the community as well as public services – means identifying with the needs and aspirations of that locality. This can be an essential part of building capacity in the community to care and to resolve important issues locally – care for the elders, dementia-friendly places, sustainable local economies and climate emergency responses, resolving anti-social behaviours. As leadership capabilities are developed everywhere, creating a coherent shared view of the priorities for that locality becomes central to community development, the role of commissioning and the coproduction of services that are relevant for the population there.

Focus on relationships at all levels – trumps structure

This means collaborating to make change and improvement happen irrespective of formal organization structures. Good relationships between all parties at a local level will drive better outcomes than formalized structures created  to ‘leverage coordination’ but where relationships misfire or lack trust and incentive to collaborate in innovative ways. Much time, energy and resources can be spent on ‘form’ – structuring coordination and complex governance – but the key point here is to pay attention to behaviours and interactions between people as the driver of alignment and cooperation to work effectively on complex local needs. Inevitably this will also lean into changing power dynamics implied by structure and organization boundaries and who decides on how funding is used locally.

Relationship-based leadership

A consequence of this approach is that public service leaders take a more relationship-based approach to leadership. To do this, Public Services leaders, often leading as ‘expert’ leaders in their field, need to shift their own locus more to the wider needs of the local system. Essential to this shift, they need

Reflection time needed to step back from crisis management

the psychological and mental pressures of complexity and the syndrome of ‘over responsibility’ felt by public service leaders is exacerbated by a funding and professional expertise operating model that leans into crisis management as a default setting. Reflection time as a leadership practice, creates the mental and emotional space to change the leadership approach to one that is more relational:

Move from ‘fixing’ to enabling – leaders have to believe in doing things differently and (be more) relationship based

this represents a shift to a non-hierarchical/non-patriarchal model of leadership, moving away from the dynamic of control and rescuing – moving towards enabling the strengths and capabilities of others to be seeded, nurtured and grown. Leadership is distributed through the local system and decision making is far more localized.

Managing by outcomes not presenteeism

represents a change in the ‘psychological contract’ with staff – focusing on helping people to succeed at what they do, wherever they may be working from (at home, in hubs and local places, as well as in the office). This assumes a maturity in relationship based on an adult’s responsibility to organise their time, priorities and schedules in ways they see fit; they are supported to do this if needed, but it is what is achieved – the outcomes of their endeavours that is important; working from home undermines habitual ‘presenteeism’ – and for that matter absenteeism, but this also requires a clear assessment of what people are trying to achieve and how that works in a ‘blended’ work place (home-based – office based – and place based working).

Developing leadership at all levels

creating agency and adult-adult working where anyone working in a local system can be supported to lead – essentially facilitating initiative, trust around a shared purpose, values and set of local conditions that support the aspirations of local residents and businesses. Investing in leadership development becomes place-based not organizational and is designed to meet local needs and solve local problems; participants come from all parts of the system.

Compassionate and emotionally intelligent leadership is essential

underlines the importance of  the reflection time needed to step back from crisis management – to make sense of what is going on and to ensure that the leader is not overwhelmed by feelings or the emotions of people they are leading in creating the conditions for recovery. As we recover from Covid 19 emergency responses and aim to build back better, creating the right conditions for working in new ways is an essential leadership role. The group discussion discussed what this means in practice:

Safe working: psychological and physical

Distribute leadership to ‘front-line’ and decision making – supported by new processes with governance

Less risk averse, innovative, citizen focused – how to safeguard staff in trying things. Leadership support is needed.

‘Experience strategy’ and leaders have to engage and ‘walk the talk’ with more staff working away from the office

Recognise and celebrate right values and behaviours in context

There are a number of trends influencing psychological and physical safety. If we take as a starting point the possibility that Covid 19 and lockdown has been psychologically impactful and possibly traumatic over time for staff and key leaders in local systems, then organization and place-based development need to be psychologically (and trauma)-informed. Reported increases in domestic violence and therefore adverse childhood experiences during lockdown, illustrates the tensions experienced by families which can of course also include employees of public services. We have known for many decades that any shift to remote working can shatter social networks that contribute to happiness, productivity and coping at work. Working in more relational ways is a trend in public services – children’s social care, education, homelessness and police services in particular are embracing ‘psychologically informed environments’ and ‘trauma-informed practices’. This requires organization and leadership practices that create the right conditions for this work to be done.

These two factors (recovery from the impacts of Covid and working in relational ways with more vulnerable members of society) require psychologically and physically safe environments to be created for all staff. Overlaying the points on the post-its above, we can see this is a critical dimension too in how leadership is developed to support these new ways of working.

Creating conditions for working in this way

Creating a ‘secure base’ for staff involves organization design and development that is based on the key elements of early development; that is creating a ‘holding space’ – where individual and collective anxiety is effectively ‘held’ and supported to differentiate the personal from the professional. In developmental terms, this is moving from dependence (working to instruction/prescribed standards) to independence (expert leadership based on what I have learned and trained in) to interdependence (working across boundaries in the system to achieve outcomes for the local population and service users). Without this progression we get co-dependence (and remote working can create this, and the crisis system described earlier encourages this) – which fuels demand, escalation and reactive strategies in a state of constant anxiety, over-dependence on fixing or being fixed and sometimes, constant engagement with ‘the authorities’ over a lifetime.

One outcome of co-dependence is conflict and/or avoidance across boundaries. Conflict can be both interpersonal and inter-institutional (often one reflecting the other) and leaders will need to develop the practices needed to work across personal and institutional boundaries to support collaboration whilst acknowledging the need to refresh and reboot relationships at every level.   Our highlighted points above can be a source of both liberation and anxiety, innovation and exploitation. Letting go and holding to account in adult ways are fundamental components of creating these conditions, in which feelings can be validated, the strengths of people nurtured, learning is valued and accountabilities are held from a place of integrity, without blame or shame.

Join us to build further: https://www.publicservicetransformation.org/2020/04/the-days-after-a-learning-community-to-build-back-better/

In preparing for the Wind Up and dissolution of Scotland’s first New Town, East Kilbride, the chair, Mr J Allan Denholm, reflected on the achievements of the New Town Development Corporations, with words that have much resonance today. 

‘The measure of a mature and successful community is its ability to sustain growth and support the aspirations of its people throughout periods of change and challenge as well as in times of stability and prosperity …

‘…It is people in every part of this community who have created East Kilbride’s success and whose hands its future will lie’.

The New Town model had been based on land and property development to meet housing needs over-spilling from Glasgow but more than this, to provide community infrastructure, social cohesion and employment opportunities through inward investment.

 It provided places for people and business to thrive – a platform of place based and harmonious participation from a wide variety of stakeholders with the purpose of building ‘good’ and sustainable growth. It was a model of working, using many different levers and capabilities, skills and viewpoints, to marry lofty policy with the practical, physical delivery of a new town which served the common good. It influenced many of us officers who were embarking on our own public service careers. And it certainly remains part of the local government policy through to delivery model of local place shaping governance.

It was those final words about people which seemed the most poignant and important for people like me, a corporation employee, and and who also part of the community we were serving.  Our work felt personal ….and it was personal.

That annual report of 1994 certainly captured all the big, high-profile economic development successes of EKDC but the real yardstick of success was really how the people of East Kilbride felt about each other and the place.  

Since that point I have been, and will remain, a flag bearer for ‘emotional connectedness’ we learned as part of that journey – and for designing people ‘in’ and not ‘out’ in increasingly digital or technology enabled service or policy solutions.

Now, following the trauma following  the Covid-19 pandemic, we see the need to create community platforms of a different kind.  The emergence of Smart City solutions for urban spaces, a next generation on from the green field development corporations, provides new possibilities to improve how we live – but only if we take great care not to export across into the new future, all the old biases, injustices, prejudices and labels, that the algorithms might project from our past and flawed structures.

And only if we take great care not to use digital capability to govern by remote control without real, sincere, empathetic human engagement to negotiate ongoing change.

The past is no longer a good indicator of what will come.  Patriarchal organisational strategies based on past performance will not readily accommodate emerging questions.

A definition of Smart Cities is currently  ‘an urban area that uses different types of electronic data collection sensors to supply information which is used to manage assets and resources efficiently. 

Key dimensions of current Smart City capabilities focus on Smart Energy, Smart Transport, Smart data, Smart infrastructure, Smart mobility and Smart IoT with sensing and reporting devices being attached to existing urban infrastructure. 

Using anonymised data there are some wholescale insights which can be made about behaviour and use.  Indeed the current narratives supporting Smart Cities centre around driving more efficient use of resources and reducing cost in comparison with current behaviours. 

The current narratives around design of Smart technologies to understand homelessness, as an example, are really interesting in this regard with rationales ranging from reducing demand on hospitals, social care and other services to being able to track individuals movements to providing help at park benches, to connecting homeless people with hostels and help via mobile and smartphone technology.  

But whilst we are demonstrating ‘capability’ it might be a good time to discuss ‘purpose’.

Referencing the Scottish New Town model of community connectedness I would ask how kindness, dignity and compassion can characterise our decision making and actions – some key values to underpin a just, inclusive and fair society.

In my mind there are some key questions which might be usefully debated including;

1. Can technology platforms include the capability to develop emotional intelligence, empathy and connectedness of people?
2. Is  our emotional connectedness to place important or necessary for thriving communities?
3. Who owns data and insight in a democratic environment, and how do we all ensure it is deployed for the common good.
4. What degree of empathy and interpersonal skill do we need to see in those developing new technology to reduce the level of marginalisation of people across society

The EKDC Chair observed over 30 years ago that ‘…there is a danger that high profile, international and national flagship projects will become the yardstick by which community success is measured’.  This seems to be a highly prescient challenge for us all now.