Local Involvement Networks - LINks and their Hosts

As I travel back on the train from a days work in Bournemouth I am thinking about the 2007 Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act. It is an exciting new piece of legislation that will support the voice of local people in the areas of health and social care.

LINks (Local Involvement Networks) will be established in every council area that delivers social care services. They will enable local people to come together on a regular basis to highlight local issues and scrutinise services. Last year I blogged about the challenges of making what was then a Bill into practical reality - suddenly we are at that point.

I am picking up from local people that sometimes it is not clear what the difference is between the LINks itself (and independent entity) and the Host organisation that will support the functions of the LINks (and be accountable both to the LINks itself and the local authority that procures it's services and performance manages the contract). 

Part of the challenge is that the Act has not been prescriptive as to the specific nature of each LINks - it is up to local people to make decisions on structures, action plans and models. This is good as it encourages a bottom-up approach but can also mean that people lack a frame of reference for how to develop the LINks. 

For me the key to negotiating the many practical and strategic issues that LINks present is in the development of strong and honest relationships between all the key stakeholders - local people, local authorities, Overview and Scrutiny Committees, Primary Care Trusts and other commissioners, service providers and the voluntary sector. It is important to find the space for these different groups to think through their own positions and understandings and build on these to create the relationships in which future action can take place.

The Act also emphasises that a key focus of LINks should be on improvement. It is worth hanging on to this aspiration in the coming months as LINks emerge. The key question for me is how are LINks going to make a real difference to peoples' lives and to the development and improvement of services.

Haringey - Borough of Parks

I was working yesterday in the north London borough of Haringey. This is a really interesting part of London with a great diversity of population. Anecdotally people say that there are over 100 languages in the the local community.

One thing that I did not realise before is that Haringey has some excellent public spaces and parks. Infact they are promoting them after a bit of a revamp. It is so good to see parks valued and looked after. They are our collective spaces. In a busy urban city they are our connection to the wider world of plants and nature.

To find out more about Haringey click here to visit the Council's website

Public Life and Private Mess - What is the cost to the local community?

Public life often gets devalued through cynicism and distrust. Reluctant as I am to quote the Daily Mail from the other day, they expressed a commonly held sentiment that it is all about 'snouts in the trough'. Without getting in to a defense of pigs as a species (of whom I am very fond) this sort of headline will resonate with many. 

At the same time people who are excluded or uninvolved in all types of public life (political and non-political) feel remote from this other world too. We need to build bridges and involve more people from local communities in public life and public decision making. So when things go wrong and people in public life let us down we have a problem.

My local M.P. (Member of Parliament) has just been investigated by the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee  following allegations of over payment of public funds to family members. As a consequence he has been suspended from the Tory parliamentary party. See the  BBC report of the full story here. 

I don't know what should happen next with this particular situation - this is for others in Parliament to work out and decide. But what I do know is that if a person on the fringes of our society had been caught doing something financially dubious - for example, allegations of benefit fraud - then they would be in serious trouble. And this is often on a far smaller scale in terms of the monies involved. Indeed we spend millions of pounds each year producing adverts and TV commercials to highlight a campaign against those on benefits who may exploit the system. There is a contrast here and it reinforces peoples' perceptions that there is a 'them and us' situation.

Public life is precious and we need to value and protect it's integrity. We need to attract honest people who are rooted in their communities. We need to draw from a wide range of voices. 

Let's hope we learn something from this sad situation. I hope it will not put off good people from coming froward to serve their communities. Because this would be the true cost of a breakdown of trust in public life.

Technology and Inclusion: The Blogger's Anxiety

Technology is great - it provides powerful tools to reach and communicate with people. I am trying to use new technologies more and learn to adapt the way I work to things like YouTube, podcasts and of course blogs. My anxiety is how do I retain my roots in the older forms of communication and how do I ensure that I do not exclude groups of people as I increasingly adopt new media?

More and more I see participatory projects start to engage and use new technologies. For example public consultations using online questionnaires, action research through tools such as SurveyMonkey, and forums. The opportunities to reach more people and provide 24 hour accessibility are very appealing.

The exciting thing is that you have the ability to have relationships and converse with lots of people. When putting a project together you can involve many people in the planning and capture their inputs. The problem is that many of the people I most want to interact with are not finding it easy to access the technology in the first place.

So where does that leave people who do not have easy access to computers and new technology? When we discuss this group we are often also referring to the most excluded and disadvantaged members of society. And how much of the basis of using new technology assumes a level of literacy that many people just do not have. What we must not do is create an underclass of people who are separated or cut off from what is going on in the virtual world.

This week I went to visit a local authority and spent some time in their general waiting area. They provide free access to their website and a range of other online material on housing, childcare and rights. The access points use touch screens and have large bright text and graphics. The resource was good but I wonder how much they are used and how much benefit they provide people. 

I also need to resolve the dilemma that my instinct is that people communicate best directly to other people. Written and electronic communication struggle to reproduce the human qualities inherent in direct interactions.  And we are all aware of the frustrations of dealing with recorded answer machines and automated call centres.

Sometimes it is important to be remind of the power of older technologies. These are the ones we often ignore or take for granted. One of the most innovative projects I have ever seen was in the Kyrgyz Republic, working with people trapped in the grim psychiatric hospitals. There communication with the outside world was a rare and often forbidden privilege. A local organisation (most of ex-service users) supplied pencils and stamped postcards to the patients to allow them to get messages out. Some wrote to family for the first time in years. Others wrote to make complaints. Many wrote to share poetry and their inner thoughts and feelings. All in their own way wrote to challenge the system

For the last year I have kept a monthly blog on the my website at www.stronger-and-more-effective.co.uk . It has been a learning experience and at times I have struggled to keep up with the demands of operating a blog and my busy working and home life (including my 18 month daughter).

So okay, I am deciding to raise my blogging presence by moving the blog to this new location and learning to use a new range of blogging tools. Ones that I hope will make it easier to regularly update the blog and keep this fresh. Let's see how it goes. I will have to remain vigilant about sharing the journey with my friends who use different communication routes.