How we lost sight of the point of public services: The case for whole system reform moving towards strengths-based and relational services

By Alex Fox and Chris Fox

As part of New Local’s first instalment of their New Thinking series, Alex Fox, Mayday CEO and Chris Fox, Professor of Evaluation and Policy Analysis at Manchester Metropolitan University examine the state of public services in the UK today, and make the case for whole system reform, moving towards strengths-based and relational services.

Strengths-based approaches do not ignore needs, but they do look beyond them. They do not impose a single, uniform service on people according to what the service regards as their needs. Practice must be person-led: with the individual identifying their own strengths and goals and working towards them at their own pace, rather than the service deciding what matters.

Read the full article here

 

An exciting time to join Mayday’s Board of Trustees

Julie

Julie McEver, Chair of Trustees at Mayday Trust

I have been a Trustee for Mayday since October 2016 and I am thrilled to currently be the Chair. Mayday is a wonderful organisation trying to make improvements in our society by working with people and truly listening to them.

I believe this listening work is what makes Mayday truly unique. After hearing from people accessing homelessness services that what they were being offered wasn’t helping and, in some cases, even making things worse, Mayday has transformed itself and the support it offers people.

Since I have been involved, I have seen Mayday continue to develop this work. Building on its own approach, the PTS Response, that provides strengths-based and person-led coaching to people experiencing tough times, and further increasing its impact by using the learning from its approach to help other organisations and local areas create positive and sustainable change.

More recently, I have been excited by the work that Alex (our CEO) has been doing with our senior leadership team to focus all of Mayday on where we want to go and how we are going to do it. It feels like we are on the cusp of something very special and are now actively recruiting for new trustees who might want to join us for the next chapter, supporting Mayday as it develops and ensuring we truly represent the people we work with.

To do this to the best of our ability, we want to increase the diversity of our Board and look for some specific skills that complement what we already have. I personally believe that diversity means different things to different people, and I look forward to meeting those who are interested in joining our Board to explore how we could work together and what we could achieve in the future.

If you are interested in becoming a Mayday Trustee and have any questions, please contact me or Mayday’s CEO, Alex Fox. The team is also running an informal session on the 23rd of March to allow interested applicants to find out more about Mayday and ask the team any questions.

More information on the role and how to apply can be found here.

If we focus on a positive future for social care, change can happen – Innovation in action partnership at #NCASC 2022

“Keep your face always toward the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you.” – Walt Whitman

Social care is under a cloud right now, for many good and well-rehearsed reasons, but if we give up on the hope that things can get better, things will get only worse.

Luckily, you don’t have to search very hard to find cause for optimism. There are some great things going on across the length and breadth of the UK that are making a difference to people’s lives every day. We’ve seen that when individuals and communities are involved together with decision-makers, it creates new opportunities. For example:

In Bury, Verity who is supported by Shared Lives told us

“What I like about Shared Lives is the people who I work with are very kind and caring. It gets you out and about and making new friends.”

In York, you will hear something similar from people who draw on the support of a Local Area Coordinator to build their own vision for a good life. Like Dee, who told us:

“There is a great power and confidence in knowing that support is available to you but also knowing that you are in charge of how you receive that support.”

And in Kirklees, you will learn how people are changing services for the better through their Coproduction Board which was set up with the support of the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE).

These examples are glimmers of what is possible but these really person-centred and strengths-based solutions are not available everywhere, to everyone. This needs to change!

We have formed a partnership at this year’s National Children and Adult Social Care Conference (NCASC) to show that there is a different way; a road towards a different approach to social care and support which is characterised by decency, hope, love and relationships, rather than fear, fragmented lives, frustration and despair.

The Social Care Future vision developed by people who draw on support underlines the importance of this approach: “We all want to live in the place we call home with the people and things that we love, in communities where we look out for one another, doing the things that matter to us.”

How do we get there?

 If we work together – galvanising the voice of local people in decisions about support – encourage and champion innovation and shift more power to individuals and communities which draw on support, then a brighter future is possible.

Key actions are:

  • Developing a clear, shared story about how we work and what we want to change. This needs to be developed jointly with people who draw on support in every local area. We need to build confidence and skills in doing this so that all voices are heard and people are able to contribute to what is developed and delivered locally. We call this coproduction – the involvement of people in the design, development, delivery and evaluation of support – which needs to inform everything we do. We encourage local authorities to adopt and be guided by Making it Real, a framework which guides personalised support, which was coproduced with people who draw on support, and which underpins the CQC Assessment Framework.
  • Connect up and invest in community assets, local community-led organisations, voluntary organisations and work with innovative support organisations to ensure that asset-based approaches are implemented in ways that reflect local conditions and have a lasting impact. Think Act Local Personal’s Directory of Community-Centred Support, also known as the ‘Rainbow’ provides examples of innovative organisations that can help.
  • Building equalities into everything we do. The pandemic and the resulting recovery have exacerbated and widened what were already stark inequalities between different communities. As Clenton Farquharson, Chair of Think Local Act Personal recently wrote, “If inequality is designed, it can be redesigned. How? By involving the most marginalised people in the decisions which affect their life.” All of our plans need to be underpinned by a commitment to equality and inclusion.
  • Commission differently. In determining what is developed locally, we need to focus on outcomes rather than on ‘purchasing’ a narrow set of activities or outputs. This will enable us to co-commission a wide range of local enterprises and back entrepreneurs and innovators, such as micro-enterprises, Shared Lives, Homeshare and Local Area Coordination.

Make systems and services simple and human, so that people stay in control and make choices. We know that social care is hindered by excessive and often obstructive processes and outmoded systems. We need to make systems and services simple and human, so that people stay in control and can make choices. This is one of the aims of the IMPACT centre’s Demonstrator site in Northern Ireland which is testing out how new forms of asset-based support for older people work in practice to understand how these can be implemented and scaled up effectively across a whole health and social care system.

  • Share power, resources and risks fairly and openly, learning when we get things wrong. Mayday Trust deploys a Person-led, Transitional and Strengths-based response (PTS) to develop ways of working which create an environment where people have choice and control over their lives.
  • Use really good and shared measures of wellbeing, resilience and equality. This does not mean we give up on some of the traditional measures completely but it does mean we value and invest in different things, such as people feeling more connected and in control. In the London Borough of Camden, for instance, service impact is increasingly understood in terms of how much people are enabled to draw on their own strengths rather than what services they receive.

Reaching the vision of a better care and support will not be straightforward of course. We know it will take time, commitment to coproduction and realignment of resources to enable the innovation and culture shift needed. This isn’t easy, but the current financial pressures we all face, far from distracting us, need us more than ever to focus on what is important to everyone who wants to live in thriving, connected communities. If we work together – galvanise the voice of local people and champion innovation then a brighter future is possible.

Want to find out more? Visit us in Manchester this week at NCASC 2022, stand E11

  • Pip Cannons, Chief Executive, Community Catalysts
  • Clenton Farquharson, Chair, Think Local Act Personal
  • Alex Fox, Chief Executive, Mayday Trust
  • Professor Jon Glasby, Director, IMPACT
  • Ewan King, Chief Executive, Shared Lives Plus
  • Ian McCreath, Director, Think Local Act Personal
  • Kathryn Smith, Chief Executive, Social Care Institute for Excellence

 

 

 

Mayday Trust responds to “lack of help and hope” for those facing homelessness in mini budget

In response to the rising cost of living crisis, PM Liz Truss’ new government has announced an emergency ‘mini-budget’. The new budget announced as part of Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s “Growth Plan” aims to boost the economy by cutting taxes, which many have characterised as relying on ‘trickle down economics’.

For those claiming Universal Credit and low earners, the tax cuts will make no difference to their current income, with those earning under £12,576 continuing to be exempt from National Insurance contributions, and the tax threshold announced in July staying the same.

Those earning over £100,000 per year will see around £1800 per year further take-home pay and those with enough deposit saved to get on the property ladder will benefit from a cut in stamp duty. However, for those sleeping on the streets and the even larger number who are without a home, there was no mention in the mini-budget.  As energy prices and cost of living soar, many low-income families face real fear this winter.

 

Mayday Trust, a national charity supporting people through tough times such as homelessness, have responded to this news.

 

“Sadly, the disaster of becoming homeless is no longer a rare occurrence. The stark reality is that we live in an age of homeless wage-earners, students and women fleeing domestic abuse.

We can find no help or hope in the mini-budget for people with no roof tonight.” Alex Fox CEO

 

Read more about what the growth plan means for you in this article by Big Issue.

‘A New Way to Respond to Homelessness’ Examined by NEF Foundation Report

A report conducted by NEF Consulting, part of the New Economics Foundation, studying a new way to respond to those facing homelessness evidences a sector wide shift is needed.

NEF Consulting conducted a two-year evaluation of the Person-Led, Transitional and Strength Based (PTS) Response delivered by two national organisations working in the homelessness sector, Mayday Trust in Northampton and its partner Changing Lives in Newcastle. The PTS Response sees executive-style coaching, usually reserved for highly-paid business managers, working for people who had been trapped in homelessness for years.

Alex Fox, Chief Executive of Mayday Trust, who pioneered the response, said, “These findings confirm what we have been saying for many years. Working in this way can revolutionise the support we give to people going through tough times.”

The PTS Response is a way of working with people that listens to what they want and need and offers coaching support to help people reach their goals. There is no compulsory engagement, the coaches work at the pace of the person, and a lot of time is invested in building relationships of trust and respect.

The ‘Evaluating the Person-Led, Transitional and Strength Based (PTS) Response Report’ was released today and evidences the pioneering work, which challenges traditional deficit based support models, shows a great potential to “revolutionise” support and change the homelessness system.

The Person-Led, Transitional and Strength Based (PTS) Response was developed by Mayday Trust following a huge transformation of services.  Once a conventional service provider within the social care sector, Mayday conducted a series of deep listening exercises known as the Wisdoms Series, inviting those within and working closely with their services to reflect the reality of their experiences.  The results uncovered the systematic institutionalisation of people trying to access services, anchoring people in their area of weakness, leaving them unable to create sustained, positive change for themselves.  Mayday Trust took radical action, transforming their services to become person-led, releasing housing stock and focussing on relationships first.

The PTS Response provides PTS Coaches to walk alongside people going through the toughest of times, creating an environment where people have choice and control over their lives and can move forward to the future they want.

Working with Coventry University Mayday Trust took their theory and developed an academic framework for others to learn from creating the PTS Qualification.

Through establishing a ‘New Systems Alliance’ the PTS Response is being adapted as a transformational framework by organisations across the UK who work with those facing tough times, such as homelessness.

The NEF Consulting report shows that the PTS is valued by those accessing the service, however learning is still ongoing as many reported systemic and organisational barriers to progress such as dealing with the local authority in accessing funding or a home; lack of safe housing, which led people to experience instability; and the pandemic and the lockdown restrictions, which also played a part in putting people’s aspirations “on hold”. The report shows too that the wider systemic culture around the housing sector, which contrasts markedly with the PTS asset-based approach, may also be undermining the PTS Coaches’ outcomes for the individuals.

Despite much of the research being conducted during COVID 19 restrictions respondents working with a PTS coach reported an increase in self-esteem, sense of purpose, and optimism. People also reported better mental health including feeling happier, and a reduction in anxiety. On average, by the time the coaching relationship ends, there is a demonstrable increase in wellbeing scores and people are starting to be closer to a ‘National Average’.

Respondents reported that the coaching relationship established trust through listening and the time invested in getting to know them was highlighted as the most important aspect of the support in terms of providing timely support and achieving outcomes.  Where a person-led approach was also taken when deciding when and how to end a coaching relationship, evidence showed this increased the chance of positive outcomes being more sustainable.

Alex Fox, CEO of Mayday Trust reflected on the report saying “The PTS Response is demonstrating a highly effective strengths-based approach to coaching people who are going through some of life’s toughest challenges.

The report shows that working in this way allows people more dignity, control and positivity in the process.

The evidence, that the PTS Coaches struggle sometimes to work alongside people in more traditional services, is one of the main reasons we created the New System Alliance, to take the principles of what we’ve learned in Mayday, and champion the change we want to see elsewhere across the UK.”

Operations Director at Changing Lives Neil Baird said “Changing Lives embrace strength-based practice and the PTS approach has been fundamental in our adoption of these principles. This report provides an important insight into the barriers still experienced by people who are facing challenges such as homelessness or addiction.”

NEF Consulting launched the report on their website today referring to the PTS Response as ‘A New respond to homelessness; evidencing the need for a sector wide shift

The NEF Consulting report can be accessed here.