This blog has moved
We’ve brought all the RSA Projects blogs together in a new space.
You’ll now find blogs from the Public Services blog here:
http://projects.rsablogs.org.uk/
Please remember to adjust your feeds.
To follow Rebecca Daddow’s blog posts, go to:
http://projects.rsablogs.org.uk/author/rebecca-daddow/
Taming the beast
Personalising public services is a tricky beast to tame, not least when you’re working in the criminal justice or substance misuse fields which are typically the forgotten limbs of public services.
For many, the very suggestion of enhancing choice and empowering the users of these services is incomprehensible yet their effectiveness depends on it. As the promise of spending cuts materialises, it is only by ensuring this effectiveness that will guarantee the safety, health and success of individuals and communities.
What does this look like in practice?
For the service users: The RSA User Centred Drug Services Project has been working with drug and alcohol users in Bognor Regis and Crawley to find out how we might co-design user centred [personalised] services that better meet their needs. The project has helped these often marginalised individuals to find their voice and to make them heard. It has fundamentally changed how some of these individuals see their role in their treatment, empowering them to seek a more active part in their recovery and in supporting others in theirs.
For the service providers: Existing power relationships are being turned on their head, unnerving many of the practitioners working on the ground. Fundamental changes to working cultures, practices and attitudes are slowly but surely permeating as the providers and the users find their way simultaneously.
Other fields such as social care are further along their personalisation journey than in the criminal justice or substance misuse fields and offer opportunities for learning. Much of the research has been around one element of personalisation which is yet to be fully explored by the RSA’s project; Individual Budgets. Based on a market approach with a greater level of choice, individual budgets may be a step too far in this financial climate. After all, as Dr Simon Griffiths points out, choice requires excess capacity; something that is sorely missing as we slowly climb out of recession.
I wonder. Can ‘personalisation’ be considered truly successful without individual budgets and without unrestricted choice?
Follow the RSA User Centred Drug Services Project at http://rsaroutemapstorecovery.ning.com
Jailbreak Competition
I’m attending a seminar this afternoon to find out more about an exciting competition from the Social Innovation Camp and NESTA which I thought you might be interested in.
Jailbrake is a competition to find and support great ideas that could break this cycle of youth offending and re-offending using simple web and mobile tools.
They want to bring together those who have an idea about how to slow down and stop the cycle of youth offending – whether they’re part of a youth offending team, a service user, police officer or a member of a local community – with people who can make their ideas idea a reality.
They want to find the best ideas and turn them into real projects with a helping hand from software developers, designers and funders.
This afternoons seminar is for anyone interested in finding out more about NESTA’s Jailbrake competition.This ideas evening is an opportunity to find out more about how the competition works. You’ll be able to meet other people interested in innovation in youth offending and take part in a short workshop session to show you how we can help source good ideas and begin turning them into prototype projects.
There will be a chance to talk to the Social Innovation Camp and NESTA team to ask questions about how you can get involved and to discuss your own project ideas.
You can find out more at www.jailbrake.org
Matthew Taylor: “Treat prisons like they’re just another public service”
A quick one-minute video of Matthew Taylor discussing RSA’s The Learning Prison report, released today:
Matthew Taylor on The Learning Prison report from RSA Projects on Vimeo.
Go to The Learning Prison Report
The report is on its way!
The Prison Learning Network (PLN) officially launched in March 2008 at an event where Jack Straw MP examined what he saw as the major issues in prisons policy as well as the progress and challenges in reducing re-offending.
Well, the PLN did its own invesitgation into what it saw as the major issues and the progress and challenges in reducing re-offending but with its own particular focus on offender learning and skills.
Between March 2008 – March 2009, the PLN team spoke to hundreds of practitioners, policy-makers, governors, and former and current prisoners to help inform its thinking, share learning and work towards the development of a vision for the future of learning and skills in prison.
That vision will be presented on Friday 12th February in the Prison Learning Network’s final report. Check back then to download the report, hear my thoughts and add your own. It may be a ‘final’ report, but it’s not the end of the discussion!
Launching the National Victims’ Service at the RSA
Justice Secretary Jack Straw will set out the next stage of reform in the criminal justice system, building on recent improvements to the support and assistance offered to victims of crime, by responding to Victims’ Champion Sara Payne’s report – ‘Redefining Justice’ – and officially launching the first ever National Victims’ Service.
Chair: Matthew Taylor, chief executive, RSA
To attend this event register online by clicking here.
Correlation vs. Causation
A New Year is here. 2010 promises to be another fantastic year at the RSA for me as well as for the organisation. Unlike the rest of my family and friends, the festive food frenzy and frolics was interspersed with hard study as I began to prepare the first 5000 word essay for my MA. The temptations were many but I managed to squeeze a couple of thousand words out and am thankful that I had the opportunity to reflect on everything I have had the chance to learn, see and experience over the last 6 months since beginning the course and starting to work on the User Centred Drug Services Project (both closely related to one another).
My essay has had me looking at the existing theoretical models of criminality and dependency; essentially the drugs-crime link that has dominated research and policy developments in this field since drugs use was first conceived as a threat in the mid-19th century. Initially presented as a threat to health, it quickly became framed as a criminal justice problem as it began to negatively impact on the 1914 war effort and has continued to be framed as a joint health and criminal justice issue to this day.
The fact is that most of the research about the drugs-crime link has (at varying degrees depending on the theory you’re following) successfully identified most of the correlations between drug use and criminality but it continues to fail to definitively point to the crucial causation part of the equation. Why do people take drugs? Why do people take one drug and not another? Why do people commit crime? Why do some people become dependent? And so on.
Behavioural economics and neuroscience has taught us a lot about the brain and it continues to expand our understanding of certain behaviours and I think it is here that we might be able to start tackling these whys. This is not only because our knowledge about frontal lobes, cortex’s and brain plasticity will increase but because it will open our eyes to new understandings of the environments in which we exist and develop. As my colleague Matt Grist recently wrote in relation to this fabulous publication, ‘the more we learn about what’s in our heads, the more we realise it’s what’s outside our heads that matters’.
The choice to use drugs is usually based on the effects that they produce and to fulfil certain functions. For many the perceived positive effects simply outweigh the negative effects. For some it is part of what is considered ‘normal’ where they live. Whether this is down to the ‘lost social institutions that countered the inbuilt weaknesses of our social brains’ (read Matt’s pamphlet to find out more) or something as yet undefined, drug policy cannot ignore the fact that continuing to frame drug use as a criminal justice and health issue will only continue paste over some of the cracks. This becomes increasingly essential as we find ourselves in a time when polydrug use and concomitant alcohol problems are the defining elements of the European drug problem increasing the risks of acute problems and the development of a chronic drug habit in later life for young people and complicating drug treatment, and increasing the likelihood of offending and violence among older, regular drug users.
Unfortunately I suspect the looming general election will rouse the ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ elements of the debate and focus primarily on enforcement rather than taking the risk to keep scratching at the root causes starting to be uncovered. Oh well, back to my essay…
Christmas isn’t the only forthcoming event!
Ignoring the hiatus created by the forthcoming Christmas break and the inevitable winding down and winding up periods, the User Centred Drug Services Project has wrapped itself around the holiday and has planned a series of exciting events that will bring together the broadest range of stakeholders you can think of.
As you may know, the project is working in Bognor Regis and Crawley in West Sussex. Why? Well, the area encompasses a mix of coastal, rural and urban environments. Bognor Regis, the mid-West Sussex rural belt, and the Broadfield Estates in Crawley offer a rich diversity from which to learn from. Working in these areas also allows us to consider different supply and demand dynamics, both open and more closed drug markets, rural access problems, and ethnic diversity. And it seems that the county has an average number of problem drug users, with around half of those referred to treatment reporting opiate problems, a quarter cocaine (unspecified) problems, and about one fifth cannabis problems. The area therefore provides a typical sense of scale and distribution of problem substances. So that’s why.
The first events will be a series of local workshops delivered locally in Bognor Regis and Crawley. These events will bring together a range former and current drug and alcohol users, service providers, local community groups, local government and local council, community members, GPs, academics, policy makers and RSA Fellows, to help thrash out some of the findings from the initial primary research carried out in September.
These workshops will also develop the local messages that will inform one of the RSA’s most ambitious events, the Route Maps to Recovery Symposium planned for the 18th January 2010.
From in depth primary research, more than 150 drug and alcohol users have told us what they want from a comprehensive service, when they need it and how it should be delivered. They have described what would make them engage more, what would help prevent relapse, who they would want to speak with, how their families and friends might be involved, where they would want to go, who they would want to go with, what barriers exist, what the opportunities are, what is missing and what will help them to stay on the road to recovery.
Using this information we want to design the operating system that could support this and to develop a broad, non-exhaustive menu of new service ideas and support add-ons for delivering personalised, expansive and joined up services that will deliver to user needs and aspirations. We hope that these events will help us do just this!
Want to be involved? Click here to find out how.
and join the discussions here
The prisons blog is changing
It has been a few weeks since I last wrote for which I apologise especially to the faithful few who read my blog regularly (hi mum).
As I mentioned back in June, the RSA is once again tackling the issue of drug and alcohol misuse and the public service/s that seek to address these ongoing challenges. Building on the consummate work of the RSA Commission on Illegal Drugs, Communities and Public Policy, the new project seeks to explore the suitability of a user centred approach to reviewing and designing a service that meets the needs of those individuals using it.
“The User Centred Drug Services Project can form the foundation of action research into personalised services for drug users. Transformation of service users could be dramatic as they move from being passive to active, powerless to powerful, consumers to producers. Co-production is not just about service users being in control of choosing and purchasing services, but about producing their own solutions and generating social capital. Truly user centred services – and this project – have the potential to create holistic approaches which will address the socio-structural causes of problem drug use and tackle the multiple disadvantage experienced by drug users.”
This is an exciting new project that I am so pleased to be involved in and which at its heart is about understanding and building people’s capacities. This mirrors much of what the Prison Learning Network found. Finding out about what is working across the system, where the innovation began, continued and was sustained and where the possibilities for replicability lie. Providing the tools and opportunities for individuals and communities is crucial; building capacity to be able to deal with the variety of pressures in people’s lives is central and as a public service, the CJS should be more considerate of their role as enablers.
On Monday (19th October) this blog will be renamed ‘Public Services’ so that we can widen the conversation to include the User Centred Drug Services Project as well as the Prison Learning Network and any others that might arise in the future. I hope that you will continue to find it an interesting and useful engagement in the discussions around the issues and I look forward to your engagement in the conversation.
The [not so] hidden army in UK prisons
I was told once that when people leave the armed forces they have three choices. They either manage the transition well and thrive, they become taxi drivers, or they end up in prison. I have never seen any definitive evidence of this but having spent my formative years as a ‘forces brat’ I found it quite believable.
We’ve all seen the films where the new recruits are broken down and then built up again for the betterment of the squadron. We’ve seen the programmes where bad boys are put through their paces to help turn their lives around. And by and large it works. It works because these individuals are part of a shared experience, coming together to work towards a shared purpose in a structured regime that provides for their needs i.e. accommodation and food, but also provides a level of comradeship that many may not have experienced outside of the barracks.
Our service men and women see things that the average person could not even comprehend. I’ve seen friends parents come back from war zones a fraction of the person they were before they left. I watched parents leave the forces and struggle to adjust to in the civvie world. And many fail.
With so much of their social capital tied to the regiments they served in and the people they served with, there is a substantial job at hand and one that reminds me of the discussions being had around the appeal of gangs and the close knit family they provide for its members.
But knowing that there are around 20,000 of these veterans in the criminal justice system is truly appalling. No matter your view of the forces, many of these people have dedicated large parts of their lives to protecting you and me and those less able to protect themselves.
I have to agree with Dominic Grieve; it is a ‘disgrace that so many who served their country are in jail.’ What is it about civvie society that is failing these veterans, and not providing the support and structure that many come to depend on while in the Army, Navy or RAF?
RSA Bookshop
The RSA Bookshop, in partnership with Blackwell's the UK's leading academic bookseller, offers Fellows and friends an opportunity to purchase books and to explore our speakers’ ideas in greater detail. Visit the RSA Bookshop.
Current RSA Events- RSA at the Birmingham Book Festival - State of Emergency October 20, 2010
- RSA at the Birmingham Book Festival - Reporting Live From The End of the World October 15, 2010
- RSA at the Birmingham Book Festival - Dispatches from the Dark Side -The Death Of Justice October 8, 2010
- RSA at the Birmingham Book Festival - Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No-One Can Pay October 7, 2010
- RSA at the Birmingham Book Festival - The Wavewatcher's Companion October 5, 2010