In Control: thinking community

Introduction

This chapter is mostly about ideas. That is not say that there is nothing practical to be found here. Nothing is more practical than an idea. Ideas shape actions. But this chapter differs from others in this book, and it may take a little more time to see how these ideas might matter to you and your life.

This chapter is also about the ideas being developed and used by a real community – In Control1. In Control is an international movement that promotes citizenship and community for all.

In Control has a small core organisation in England and sister organisations in the other UK countries and in Australia. Its work is about developing in practice new systems that put control of welfare into the hands of people who use social care, health care and other parts of the welfare system. In Control’s work is carried out by a small staff group, over 150 local authority and health authority members, pioneering individuals and families, provider and community organisations.

In Control says it promotes citizenship ‘for all’ for two reasons. Firstly, because we know there are many people who are particularly excluded from citizenship and community, for example those with severe disabilities. Secondly, because everyone’s citizenship and community is damaged by how society thinks and organises itself. We live in a world that tends to atomise us – to treat us as disconnected individuals – even when we all know that life is, beyond anything else, about relationships, contribution and love.

We might say that our society excludes community. This may seem paradoxical because the usual way of putting things is to say that people are excluded from community. But, if we don’t ‘think community’, we end up excluding the possibility of community from our solutions. This is our problem: we do not think community.

This chapter is the story of how In Control has tried to think community and how we have approached problems and solutions with community in mind. Hopefully, this chapter will offer some food for thought and some practical ideas too.

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The problem

In Control’s starting point was the welfare state – the systems of power and money developed during the twentieth century to take care of people who could not take care of themselves. These systems were developed for many reasons, notably because older systems of family, community support and charity had disintegrated as the agricultural and industrial revolutions took hold in the eighteenth century.

The modern welfare system is a great achievement, and many people are understandably fearful that any changes might weaken it. However, In Control aims to reform and modernise the welfare state, not to abandon it. We have learned from disabled people and older people how damaging the current system can be. There is a clear need for positive change.

The state’s response to the needs of many disabled people is often clumsy and sometimes harmful. Too often, people find they have swapped one bad situation for another. If people go without state support, they struggle and suffer. If they accept state support, they can find that support comes at a price – the loss of control and effective exclusion from their community. Most state support is already defined in terms of fixed and institutional services, hospitals, special units, care homes and day centres. The welfare state does not think community. It thinks services.

In Control has tried to reveal the mental trap we are in by identifying and naming the current system model. We call this the Professional Gift Model. Nothing is harder to change than a powerful and persuasive view of the world, and the dominance of the Professional Gift Model explains why there is deep resistance to thinking differently – to thinking community.

The Professional Gift Model sees the individual and their needs as the problem. It then sets out to meet those needs in ways shaped and defined by experts or professionals who specialise in understanding those needs: doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers and so on. To pay these professionals the state must raise taxes from the community.

We will come to the problems created by this way of thinking in a moment. But, first, it is important to see how plausible and powerful this way of thinking is.

Is it not natural to start with the problem or the need? And isn’t it natural to look to an expert to solve the problem or meet that need? Surely, it is natural to expect that the state, in the name of social justice, will pay for all this good work. It must surely be natural that we are expected to pay the state through our taxes. What could be fairer or more reasonable?

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The Professional Gift Model was a natural way of thinking about welfare in the twentieth century. It is natural that a society that has experienced so much suffering, pain and need would try to find ways of meeting those needs. It is natural that a society that respects expertise would give a powerful role to professional experts. It is natural for a society that has suffered wars, industrialisation and massive social unrest to want the state to engineer an ‘industrial solution’ to welfare.

It is natural, but not right.

[CAPTION]The Professional Gift Model

The limitations and difficulties created by the Professional Gift Model are easy to see when we identify the underlying paradigm. In particular, the model marginalises the role of the citizen and the community.

The citizen is seen as lacking something that the professional must give them. This way of thinking is deeply unhelpful. It excludes from our thinking the understanding, motivation and activity of the citizen him or herself. In this model, citizens are not actors who live their life, contribute to their community and are part of a family. Citizens become solitary, passive and needy – the opposite of a real citizen.

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The community is primarily seen as a taxpayer. This view leaves out the support of family and friends and the skills, interests and even the needs of the wider community to which the citizen might contribute. Communities are not seen as mutually supportive networks of real people with important interests and purposes. On this view, communities stand back, awaiting the intervention of the state and the professional – the opposite of a real community.

So, the Professional Gift Model effectively drives both citizenship and community from our thinking. Indeed, the more we reflect on the real business of life the more troubling these exclusions appear, because a good life is intimately bound up in:2

• our ability to identify meaningful goals for ourselves

• the need to be part of communities where those goals make sense

• the opportunity to connect to like-minded people who will support those goals

• having the necessary means to pursue those goals.

Without the many different communities of family, neighbourhood, work and society, our lives can have no substantial meaning. Our dreams, goals and aspirations would be so much smoke. Only through community can our lives take on meaning.

Of course, it is not true to say that the modern welfare system has given no attention to community. Indeed, the system often uses the word ‘community’. But the meaning is different. In the early 1990’s, the Government talked about ‘community care’ as the answer to the institutional residential care system it had developed during the 1980’s. But the policies it put in place to bring about community care could never deliver the necessary solutions because community can’t be purchased or commissioned by professionals. Instead, communities must be actively built and sustained by citizens themselves. Communities are simply citizens in action. So, a policy of community care actually translated into the creation of mini-institutions in ordinary neighbourhoods – institutions in which ‘residents’ were completely cut off from the people and activities of the community.

What we tried

We have tried to escape the Professional Gift Model by finding a different way of thinking and a different way of doing. Over time, our understanding has developed and, at the time of writing, it feels like we

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still have much to learn. So this is a story without an ending. But I will set out the different steps along the journey so far.

The Citizenship Model

We began with the Citizenship Model. This was an early attempt to offer a new framework for our thinking about the place of professional services.3 It places the individual as a citizen at the centre of the picture – at the centre of their community. The model presumes that each of us lives our own life, under our own control, but as part of inter-locking and diverse communities of family, friends, colleagues, members and peers.

All of us, as citizens, must pay taxes to the state, and the state must gives resources to those citizens who need extra support or help. We can then work with our community and with professionals and service providers to construct any patterns of support that we need to live our lives successfully.

All of the elements of the old Professional Gift Model are still used within the Citizenship Model, but they have been reordered to represent the centrality of citizenship and community.

Keys to Citizenship

We then went on to try and understand citizenship and its relationship to community in more detail. This was done through the keys to citizenship framework.

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Citizenship is not something dry or abstract. Citizenship is about real life and the keys to citizenship are also the keys to a stronger community:

Key Meaning for Citizen Meaning to Others

Self-determination

I am able to make my own decisions.

You have the right to speak and to be listened to.

Direction I am able to define my own unique role.

Your life makes sense. It has meaning.

Money I have enough independence to aim for my goals.

You can pay your way and are not unduly dependent on our good will.

Home I have a safe and private place, where I belong.

You belong with us. You are rooted in our community.

Support I need other people. I am interdependent not self-sufficient.

You need us. You provide us with opportunities to give and contribute.

Community life I contribute, give and support my community.

You help us. You make a difference to our community.

Rights and responsibilities

I am protected by explicit rules and systems.

You are part of one shared social system.

[caption]Keys to citizenship and their meaning for citizens and others

If we think about citizenship in this way we can see that it is not really a different concept to community. Citizenship is just a way of thinking about

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community ‘through’ the individual. It reinforces the fact that communities don’t exist without the citizens who make them.

Self-Directed Support

The next stage in our thinking was to develop a model by which the old system of social care could be reorganised to respect and support citizenship.

This led to the development of In Control’s 7-Step Model of Self-Directed Support. This model sets out a process in which people who need significant levels of support could be assigned a fair level of funding (now called an Individual Budget or Personal Budget) and could get the chance to lead the design of their own support, working in a partnership with community networks and professionals.

[caption]In Control’s 7-Step model of Self-Directed Support

Self-Directed Support was tested in a pilot programme from 2003-2005 in partnership with six local authorities.4 It was then further developed in partnership with a growing number of local authorities (100 by 2007) during the period 2005-2007. 5 Self-Directed Support forms the core of the Government’s Putting People First initiative that sets out a ‘radical reform of public services’.6

Self-Directed Support has been important because, for the two million or so people who rely on social care services, it enables a fundamental shift of power to families and communities. One of the positive consequences of introducing Self-Directed Support has been significant, measurable improvements in people’s community connections. In the report on In Control’s work between 2005 and 2007, 64% of people had taken a greater part in their community, while only 2% had become less involved (of a sample of 200) – see the figure below.

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[caption]Community connections after people had taken control of their own support

Integrated funding

Self-Directed Support helps us to think differently about the relationship to the state of those who have complex needs or are vulnerable to specific risks.

But we can go further. We could develop a more universal system of welfare if we look beyond the limits of Personal Budgets to a model that includes all citizens.

Personal Budgets, or other forms of state funding or benefits, are only one part of the picture. The Personal Budget should be seen in the context of all the individual’s benefits and personal income. All the individual’s financial assets need to be considered.

At present, the development of Personal Budgets has been left to happen in isolation from the other systems of the welfare state. In addition to a social care Personal Budget, people may have other forms of income:

• personal income from earnings or savings

• benefits, tax credits and tax allowances

• health funding

2%

34%

64%

Taking part in community ImprovedSameWorse

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• education funding

• grants (such as Small Sparks or Community Champions grants).

[caption]Personal budgets alongside other sources of income

Personal savings and other capital assets like property, shares or pension rights could also be included. However, at the moment, there is no coherent thinking about how we help people to develop their wealth:

• Many people don’t get all their entitlements. The entitlement system is complex and overlapping. There are nearly 100 different benefits.

• Many people don’t earn or save because they fear losing their entitlements.

• The rules about taxation, charging and contributions, and benefit reduction are not integrated. People on modest incomes can be taxed many times over.

We need to help the Government see the need for a thorough reorganisation of the whole tax and benefit system. In particular, we need to find ways of combating the diverse disincentives for individuals and families to improve their income and savings.

Means-testing and poverty traps are an important factor in determining the real value of income and savings. If you find that, say, your housing benefit is at risk if you choose to live with your family, earn a little money and save a little, then that benefit is actually a trap that discourages you

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from developing your skills, from contributing, from building your family. It may be difficult to entirely remove some of these disincentives, but it must make sense to reduce them to a minimum.

The current system is focused on needs not citizens. Different systems are set up for different needs without regard to the impact of the whole system on the citizen and their community. Reform in this area may be difficult to achieve, but it is vital.

Real wealth

We can go further than simply seeing wealth as a collection of financial assets.7 We are learning that a good life is dependent on a number of factors, each of which is logically independent of each other:

1. Strengths – we all have strengths, whatever our age, health or impairments. Our diverse gifts, abilities or skills are part of what we use to construct the best possible life for ourselves. Of course, some people have impairments or health problems that mean they need more support.

2. Connections – our close and extended family, our friends, work colleagues, our peers, and all of those connected to us through organisations, clubs, groups or networks form our connections. These connections: all of these form an important dimension of our real wealth. Some people are so disconnected that they need more support.

3. Understanding – the more we know and understand, the richer we are. Our understanding of community’s best features, its possibilities and the things available in it is also a form of wealth. Some people lack knowledge and understanding and so need more support.

4. Assets – our income, property, savings, benefits, tax credits and entitlements add to our wealth and give us the means to build a better life. Some people are poorer and so need more support.

These are the things that make up real wealth – the resources that enable individuals and families to achieve a good life. More importantly, it is the attitude and sense of personal resilience that enables the family to use its wealth positively to live a good life.

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The idea of real wealth helps us to understand how someone who is, according to society’s norms, poor can still be wealthy if they have a vibrant sense of their own strengths, if they have family and friends and they know where and how to connect to community opportunities. The idea of real wealth also explains how someone with a lot of money can feel incapable, socially isolated and unaware of positive possibilities.

The idea of real wealth links well to the model of Resource Allocation which In Control began to develop in 2003. This Resource Allocation System (the set of rules which help set a fair Personal Budget) was designed to take into account:

• the level of support someone needs

• the level of natural family support that is available

• the individual’s financial assets.

In this system, In Control began to explore the complex relationship between the idea of the citizen and that of family.

Strengthening community capacity

Wealth, even ‘real wealth’ is not the only factor that determines the outcomes we can achieve. How we use our wealth is the important factor. The wider community and the help available to us shape how we use our wealth

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So, In Control’s latest model shows how optimum outcomes are achieved when a citizen uses their real wealth in a rich and healthy community using the most appropriate support.

This model of community capacity is our most comprehensive so far, but it is still at an early stage of development. The model maps four dimensions of community capacity. These community capacities support the achievement of valued outcomes.

The four dimensions of community capacity are:

1. the real wealth of citizens and families

2. the valued outcomes that people aim to achieve

3. the community context within which people operate

4. the support available to help achieve the outcomes.

The concept of real wealth has been explored already. The concept of valued outcomes is implicit in the ideal of citizenship itself: a valued outcome is simply the mirror image of a need. We use the word ‘need’ when we observe that someone lacks something important. We say ‘valued outcome’ when the person has identified a way of meeting that need that makes sense to them.

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Outside this framework of wealth, needs and valued outcomes there is the wider community context.

This community context can be broken down into six categories:

1. quality of family life in the community

2. associations, clubs, circles available

3. social enterprises, charities, faith organisations

4. business, commerce and economic environment

5. public services, hospitals, schools and emergency services

6. law, regulations, democratic and judicial structures.

We need to learn more about how these elements of community can enable or inhibit opportunities for individuals. We also need to learn how interventions by the state impact on these elements of community. For instance, current ideas about training and regulation of the social care workforce focus entirely on paid staff (about a million workers). However, over 6 million unpaid people (family and friends) each provides more than 50 hours care a week. This emphasis on paid staff is an example of how current thinking is blind to the real community context. In Control’s community capacity model provides an all-round framework for understanding how community helps people achieve their outcomes.

The fourth dimension of the Community Capacity Model is the support some people need to achieve their outcomes. There are six different forms of support:

1. support from family and friends

2. peer support

3. help and advice from local community services

4. help from people’s supporters and assistants

5. specialist advice and information

6. support and back-up from the regulatory systems

We have a lot to learn about which forms of support are most effective and about how support is best organised and promoted. However, it is clear that the current system is not organised to think community. Funding for support is almost totally locked into professional, specialist and regulatory support. Almost nothing is done to foster peer support.

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When peer support is set up it is usually organised in ways that mimic professional support – despite the constant insistence by disabled people and families that the most productive conversations they have are with people who share similar experiences.

The Community Capacity Model may need refinement but it seems to offer, even in its current stage of development, a useful framework for further analysis, innovation and research.

What we are learning

The intellectual journey described in this chapter has lasted 18 years for me. The ideas are actually a development of the experiences and ideas of many other people. We began by trying to understand the limited paradigm within which the old system has operated. We have moved progressively to a detailed picture of how citizenship and communities develop and how they can be fostered.

These approaches begin to offer a very different account of how the welfare state needs to be redesigned if it is to genuinely promote citizenship and community. Our model suggests that the modern welfare state will need to become more sensitive to the value and tension between three very different strategies:

1. fostering stronger communities

2. directly increasing wealth

3. providing effective support.

This framework helps us to see that, if our primary responsibility is to help people have good lives, we need to learn how to establish the conditions for success. We need then to understand how to invest in our society to ensure that we genuinely support success. It is important to see that this a whole-system model: a change in one part of the model will require changes at other points. It is important to:

• note that increasing money in public services reduces the money that can be directly invested in real wealth

• invest in those aspects of community that will be most productive (and this may not be how resources are currently invested)

• invest in the most effective support strategies (and this may not be how resources are currently invested).

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We do not know how all these different strategies will interact and what is the best balance of strategies. What we do know is that, currently, the shift from offering direct services towards increasing wealth through Personal Budgets is leading to some dramatic outcome improvements. The Community Capacity Model opens up the possibility of a much more innovative and empirical approach to promoting social justice and better lives for everyone.

An active programme

Although In Control’s work has always been focused on community we are sometimes criticised for promoting consumerism or individualism. We don’t think this is criticism is correct. In Control is creating systems that move power to people. This is not a naive promotion of consumerism. We are trying to create a mutually beneficial process of power sharing, a process in which the unlocked capacities of individuals and families can be increasingly realised in more productive partnerships with professionals and the state.

In particular, In Control has been keen to foster and support any social innovations which can serve the dual purpose of strengthening the capacities of citizens and communities. Currently, we are supporting the further development of:

• Partners in Policy-Making – a national peer support network that promotes learning and mutual support for disabled people and families

• Plan UK – a federative system of focused peer support groups

• Small Sparks – a small grants programme (borrowed from a successful programme in Seattle) that enables individuals to start community projects

• In Control Jobs – direct support to help people find and keep work

• Local Area Coordination – learning how to apply the successful Australian model of professional support focused on connecting people to communities

• Manavodaya Institute – a partnership with one of the world’s leading sources of expertise on community-based development and facilitation (based in India)

• Shop4Support – an internet site offering advice and information to all about support and community resources.

In Control is also starting a research and development programme for local authorities to explore how best to promote community capacity. This

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programme will be launched in 2009 and will hopefully lead to a new wave of innovation and learning.8

Suggestions for others

I want to end by suggesting that a focus on community may be the only practical solution to a crisis in social care funding.

Today the Government is, quite rightly, encouraging social care departments to reach out beyond their traditional boundaries. In particular the Concordat, Putting People First, encouraged local authorities to promote strategies for:

• prevention and early intervention

• growing social capital and strengthening community

• improving access to mainstream services.

However, local authorities seem preoccupied with more short-term concerns. A growing number of authorities is raising the threshold of eligibility for social services. In many places, individuals have to demonstrate ‘critical’, rather than merely ‘substantial’ need. Growing numbers are prevented from getting services they need – whether traditional services or Self-Directed Support. This trend is likely to create more crisis-led interventions. It will do nothing to strengthen communities.

At the same time, outside social care, there are many important initiatives that have questioned a trend towards undue centralisation. These initiatives encourage local government to be more confident in exerting its own authority and finding local solutions to local problems. The following terms give a flavour of current trends:

• Double Devolution – the idea that power needs to shift from central Government towards local government and further downwards towards citizens. See for example the Local Government White Paper, ‘Strong and Prosperous Communities.’9

• Place Shaping – the idea that local government and people who live in an area should become actively involved in making it a place they want to live.10

•Empowerment – the recent Empowerment white paper11 is an important statement of the Government’s intention to put more power in the hands of citizens – through citizen’s juries, community kitties and

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participatory budgeting, though the relevance of Personal Budgets to this agenda has not always been well recognised.

• Citizen Engagement and Partnership Working – Local Area Agreements, Community Safety Partnerships, and neighbourhood management are all examples of attempts to address issues in a joined up way involving local people.

• Social Enterprise – recently, there is increased interest in the role that (often small) enterprises seeking a social as well as a commercial dividend might play. They occupy a gap between profit-motivated organisations and voluntarism. Social enterprises typically employ people from groups that find it harder to enter the workforce or are mainly concerned with the social rather than the financial impact of their work. Also there is a general trend towards an increased role for the voluntary and community sector in delivering government contracts. Government has provided support for capacity building of community organisations through funds such as Capacity Builders12, and Futurebuilders13. The Third Sector Review made a commitment to help give third sector organisations a greater voice 14 The Third Sector Review made a commitment to give third sector organisations a greater voice and to work with the sector to strengthen communities, transform public services, encourage social enterprise and support the conditions for the sector to thrive.15

Yet, despite this rhetorical shift towards community, there is still a tendency within social care to see the focus on community as both desirable and yet somewhat marginal and aspirational. The focus on prevention and community does not seem to help local authorities with tough short-term decisions on expenditure. Instead, the primary focus is often to control cost-inflation in services.

But a focus on community capacity may be the only real and meaningful way to make social care economically affordable in the long-run. For, if we think through our economic options, we find that there are broadly only three:

• Input-focused efficiency – reducing the costs associated with support services – primarily this will mean reducing the growth in salary levels

• Process-focused efficiency – identifying more creative and appropriate ways of delivering support for any given level of funding

• Needs-focused efficiency – reducing the need for paid support – primarily this will mean increasing capacities of citizens and communities.

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In Control’s early work showed the advantage of shifting decision-making towards people in order to improve process-focused efficiency. We found that people can make much better use of resources they control. We have also seen some evidence that Self-Directed Support can also reduce needs – fostering capacity and community. However, on its own, Self-Directed Support will not be sufficient to maximise the economic sustainability of social care. It will also be necessary to pay attention to:

• how all people and families, including those with lower levels of need, can be supported to increase individual capacities

• how the delivery of public services can be made more enabling and more focused on strengthening capacities and connecting people to community

• how family, community and other social structures can be strengthened in order to meet needs without any use of individualised funding.

Needs are not simple or absolute. Our needs grow to the extent that we lack resources, skills, family, friends and a sense of our own personal capacity. They also grow to the extent our communities are fragmented, weak, prejudiced and impoverished.

Welfare services are often necessary. But they do not the offer the most efficient way of meeting needs in the long run. In an era when most observers believe that the welfare state will no longer grow as a proportion of the economy, it is increasingly important that we shift our approach away from merely providing support. Instead, we must start to find strategies that minimise need and increase community capacity. The aim must be to shift spending from a remedial approach to one that invests in community capacity in such a way that future on-going spending commitments are better managed.

Conclusion

In Control believes that each and every person can be an active citizen. However, we need to learn more about what it takes to encourage and sustain citizenship and to build communities that welcome and foster citizenship.

This paper describes our thinking to date and sets out a model of community capacity building which can be used to promote and test a range of possible strategies for building stronger communities and stronger citizenship.

It is hoped that our Community Capacity Model will provide an early framework for the work that in Control will be undertaking with its local

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authority members over the coming months. We will use the Model and test out some practical approaches to developing a greater role for communities in supporting people’s active citizenship by:

• supporting local authorities as they invest in their own local approach

• locating such approaches within a holistic model

• supporting local authorities to test these approaches

• sharing lessons, learning and data with members and wider networks.

This paper is not the definitive statement of our Community Capacity Model and the Model will be refined as we work with the Government, our membership and the wider community.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge all the people whose ideas have influenced my thinking about community.

Firstly, Marilyn Wilson and John O’Brien. Without John, there may have never been a Citizenship Model. Judith Snow’s work inspired me to see the deep interrelationship between community and a meaningful life. Nic Crosby and Pippa Murray are responsible for the incredibly helpful concept of real wealth. Carl Poll, John Gillespie and Andrew Tyson have continued to help me find better ways of balancing citizenship and community. Varun Vidyarthi of Manavodaya has opened up new routes to understanding the value of community and the inner dimension to change.

Finally, a big thank you to Julie Stansfield for keeping my feet on the ground and making sure that some of these ideas actually get turned into reality.

Notes

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1 For more information: www.in-control.org.uk

2 See A Letter to Judith

3 This model was developed in 1992 but only formally published within Unlocking the Imagination in 1996

4 The evaluation of this work: A Report on In Control’s First Phase 2003-2005, Poll, Duffy, Hatton, Sanderson, Routledge is available from www.in-control.org.uk

5 The evaluation of this work: A Report on In Control’s Second Phase 2003-2005, Ed. Poll, Duffy, is available from www.in-control.org.uk

6 Putting people first: a shared vision and commitment to the transformation of adult social care, HM Government, 2007.

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7 Nic Crosby and Pippa Murray are responsible for this very valuable insight.

8 Information about all these initiatives is available on the In Control website: www.in-control.org.uk

9 See DCLG 2006 ‘Strong and Prosperous Communities’ Local Government White Paper

10 See, Sir Michael Lyons’ Enquiry; HMSO 2007 ‘Place-shaping: a shared ambition for the future of local government.

11 July 2008 ‘Communities in Control’: real people, real power’, White Paper

12 See www.capacitybuilders.org.uk

13 See www.futurebuilders-england.org.uk

14 See www.futurebuilders-england.org.uk

15 The Cabinet Office 2007 ‘The future role of the third sector in social and economic regeneration’