Welcome to the Relationships Foundation newsletter October 2010
Our submission to the Review on Poverty and Life Chances
Relationships Foundation has submitted its response to the Independent Review on Poverty and Life Chances chaired by Frank Field.
We welcome the review and are particularly interested in their plans to create an index of life opportunities.
We have long held the view that relational poverty should be seen to be as important as material poverty, and made visible in official figures. Relationships provide both resilience against adversity, as well as enabling change and progress. It is significant that the General Household Survey suggests that 20% of people have neither a ‘satisfactory friendship network’ nor a ‘satisfactory relatives network’. For vulnerable people who lack supportive relationships within the family, the nature and quality of their relationships with voluntary and public sector agencies becomes a vital ingredient in their future life chances.
Our submission also considered the importance of enabling secure and stable attachment as the basis for healthy maturation. This draws on our current project in collaboration with Sharon Willmer from the Child and Adolescent Studies department at California State University, Fullerton. Without secure attachment, the capacity to form and conduct work, family and community relationships is compromised, leading to many forms of disadvantage.
In looking at the aspects of the home environment that affect children’s life chances we highlighted key findings from our studies on the impact of working atypical and unsocial hours. Working parents claiming housing or council tax benefits are more likely to work weekends than other parents. For parents working unsocial hours, the average couple mother spends eight hours less a week with her children, and single earner fathers ten and a half hours less. We hope that the review will lead to a stronger family policy that protects the relationships that have the most impact on children’s future prospects – their family.
The fairness debate
How Fair is Britain? asks the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
‘Fairness Tax Hits Middle Britain’ rails the Express.
Nick Clegg unveils a ‘fairness premium’ for the poorest children.
Fairness is starting to eclipse ‘progressive’ as the current political buzzword. Like many words in our political lexicon – for example equality, accountability, participation – it is an account of how we should relate. But what sort of relationships are fair, and how might what John Gray has termed ‘a convincing narrative of fairness’ be developed?
Answering this question must begin with the recognition that politics is essentially about the reordering of relationships. These may be the financial transfers of tax and benefits, the accountability and authority of the state, the complex web of relationships that make up public services, involvement in the Big Society, or the regulation of work and business relationships.
David Cameron argued in his party conference speech that ‘citizenship is a relationship’ not just ‘a transaction, with services given in return for taxes paid’. Fairness in these relationships can be defined in terms of outcome, process and conduct. This means, for example, that both the pain of cuts and the benefits of investment are to be distributed fairly between groups, that the same principles are applied consistently to all in making fair decisions, and we don’t succumb to a crude rhetoric of bashing bankers or scroungers.
The difficulty, though, is that fair distribution can be hard to determine, not least because we all enter the debate with a range of cognitive biases including, for example, loss aversion which means that losses are felt much more acutely than gains. Difficult decisions include how we factor in responsibility – whether that of bankers for the financial crisis or those in poverty for their plight. We may wish to encourage parents to invest in their children, but worry whether the advantages conveyed are fair. And we must debate the extent to which fairness requires protecting all from externalities over which they have no control.
Getting it right is important, because fairness is a deeply ingrained instinct and perceptions of unfairness can colour relationships for a long time. People who feel they have been treated unfairly are less likely to be generous contributors to a ‘big society’ or engage constructively in public deliberation. But one clear lesson from studies of fairness in the workplace may point to a way forward. Where people are able to be involved in decisions, feeling that they have been heard, and clear explanations are given, they are much more likely to accept the outcome as fair.
Relationships and the NHS Reforms
The Relationships Foundation has not been actively engaged in the current NHS reforms set out in the White Paper Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS which will give groups of GPs rather than Primary Care Trusts responsibility for commissioning care for their local communities.
When PCTs were being formed we worked with a number of them to assess the relationship implications.
Our book Relationships in the NHS by Geoff Meads and John Ashcroft (available to download free here) set out many of the lessons. A subsequent book, The Case for Interprofessional Collaboration in Health and Social Care looked at how collaborative relationships between professions, organisations, and with patients and communities is essential in both improving performance and reducing risk. This collaborative imperative will remain whatever form the commissioning process takes.
One of the lessons from the previous round of major organisational change was that the relationship implications were often inadequately considered and under-managed.
Although individuals can sustain effective relationships in difficult contexts, leadership in the implementation of policy and organisational change is a critical factor in safeguarding the key relationships, insulating them from some of the destructive pressures. The attitude to change also matters: seeing it as an opportunity, rather than a threat, makes it more likely that the benefits of innovation will be realised.
The current reforms seek to bring commissioning closer to the patient, with more clinical influence on the decisions, and with greater flexibility and responsiveness in addressing patient needs. During previous reforms we explored different typologies of relationships for primary care groups and trusts, and it is likely that different relational dynamics will emerge this time. Modelling the different relationship styles, and understanding their various strengths and weaknesses, should be part of the implementation process. GPs will have to integrate the demands of relationships with individual patients, local communities, fellow GPs, other practice based medical staff, clinicians and managers in secondary care, as well as local social care providers. These demands are not new, but a key test of the reforms will be the extent to which they aid or hinder these relationships.
Sign up today to a course in our Consulting and Leadership Development Programme!
“Preventing and De-escalating Conflicts: Doing It More Effectively the Relational Way”
A one-day course for line managers and team leaders who all face the same reality: dealing with and being responsible for groups of people. But where there are people there is always the potential for conflict. Conflicts are costly and can be hugely counter-productive; they are the last thing organisations need in an era of austerity and where employee engagement and productivity have never been more important.
This course provides line managers and team leaders with a distinctive relational solution that helps them develop an intentional strategy to prevent conflicts and a structured approach to de-escalate them when they occur.
Delegates will be shown how our model and tools can help them nip potential conflicts in the bud by analysing the strength and quality of relationships – and then taking the right corrective action.
Date: November 4th, 2010. Venue: Cambridge University (college to be confirmed)
We are recruiting
RF is advertising for Programme Manager for our Family Policy project. Details of the job can be found here [page no longer available].
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