Is Devolution really “taking power from Westminster”?

I’ve just seen the West Yorkshire devolution deal described as “taking power from Westminster”. This raises a number of questions, a couple of which are (a) is it really taking power?; and (b) who in West Yorkshire has taken this power?

The West Yorkshire devolution deal has been haggled over for years, and is one of the last “devolution” deals to be agreed between Westminster and local politicians. It is an agreement. And I am 100% sure that it would not have been agreed at all if politicians in Whitehall hadn’t approved every last detail of it. Is this really taking power? I don’t think so. The UK is one of the most centralised states in the world. No subordinate body, beit a Parish Council or the West Yorkshire Combined Authority does anything without the sanction of the national government. And now this national government claims to be giving away power. The devolution deal sets out the terms in which that power is to be given away. It maps out very clear perameters within which the money it is supposedly handing over can be spent. So, in reality, the power stays where it has always been, in Westminster. And you can be pretty sure that if the local bodies deviate in any way from the agreement, then the money won’t be forthcoming.

And to answer my second question. The local body to which the power is supposedly being transferred is the West Yorkshire Combined Authority. Who? I hear you ask. Precisely. Next year we are to be privileged enough to get the opportunity to elect a Mayor to head up this body, and that might give it a raise in profile and focal point, but, up to now, most people in West Yorkshire will not have heard of the Combined Authority, let alone know who makes up its membership. So, even if we accept that power is indeed being transferred (which I don’t), do we know who the people are who exercise this power on our behalf?

The flagship project which these new powers and money are to be deployed on is a rapid transit scheme (tram network to you and me). It would be great to have such an initiative in place, it would solve a lot of problems. But, if the power was really being handed over to the people of West Yorkshire, would this be their priority? What about having enough money to put food on the table? What about social care? What about better and cheaper buses? There are probably very many issues which the public would want to be tackled before we got to putting trams on the region’s streets. But oh, the powers over those issues are not being devolved. So is this devolution worth having in any case?

What do you think?

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Why I do Digital Storytelling

This is a brief post about why Digital Storytelling is so important to me.

I believe the world needs to change so that there are more opportunities for people to improve their lives, so that organisations are more responsive to people’s needs, and so that power structures are more representative of the diversity of society.

Every day I come across examples of great initiatives which are contributing to these objectives, but all too often they exist in isolation from each other and from policy and power mechanisms which could translate them into coherent social movements.

As an example, I have only today seen someone from a major organisation revealing in a tweet that they have only just become aware that Britain has a Housing Crisis.

The digital storytelling I do aims to shine a light on people and organisations doing great work to make the world a better place. The most powerful stories of all are those which enable the people who benefit from such work to describe and demonstrate the difference it has made to them.

Here are some examples:

Most people think that social care is in terminal crisis. While no one could deny there are huge problems, every day millions of people work to deliver the best care they can in challenging circumstances.

Policy makers have for years believed that Britain’s South Asian communities did not want professional social care organisations interfering in their family relationships. Probing beneath the surface can reveal the truth.

https://vimeo.com/214214997

All too many people believe that a diagnosis of dementia is a death sentence. Events like the North Wales Dementia Meetups prove that people can continue to live fulfilling lives with the condition.

https://vimeo.com/194802147

It is not true that older people don’t use technology. Some get great benefits from it, but most don’t. Here are some of those who do use it to enhance their lives.

And sometimes it’s all about having fun.

https://vimeo.com/258285215 

I’d love to help as many people as possible to use this kind of storytelling in their work. If I can help you, please get in touch

#onenorth

Somewhere in the North of England

I love the north of England, I have lived in the north for more than 20 years, and even before that I sort of considered it my spiritual home. I was brought up just outside Nottingham which is in the East Midlands. But, historically, the River Trent was seen as the dividing line between the north and south, and, as the maternity hospital where I was born was three miles north of the river, and the village where I was brought up was another 5 miles north of that, I have always considered myself to be a northerner. I realise that if you are reading this in Newcastle or Carlisle, you’ll consider that Huddersfield, where I now live, is pretty far south, but I think most people would consider it to be pretty much at the heart of that thing known collectively as “the North” (in England at least; “hello” to my Scottish friends).

As a child I was fascinated by the North. My mother was a Londoner, and my dad had a job in which he travelled the country, but had regularly to visit his head office in London. When this happened in the school holidays, the family would all get in the car and be dropped off at my uncle’s house in North London while my dad went off to the head office. This happened regularly, we would all get into the car, head off towards the M1 motorway and turn left to head south for London. And every time we did this, I thought “what would happen if we turned right and went north?”. And then, one day, we did. I can’t remember why, but we turned right and headed north. And it was early evening in winter, it was getting dark. One of the things I remember vividly was that, as we crossed the Tinsley viaduct near Sheffield, there were jets of flame illuminating the night sky, emanating from the steel works. That left a big impression on me. My romantic notions of “the North” were now enhanced by a mental image that was almost like dragons breathing fire beside the road. Of course, those steel works are not there any more, and have been replaced by the Meadowhall shopping centre, which may be some people’s idea of a romantic venue, but not mine.

Somewhere else in the North of England

It was around this time, or a bit later, that my romantic notions of the North were significantly boosted by studying “Wuthering Heights” at school. And I also had this idea, perhaps fostered by my mother’s declaration that, having left London at the age of 21 she would never go back to live there, that the further north you went, the kinder and more collaborative people got (apologies to my southern friends, I know this is a stereotype). So, having lived in the West Midlands, as well as the East, when I got the opportunity to move to Yorkshire I jumped at it.

Even though I love living in the North, it cannot be denied that some of the infrastructure leaves a lot to be desired. It always amazes me when I visit London and people complain about the Underground. Of course it has its faults, not least being the over-crowding at rush hour, but the fact that you can disappear underground and be whisked miles across the city in quick time is something that residents of most other cities in the country can only dream of. And, there is the issue of the extra investment being pumped into new lines like Crossrail and Thameslink, at the same time that projects such as the proposed electrification of the Transpennine rail line between Manchester and Leeds have been cancelled. So, is it any wonder that people in the North are angry, and suspecting that the south is being favoured?

And we have had the Northern Powerhouse, which is something I have been sceptical about since its inception. My big problem with it was that, in common with many high-level strategies, it failed to engage with the people of the North in any kind of tangible way. Most of the imagery that came out of it was the usual stuff featuring middle-aged white men in suits. And little of what they produced seemed to have much relevance to people’s lives. And then there came a change of government, and the one project that might have made a difference to how we live, the rail electrification, was cancelled.

A Northern Rail Pacer

Is the Northern Powerhouse dead? I don’t know? What I do know is that the people of the North are angry, and that anger has crystallised around the latest debacle, which has been the failure of the train operating companies, in particular Northern Rail, to adapt to the new timetable which was supposed to give us at least a slight upgrade in terms of speed and frequency of train services. The result has been the opposite of what was promised, with chaos across the region, and reports of people losing their jobs because they can’t get to work on time, among other negative consequences.

I have often been asked for my opinion of the most effective means to get communities organising using social media. My response has often been to suggest that anger is the most likely stimulus. And the Northern Rail situation has produced lots and lots of anger. One of the unexpected results of this has been rival newspaper groups across the region putting aside their normal competitive instincts to come together in a collective expression of the region’s rage at the situation. And much of the anger has been focused around the social media hashtag #onenorth which has been used both to rally people around the campaign to get the government to re-instate its previous promises for investment in northern infrastructure, and to catalogue the nightmare journeys many people have been facing. It is interesting that this began as pretty much a grassroots expression of frustration, with the newspapers offering some kind of leadership and amplification of the message. The politicians of the north, with the possible exception of the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, have been late to this party. Their leadership has been largely lacking.

So, does #onenorth represent a major coming together of the collective spirit of the people of the North? Who knows? It is perhaps too early to tell. I suspect that any collective spirit that does exist will dissipate if the immediate issues are addressed. But I have a hope. It is a hope that this might be a start of something. Could it just be that we can keep the #onenorth spirit going and use it to ensure the people’s voice is heard in future developments across the north of England? The Northern Powerhouse has been something that few people in the North have been able to engage with. Let’s make #onenorth a real movement of the people?

I am being absurdly optimistic about this? Let me know in the comments below.

Oh, and why you are here, I urgently need to get to 1,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel (I make videos about social issues and people’s efforts to improve the world), so please click here and subscribe if you can.

When did we allow the Public Sector to become “other”?

When did we allow the Public Sector to become “other”? I’ve just read yet another article about people doing things for themselves rather than leaving it to the “impersonal” public sector. All power to them, but why the contrast?. We have allowed the media and certain politicians to paint public organisations as being separate from the public, and, it has to be said, a certain kind of management culture and jobsworthiness kind of fosters that within a lot of civic organisations.

But, we should remember that public organisations ARE us. The public funds them through various kinds of taxes, and we elect politicians to oversee them. The public sector represents people’s desire to act collectively to get things done that we cannot achieve on our own. But still there are those who would like us to forget that. This is the reason I have formed the Civic Story Factory to unlock the stories of people doing great work on our behalf.

Love, Care and Happiness: Telling The Story of Great Social Care

As you may know I’ve been doing some work with Calderdale Council‘s Adult Social Care service to tell the story of how Social Care is being delivered in the district in very trying times.

There can be no denying that Social Care is suffering due to the twin pressures of budget tightening and increasing demand. In many areas this is resulting in collapse of services which are buckling under the pressure. And yet, wherever I go in Calderdale, people keep telling me that things are different, that difficulties are being overcome, and that good quality social care is being made to work. As far as I can tell, this is being achieved by a combination of imaginative and flexible commissioning by the Council and managers and staff of providers who are prepared to go the extra mile. And, in the main, they do this because they care. A good friend of mine, Mike Chitty, once said to me “people can’t be paid to care”. I think he is absolutely right, but it is also true, in some cases, at least, that caring professions attract caring people, i.e. people with heightened degrees of empathy and a mission to help their fellow humans. Could it be that there are more of these kinds of people in Calderdale than elsewhere? I suggest this is unlikely, but from my experience, they do seem to be harnessing more of such people’s talents and enthusiasms in pursuit of common goals.

And I think it is vital that we tell the story of how this is all happening so others can learn from it. As I often say – if people doing good work shy away from telling their story (often shrugging and saying “I’m just doing my job”), they leave the way open for others to distort what they do (look at TV programmes like “Benefits Street”, “On Benefits and Proud”, etc.).

So, here is the video diary I shot after visiting Valley View Care Home in Halifax. This is where I started expounding my view that the ultimate aim of social care providers is to ensure the happiness of the people they care for, and that, thus, Social Care is the Happiness Business.

And then I met Mark Coup, Owner of Welcome Independent Living, based in Hebden Bridge, who told me some great stories about how his staff go beyond the call of duty to show they care.

At the end of a day when I had flitted around the District visiting providers and advocates in Halifax and Todmorden, I paused before getting back on the train to record this video diary in which I, a bit off the cuff, tried to sum up what I had seen and what I thought summed up a great Social Care provider. I think the basic agreements are Love, Care and Happiness.

And so, here is the video I was making, which kind of sums all this up in the words of those running great social care organisations, and some of the self-advocates who work with Lead the Way, and the Council.

If you’ve got a great social good story to tell, and would like me to help you tell it, please get in touch.

 

Why Senior Leaders Can’t Afford to Ignore Social Media

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about management and leadership and social media. And I’m thinking about this in the context of the world I inhabit most of the time, that of the public and voluntary sectors. I know a number of senior managers and leaders who are great on social media, but I also know a lot of people who are still complaining that their access to social media and other useful tools is restricted in the workplace. More than 10 years after social media use first became widespread, there are still a large number of organisations either not taking it seriously or blocking it.

This is a really important issue in today’s networked world. Social media and other new technologies have changed the world of work for most people. They have caused organisations to work in more open and collaborative ways, they have flattened hierarchies, and they have allowed like-minded individuals to find and connect with each other to pursue common goals. But, there are still organisations who are oblivious to these changes, or who are actively resisting them. This is bad for their organisations for a number of reasons:

• People are using digital tools in their private lives and they expect similar experiences when they go to work;
• Organisations not using modern tools risk being outflanked by those that are;
• Deploying social media and modern digital tools makes work more interesting and fulfilling, meaning staff are more likely to stay with the organisation, be committed to its vision, and produce better work.

So, what does this mean for senior managers and leaders? Well, surely that point about flattened hierarchies is some kind of threat isn’t it? Maybe not, considering that organisations are indeed changing. The fact that social media in particular allows leaders to tap into knowledge, expertise, and enthusiasm wherever it exists in the organisation has to be an opportunity.

And it is certainly true now (possibly more than ever before), that leadership and status are not necessarily correlated. What social media has definitely done is to highlight where the thinkers, the innovators and the change makers are in organisations and make them visible to the outside world. These kinds of people are not always at senior positions in the hierarchy.  There have been far too many examples where such people have been frustrated that their ideas have not been taken up, and they have subsequently left the organisation, in many cases to establish their own startup companies. One of the key challenges for leaders in the second decade of the 21st Century is to provide opportunities for all staff to contribute to the mission, feel valued, and understand that they have opportunities to progress. Even organisations which ban staff access to social media need to be aware that this is not a foolproof strategy for suppressing criticism, as staff are quite capable of communicating via their smartphones, or in their own time outside work. It is thus far better to offer opportunities for people to make their contributions as part of their work rather than outside it.

I maintain, therefore, that we are no longer in a world where status automatically begats respect as a leader. That respect has to be earned. If you are in a senior position in a large organisation, how do people who work in it, who may never meet you, or do so rarely, get to know you, and work out whether you are deserving in their trust as a leader? We all know that “management by walking about” is a good strategy, but, when the organisation is above a certain size, that may not be practical. This is where social media is your friend. Developing a good social media profile can bring you closer to your staff, as well as enabling you to make those contacts which tap into knowledge and expertise which doesn’t reach you through the usual channels which exist in hierarchies. If you want an example of how this can work, have a look at the public profile of someone like Sir Richard Branson who has been extraordinarily successful in a range of different business spheres, but has managed to maintain his “nice guy” image. Branson is a living embodiment of the power of public relations, and it pays to be aware that good relations internally within an organisation are at least as important as those with external bodies and individuals.

The openness afforded by social media has transformed what it means to be a leader in the modern workplace. But, if you are not already active on social media platforms it can feel like a scary place to venture in to. Because there is no deference on social media. If you are starting from scratch, you have zero followers, and people used to being listened to by virtue of their status in the hierarchy can feel this is like starting out all over again. But the things to remember about social media are:

• It is a slow burner, and you need to build profile and reputation over time;
• You can use it to connect with peers in other organisations who have already been there and done it;
• Unless you are a celebrity, a politician, or someone who deliberate courts controversy and offence, social media tends to be a friendly place, full of helpful people (that’s certainly been my experience over the last 10 years).

A high profile on social media is an essential part of any manager’s toolkit in the current climate. If I can help you on develop your practice in this area, please get in touch

Social Work is Human Rights #SWisHumanRights – building social movements from events

On Friday 15th July I had the great pleasure of being part of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) Yorkshire & Humber Conference at York Racecourse. The theme of the event was “Social Work is Human Rights”

My role was to work with the organisers to help get the messages out of the room via live-streaming, tweeting and capturing voices via vox pop videos and filming the presentations. It was an inspirational day, and what really helped was that the presenters told some really powerful stories. Andrea Sutcliffe of the Quality Care Commission illustrated her presentation with the story of her brother’s suicide; we heard powerfully from Gavin Harding about how the NHS is now putting into practice the idea that, to take people with learning disabilities seriously (his words), organisations need to employ them. And we also heard the heart-wrenching story from Mark Neary  about how his son, Steven, was taken to an Assessment and Treatment Unit for one night, and didn’t come home for 350 days, and then, only after a very hard fight from his dad.

All these were very powerful, inspirational stories, which clearly moved people and made them think. But the other thing about the event is that the impact has carried on afterwards, and continues, due to the social media and video content produced. Elaine James has produced and distributed an excellent storify of the event which has been instrumental in carrying on the debate.

As you probably know, I think stories are the most effective means of getting messages to stay with people. Social Work is Human Rights was full of great stories, but their impact will live on and gather momentum due to the social media and video which is circulating on the web.

It seems to me that what we are doing with this kind of approach is to seed, stimulate, and / or launch social movements off the back of events.  If you’d like me to help you do something similar around your event, please get in touch.

Here’s the overview video of the event

And here are the views of some of the presenters and delegates

The EU Referendum – proof of the power of storytelling

I’m banging on about storytelling again. Because I believe a momentous decision has just been made because slightly over half of the UK adult population believed a story. That story might be true. It might not. I very much doubt that all of it is true. Much of it might have its roots in truth. But….

You see, the Leave Campaign bus had a slogan on the side which said “We send £350m a week to the EU: Let’s spend that money on the NHS”. Nigel Farage made a speech in front of a poster saying “Let’s spend money on the NHS; not Brussels”. This morning he has said that nobody promised the EU money would be spent on the NHS. You see, not all stories are true. But some of them are powerful enough to make people believe in them.

I watched a TV programme recently about the guy who debunked Yuri Geller and several evangelical Faith Healers. Even though their methods were publicly shown to be fake, after a brief glitch in their popularity, most went on to resume their careers. People wanted to believe that what they were doing was real more than they wanted to believe the facts. The story won out over the reality.

So, in the face of myths, we have to tell the real story and we have to get people to want to believe the reality more than they want to believe the myth. People believe that all social housing tenants are cheating scroungers because of “Benefits Street” and the like. They believe that having any kind of ambition in life is setting yourself up for a fall because that is a recurring motif in TV Soap Operas.

So, some of the stories we have to tell, in ways that that engage people, are:

• Social housing is necessary for social cohesion and a balanced society;
• Some people need benefits because they can’t work either permanently or temporarily;
• Collective community actions can improve people’s lives;
• Some people can and should be able to improve their own health and wellbeing if given support and access to resources;
• WIthout immigration our economy would collapse;
• Ethnic and social diversity is a social good and enhances all of our lives
• Older age is not “God’s Waiting Room”.

And those of us who believe in these ideas, or work in organisations whose existence depends on them, need to tell these stories ourselves. All the evidence suggests that no one else is going to do it for us.

I am passionate about the power of Digital Storytelling and I want to help all organisations and individuals to gain the skills and capabilities to tell their own stories to the world. If you share this objective, and just need a little help getting there, please get in touch.

Let your staff be your ambassadors – a takeway from #wgt16

Today I attended the first We Nurses Get Together (#wtg16). It was a great event to be present at, and I’d just like to congratulate everyone involved in making it happen.

During the afternoon I was part of a group that were looking at developing enabling social media policies. Quite a few of the members of the group expressed their frustration that their organisations were still frightened of social media and were blocking staff from using it at work. We explored why this was the case, and management fears of people saying the wrong things and causing a scandal were pretty high on the list.

And yet, one of the group was from Morecambe Bay NHS Trust, an organisation which has experienced more than its fair share of scandal, none of it social media-related. And as part of this Trust’s fight back from its dire position, it is now encouraging all its staff to be active on social media, and to tell their stories about the good work they are doing.

So, there is a real contradiction here. Those organisations which have not experienced scandal are preventing their staff from accessing social media in case they cause one; whereas the organisation that has been through scandal encourages its staff to be open and transparent. This is because they recognise that their staff are their greatest asset and that, by using social media, they can harness their individual and collective voices to place the good work the Trust does before the public. As I said in the session; too many organisations claim their staff are their greatest asset while treating them as if they are a liability. If you really want to get the best out of your staff you need to give their voice free reign, and turn them all into ambassadors for your organisation.

I think this is a really powerful argument to put forward to any managers who are still being reluctant to let their staff use social media. Tell them to consider what is the worst that can happen if someone makes a mistake on social media and could it be worse than any of the things that happened at Morecambe Bay. In the scheme of things, scandals caused by people’s actions on social media are few and far between, but the positive stories of hardworking people wanting to make a difference are many, and they deserve to be told.

Please get in touch if I can help you develop your social media strategy.

Councillors and Social Media – Could They be YouTube Stars?

This is my second post on my takeaways from this year’s #notwestminster event. It may not be the last.

This was the second #notwestminster event, and there have been numerous other events with a similar slant, principally #localgovcamps over the past 8 years or so. It is tempting to think that we will always see progress as time passes, but I fear that this is not always the case. And in this instance, there is a field in which I think progress has stalled, or maybe even taken some backward steps, and that is the use of social media by councillors.

Councillors as Youtube Stars

Someone like Cllr. David Harrington from Stockton-on-Tees is living proof of why councillors should be making effective use of social media. More of that, including a video interview below. But, before that, at the Friday, Local Democracy Makers’ Day, I pitched an idea that I have outlined before, namely, how can we make Youtube stars out of councillors?

As I have written elsewhere, I am a firm believer that non-profit organisations need to make much more use of online video to engage with their customers and service users. There are now people who are making millions from YouTube videos; their audience is mainly young people, they are mainly young themselves, and their subject matter is normally pretty frivolous. But that doesn’t mean that this experience cannot be translated to a more serious area. And the benefits of Councillors engaging beyond the “usual suspects” of the politically-engaged, the campaigners and those with an axe to grind, has to be self-evident.

So, on Friday, we formed a group to work on how Councillors can use video to engage with their constituents, and I think we came up with something quite interesting, with possible applications beyond local government. The solution we came up with was a tool which would allow councillors to publish a map of their ward populated with videos about issues in particular locations. Lucy Knight pulled the tool together and published it immediately on her blog here, while I conducted a video interview with Cllr. Mike Jordan to give us some content to display. The video interview is posted below. It’s worth a watch as it gives some insights into how floods have been dealt with in Selby and North Yorkshire.

It’s a very rough and ready tool, but sometimes the most simple things are the best. I think this, if developed further, could be the basis of an engagement platform, providing opportunities for councillors to use video to engage their electorate. And it could be opened wider to allow local residents to publish their own videos on it in an effort to get something done about local issues. Please get in touch if you are interested in helping to develop this tool further.

Councillors and Social Media

And so to the wider issue of councillors using social media. I conducted the interview below with Councillor David Harrington because I was very struck with what he had said about how his councillor caseload has increased greatly as a result of his high profile on social media. A few years ago there was funding avialable to run programmes like this one which had quite an influence on increased uptake of social media on the part of local elected members. But, as austerity has bitten, funding for things like this has dried up. I think that is a great shame, and I’d be very interested in running some social media training sessions for councillors if either funding could be found, or if councillors themselves might be prepared to pay a modest amount to attend. If anyone can help with this, please get in touch. I’d be interested in the views of elected members themselves as to whether they would attend such sessions and how they might be funded.