The Enabling Social Action Programme was created in collaboration between the Social Action Team in the Office for Civil Society and the New Economic Foundation. It took place from November 2015 to August 2016. The programme’s aim is to provide learning and resources for commissioners and other public sector leaders to enable social action. Four main sources were used to gather information and insights about how public sector leaders can enable social action:
How to? Three main ways are identified in which the public sector can enable social action. Public bodies seeking to enable a range of activities across the typology of social action are likely to be involved in all three.
One way of understanding, unlocking, and building up local assets is Asset-based community development (ABCD, www.abcdinstitute.org). It is a helpful tool for researching local opportunities and barriers to social action. The key stages of this approach are: 1. Mapping or making an inventory of the capacities and assets in the area 2. Building relationships and connections between residents, and between residents and agencies, to change values and attitudes 3. Mobilising residents to become self-organising and active by sharing knowledge and resources and identifying common interests 4. Convening a core group of residents to identify, from asset mapping and mobilising activities, the key theme or issue that will inspire people to get organised and to create a vision and a plan 5. Levering outside resources only to do those things that the residents cannot do for themselves; they need to be in a position of strength in dealing with outside agencies.
A strong sense of community is important for participation in social actions.
Social bonds between community members will increase participation in social actions.
A sense of collaboration between community members is important for participating in social actions and volunteering to help others.
The stronger the perception of responsibility for each other in a community the more people will be participating in social actions.
Important for the effectiveness is that authorities are willing to adopt the program and that the provided support is in close collaboration with the community and social activities already in place.
Kirklees Council's community partnerships program has succeeded in linking small-scale social action initiatives into a system that allows significant impact on local outcomes by focusing on activities that support older and disabled people in maintaining their well-being and independence. Every year, the community partnerships team makes small to medium grants to approximately 130 social action projects that help people stay healthy in their communities. Around half of the projects are led by users and have no paid members of staff. The council and two local clinical commissioning groups co-funded the £1.5 million investment in 2015/2016. A further 100 organizations receive development assistance from the community partnerships team, which includes administrative and in-kind assistance as well as assistance in locating alternative sources of funding. In 2015/2016, a social prescribing initiative assisted over 600 people, 70% of whom have high levels of need, in learning about or accessing community activities for the first time. Overall, Kirklees social action helped 6,245 people each week and at least 34,300 people over the course of the year. In some cases, social action support has resulted in people declining more acute health and social care services because they prefer the community activities to which they have been referred. In Kirklees, the number of people using adult social services has dropped by half in the last five years. While correlation cannot be assumed to imply causation, this is the same period of time in which Kirklees has strategically invested in joining up local social action.
External links: Kirklees Council. (2016). Community partnerships: Annual newsletter 2015–16. Retrieved from: www.kirklees.gov.uk/beta/grants-and-funding/pdf/community-partnerships-annual-newsletter-1516.pdf
Shared Lives is an example of social action that has been replicated and scaled. It operates as a national membership network of Shared Lives Carers who support adults with care needs in family and community-based ways. In Shared Lives, approximately half of the carers care for people by including them in their own family home, while the other half support people through short breaks and day visits. Shared Lives began in 1992 as an adult placement program. By 2003, there were 700 members, but there were numerous challenges with regulatory barriers. Shared Lives now has 8,460 members who support 11,570 people across 131 Shared Lives schemes in England. It has been replicated across the UK through partnerships with local authorities. Shared Lives offers carers support, advice, and insurance, as well as a rigorous training, approval, and matching process. Local governments fund part-time care through their community care budget, but at a much lower cost than traditional residential care or care homes. Helping it scale, Shared Lives has also had the backing of NHS England and the Cabinet Office. This enabled it to achieve the regulatory changes required to support its social action model of care and the public profile that has led to it becoming a trusted partner for the majority of English local authorities. In 2014/2015, Shared Lives placements for people with learning disabilities cost on average £26,000 less per year than institutional care. 11 The vast majority (96%) of Shared Lives placements were rated good or outstanding by the Care Quality Commission in 2016 which compares favorably with other community services of which 68.6% were rated good or outstanding, and residential services of which 63.5% were. Over the next four years, Shared Lives hopes to support 37,113 more people while saving local governments an additional £145 million.
External Link: Shared Lives Plus. (no date). About Shared Lives Plus. Retrieved from: sharedlivesplus.org.uk/index.php/ about-shared-lives-plus
With Cornwall Council focused on understanding how it was devolving the library service to town and parish councils and community groups. One action was to make the Council think through the role co-production and social action could play in this process, as well as across the Council as a whole. Motivated by the need to make budget savings, Cornwall Council embarked on a process of finding a different way of running its 29 libraries in 2015. It started with a public consultation that aimed to gauge public opinion on whether libraries should be: (1) devolved to town and parish councils and community organisations; (2) outsourced to a trust, a commercial organisation, or a social enterprise; or (3) opened to alternative forms of ownership and management. Option 1 proved most popular. 26 of 29 town and parish councils and community groups had expressed an interest in taking on the running of the library in their area. The principal aim was to understand what enabled voluntary groups to come forward and offer to run the library, and what held other areas back. Interviews were held with a wide range of stakeholders, including the head of the library service, commissioners, parish councillors and clerks, and local community groups to answer this question. Findings were that community capacity – in the form of motivated, funded community groups – was a key ingredient in areas where community activists were interested in running the library. Additionally, a roundtable was held with a range of commissioners from across Cornwall Council to discuss the role social action currently plays in commissioning, and to identify the opportunities and challenges for extending and deepening this approach.
The general challenge of this solution is the work that needs to be done to convince authorities to invest in social actions and convey that the benefits will outway the costs.