Ratio Talks

David Robinson is leader of The Relationship Project at Shift, a design house focused on collective solutions to social problems. He previously led Community Links, a catalyst for change in East London. Here he reflects on the potential for a relational social policy set out in a Ratio paper, and the opportunities and obstacles for local and health authorities to shift the balance in favour of civil society.

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Jon Zaff is Director of the CERES Institute at Boston University. It is an attempt to link knowledge in the university with the needs of the communities around the university, in Jon’s case the needs of schools. His work focuses on the educational environment, the ethos, the way students relate to each other, and to their teachers.

https://www.bu.edu/wheelock/profile/jonathan-f-zaff/
https://ceresinstitute.org/

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Glaswegian Social Entrepreneur Iain MacRitchie is best known for his business turnarounds, guiding ailing companies back to good health. Most of this work was put on ice to develop and scale MCR Pathways, a programme that builds a support network around the most disadvantaged pupils and connects them with a mentor from local businesses and public systems. Iain reflects on the lessons learned, starting with one school in Glasgow and now reaching schools across seven Scottish local authorities.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/oct/13/dead-without-it-mentoring-care-leavers-scotland

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It started with a single study in Greentown. Instead of looking at the cause of youth crime one case at a time, Sean Redmond’s team examined young people’s networks. A different data set exposed new ways of responding to the problem. Building trust in communities. Giving young people options. Taking out the adult lynchpins of the gang. It moved on to replication in Redtown and Bluetown. The collaboration between the University, the Irish police and communities in each of the towns has generated a clear and effective relational social policy.

http://www.ulsites.ul.ie/law/professor-sean-redmond-0

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Toby Lowe, Senior Lecturer in Public Management at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, has led a decade long challenge to new public management, and in particular its potential to shoehorn difficult social problems into a relationship between  inputs, outputs and outcomes. His Human, Learning, Systems approach offers a new paradigm for public services.

https://www.humanlearning.systems

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Tim Moore is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Community Child Health, Melbourne Children’s Hospital. He leads reviews of research literature on child development, family functioning and public services. In recent years two issues have captured Moore’s attention: the development of the human brain in the first 1,000 days of life; and its implications for our ways of learning.

‘We are wired to relate to others’ finds Moore, an impetus for rebalancing public systems so that more time is spent connecting people to natural supports and less time referring onto services that fix.

https://www.rch.org.au/ccch/first-thousand-days/

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Maff Potts is founder of the Association of Camerados, the catalyst for a movement of people who believe the answer to our problems is each other. Camerados are constantly trying new ways to encourage connection and mutual aid. This podcast was recorded in a teepee erected in the foyer of Blackpool hospital, a magical space that enticed in 1,000 visitors each week. Those entering got a Camerados badge, and when they were contacted a week after spending time in the teepee they were found to be more altruistic and more open to mutual aid. Maff Potts talks about the successes and failures of this work, and his aspirations for the movement.

https://www.camerados.org

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thisisratio.substack.com

Functional Family Therapy is an evidence based response to conduct disorder in adolescents. When Robert Barnoski of the Washington State Institute for Public Policy studied the programme he found that, on average, fidelity to the model matters. But there were exceptions. Some practitioners who did it their own way got good scores. Others who did it by the book got bad scores. Tom Sexton is one of the developers of the Functional Family Therapy model. Donald Forrester has been a pioneer in bringing good quality research to bear on social work. They discuss Robert Barnoki’s findings, and their implications for public policy.

Find out more:
https://www.care4software.com/who-we-are
https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view/208757-

See here the FFT fidelity findings:
https://we.tl/t-egBWKfTgDx

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Hilary Cottam’s book Radical Help: How We Can Remake the Relationships Between Us and Revolutionise the Welfare State offers a vision rooted in human connection. Cottam was talking about and experimenting with relational ways of working long before its potential was taken seriously by public policy experts. The work provides the foundation for a new settlement between state and civil society.

Find out more:
https://www.hilarycottam.com
https://www.ted.com/talkshilary_cottam_social_services_are_broken_how_we_can_fix_them?language=en

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thisisratio.substack.com

Wigan Council have been at the forefront of forging a new relationship between public systems and civil society. It started with the Deal. It commits the Council and citizens to radical change in their respective roles and responsibilities. It is a relational approach born from the realities of protecting front-line services in the context of austerity. As Donna Hall, Chief Executive of Wigan explains, this rebalancing of civil society and public systems has some way to go but is beginning to reap rewards of better health of residents.

Find out more about the Deal:
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/lessons-wigan-deal
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/wigan-deal

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thisisratio.substack.com