« Quotation of the week – Main – Standing for what? »
Public service reform is near constant and an important part of the political sphere of British life. The difference between the politics of reform and what happens on the ground — your and my interactions with the local council, schools or hospital, for example, — is often marked: the two feel divorced from each other.
What is more, the distance between law as stated in the legislation, which enacts policy, and public services on the ground is even greater. A recent report, however, has shown how changes that have come about in the legislation can impact very positively on public services and their reform.
If I may, I'll concentrate on the benefits first, because their source might seem surprising.
The report showed that public services, such as local councils and hospitals, can become better, more efficient, sustainable, and more trusted in a relatively simple and effective way.
On efficiency and sustainability, the report highlighted how organisations can understand better the people they exist for and for whom the services are designed. By doing so, providers of public services can ensure they include everything appropriate to their service within their provision, and not have to make costly changes after providing a service and realising it doesn't do the job. As such, services from their start are more likely to continue to meet needs in the long term i.e. they are sustainable.
The point around a service becoming better is similar: in developing a service, the report highlights how hearing about personal experiences of users helps to shape a service and ensure that personalisation is possible because the service understands and listens to the people who will use it.
Developing and securing more trust in public services is perhaps the most important point highlighted by the report. Public services are beginning to develop specific new structures to enable people to contribute and input to the development or running of a service. This isn't just normal consultation, but actual involvement in developing services and the decision-making processes involved. By being able to see how a contribution has directly contributed to a specific component or action associated with a service, so trust in that service is inevitably built.
The mechanism for achieving all of these gains — a better, more efficient and sustainable service, which is trusted by the public — is called the Disability Equality Duty. This is a legal requirement upon public organisations which aims to promote disability equality and ensure that services take account of the people covered by the Disability Discrimination Act.
The ded is legislation, but its practical implications are clear. As a member of the public, to know that you can contribute to the development of a local service you use is a very powerful feeling, and one that would logically result in that service being better suited to your needs. At the same time, as a senior manager of that local service, to know that involving disabled people in the development of your service will lead to that service being better, more efficient and more trusted is surely to know that ensuring your organisation meets the ded is one that will benefit not only your service users, but you as an organisation.
A copy of the report — Involvement for Real Equality — can be downloaded from arbitrary constant here.