arbitrary constant

Recent Entries in Work

• Bob Kerslake: knows what he's talking about

  Despite not knowing him and having never worked with him, Bob Kerslake's is one of those names that is just known in government and local government (a bit like Michael Bichard). He's been in the news this week since he's just been appointed as Permanent Secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government - an appointment I was delighted to hear about, despite not quite knowing why. Anyway, with wonderful timing, yesterday's Guardian Society...

• Right to Control Trailblazer: Public agencies working together and the implications for staff

  This post is the last in a series of reflections on the Right to Control Trailblazer work in Essex over the last few months. For an overview of the work, an introduction to this post and links to all previous posts in the series, please see the opening post of this series. Bringing together 3 local public agencies, and different teams from within those agencies, is bound to throw up a number of interesting points...

• Right to Control Trailblazer: Money, outcomes and money again

  This post is one of a series of reflections on the Right to Control Trailblazer work in Essex over the last few months. For an overview of the work, and an introduction to this post, please see the opening post of this series. In the present climate, one of the drivers for this work has got to be understanding how joining up the work makes it more effective, both in terms of service user outcomes...

• Right to Control Trailblazer: Policy 'versus' process

  This post is one of a series of reflections on the Right to Control Trailblazer work in Essex over the last few months. For an overview of the work, and an introduction to this post, please see the opening post of this series. I've been surprised throughout the Trailblazer process by how little policy is spoken of. My perception is that people delivering services 'on the ground' think of policy happening elsewhere; in some cases,...

• Right to Control Trailblazer: Legislation and Regulations

  This post is one of a series of reflections on the Right to Control Trailblazer work in Essex over the last few months. For an overview of the work, and an introduction to this post, please see the opening post of this series. The Right to Control Trailblazer learnt from one of the significant problems with the Individual Budget pilots and is looking to ensure there is a solid regulatory basis for the Trailblazers to...

• Right to Control Trailblazer: Scale and knowing your numbers

  This post is one of a series of reflections on the Right to Control Trailblazer work in Essex over the last few months. For an overview of the work, and an introduction to this post, please see the opening post of this series. Essex is a big local authority area. There are approximately 17,500 new social care assessments each year and there are currently over 33,000 current social care users. All staff in agencies touched...

• 

  Right to Control Trailblazer update: overview

  In my professional life I have spent a considerable proportion of time over the last few months working on the Right to Control Trailblazer in Essex, focusing on service design and reform. My initial thoughts on the Right to Control Trailblazer, posted after the launch event, can be found here. This post updates those thoughts after 5 months of significant work and progress. First, an overview. We're seeking to achieve 3 aims with the Trailblazer....

• Democratic accountability in the Health White Paper

  The Department of Health has published a number of accompanying documents to the Health White Paper that was itself published last week. Having written a detailed analysis of patient voice in the Health White Paper, I was thus particularly interested in the "Local democratic legitimacy in health" follow-up paper. Though the paper addresses nowhere near all of the questions I outlined in my previous post, there is some good stuff in this accompanying paper on...

• The BMA and the #healthwhitepaper

  Following a whole series of post on the #healathwhitepaper (see "other posts" below), it's interesting to note that the powerful BMA is doing its best to ignore the proposals contained in the White Paper and focused instead on GP contracts: We hope there will be few changes to the GP contract as this is a UK contract and commissioning is an England policy. We know that the government wishes to make a few, very significant,...

• The Health White Paper and social care

  Following up my post on patient voice in the Health White Paper, here's one capturing my confusion over how health relates to social care. It is baffling to me that a White Paper entitled "Liberating the NHS" makes so many references to social care. Indeed, the White Paper may be liberating the NHS, but it feels like it's making a landgrab for social care. The direction of travel all seems to be from social care...

• Discrimination against people with learning disabilities still rife

  Fucking hell, this is depressing: Discrimination against people with learning disabilities and misconceptions about their lives is still widespread in the UK, despite a string of high profile hate crime cases, a poll reveals today. A third of Britons think those with such disabilities cannot live independently or do jobs, while almost a quarter imagined they would be living in care homes. Nearly one in ten (8%) expected them to be cared for in a...

• Voluntary sector, social care and the Big Society

  After a pleasant 30 minutes reading NCVO's excellent UK Civil Society Almanac 2010, here are some key facts relating to the role of the voluntary sector in adult social care: In 2007/08 local authority expenditure on social care was £20.7bn, of which £15.3bn was for adult social care. Social care workforce in the voluntary sector grew from 19% in 1996/97 (202,000 people) to 26% in 2007/08 (374,000). As a comparison, the voluntary sector as a...

• Early learning from Personal Health Budgets

  For those of you so inclined, this makes for fascinating reading: Personal health budget pilot sites have faced early challenges in funding personalised care packages for patients, a national evaluation has found. Pilot leads in primary care trusts said they were struggling both to calculate the value of budgets and to find money to resource them. The key issues in introducing Personal Budgets in health seem to be: PCTs can't calculate the value of budgets...

• Not a "Death Tax" but a choice

  Having had a Royal Commission, two Wanless reports, a national debate, a Select Committee Inquiry, a Green Paper and a White Paper, and with a vision paper and a new White Paper on their way, the coalition government today set up it's Commission on the Funding of Care and Support to address the issue of funding adult social care. I don't know about you, but I'm just not sure we've thought about it enough. Anyway,...

• Social care reform: the journey from here (updated)

  The Health White Paper and some recently published documents have given some useful indications as to the timetable for social care reform over the next few months. Here's what I think we can expect: The Commission on the funding of long-term care will being its work in July 2010 and report in July 2011. I don't know why the coalition has called this work on "long-term care" rather than just "social care". I'm assuming it's...

• Where's all the "Equity" when the NHS has been "Liberated"?

  This is a guest post by Christine Burns MBE, an Equality and Diversity consultant currently embedded in the NHS war zone. Since Andrew Lansley’s NHS White Paper was published last week, most of the public commentary has inevitably centred on the alleged savings to be achieved and the open door which the plans will create for privatisation. The White Paper, “Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS”, proposes to remove two tiers of regional and local...

• Patient voice in the Health White Paper

  This post also appeared on Stable and Principled The launch of the coalition government's Health White Paper has made for interesting reading this week. Probably the best reaction to the proposals came from Health Policy Insight: The document's flaws are in two main areas: those of Emmentalesque holes; and of biscuit contraception (the bits that are fucking crackers). For reactions and criticisms that capture the key issues of the plan, I would certainly recommend Civitas's...

• Two US perspectives on welfare / workfare

  Lawrence M Mead: In 1986, Mead's big idea was to push welfare recipients into jobs - an approach that came to be known as "workfare". Unlike those on the left who wanted to change capitalism, Mead wanted to change the poor. The academic argued that disorder stemming from the actions of the inner-city poor, rather than a lack of opportunity, lay at the collapse of their communities. What was needed, he argued, was to "enforce...

• Report the DWP for harassment

  Close readers of this blog will know I try to cover broad disability-based issues. This reflects both a personal and professional interest, as well as my belief that how politics and policy addresses disability equality issues is essentially a proxy for how they treat people as a whole. In the last week or so, I've highlighted the coalition government's potential position with regard to Disability Living Allowance, covered the implications of introducing medical assessments for...

• The Budget and DLA: initial reactions

  From a disability perspective, the big announcement in today’s Budget was the introduction of medical assessments for all DLA claimants from 2013-14. The relevant paragraph is the following from the Budget document: 1.103 The Government will reform the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to ensure support is targeted on those with the highest medical need. The Government will introduce the use of objective medical assessments for all DLA claimants from 2013-14 to ensure payments are only...

• 5 tips for radio interviews

  I was interviewed on the radio this morning, ahead of the Budget tomorrow. Though I'm nervous each time I do it - this is the fourth time I've been interviewed - I do enjoy the experience. Though a relative novice - and recognising there are probably hundreds of media training courses that offer far more insight and expertise than my thoughts - here are my top 5 tips if you're going to be interviewed on...

• Independent Living Fund essentially closed for business

  The Independent Living Fund (ILF) - which provides financial support to disabled people with high support needs to support the cost of their personal assistance, and is separate to social care funding - is essentially closed for business. It's shut. Due to budget restrictions, the ILF first said that it would only support ILF applications from disabled people working over 16 hours a week. Before this decision, there was no such requirement, which in itself...

• EHRC calls for disability hate crime evidence

  Several months back, I wrote a series of posts covering the topic of disability hate crime. These were prompted by the Equality & Human Rights Commission's report into "Promoting the Safety and Security of Disabled People", which noted that: Disabled people are 4 times more likely to be victims of crime compared to non-disabled people 47 per cent of disabled people had either experienced physical abuse or had witnessed physical abuse of a disabled companion...

• All on board the new London bus?

  The excellent Boris Watch picks up on whether or not disabled people were engaged up front in the design of the new London bus. The answer? No....

• EHRC faces budget cuts

  I note this because I used to work there and some ex-colleagues and friends may be affected: The Equality and Human Rights Commission, charged with tackling discrimination and safeguarding human rights, has been ordered to cut 15% from its budget as part of the coalition government's austerity measures, the Guardian has learned. The cuts to the equalities watchdog has forced it to review its staffing, marketing and programme of grants to combat discrimination. Two other...

• Frontline workers and the personalisation of adult social care

  My boss took part in a really interesting debate on the personalisation of adult social care earlier this week. It was organised by the excellent OPM as part of their Public Interest Seminar series, more about which can be found on their dedicated website. Photos from the event are here. The motion for debate was that the success of personalisation would depend on the knowledge, skills and confidence of frontline workers. Since the seminar was...

• More on disabled people and 'dependency'

  Following my lengthy post on the new coalition government's report on Poverty, Welfare and Dependency, I thought I'd point you to the United Kingdom Disabled People's Council response to the report. It picks up on many of the same points I made in my post, and very usefully goes further by pointing out where the coalition government's report fails to mention many other issues relating to disabled people. These include young disabled people, not distinguishing...

• Poverty, worklessness... and #DLA?

  The new coalition government published its "State of the Nation" report on "Poverty, Worklessness and Welfare Dependency" last week. This is clearly an important document since it sets out the perspective from which a key department will operate in a vital area over the coming parliament and, as the document itself notes, provides an overview that "will be used to inform policy decisions" (p6). This posts notes some key themes of and issues with the...

• Total Place under the Tories

  The Total Place initiative was a significant development in local government policy over the last term of the Labour government. Details about what Total Place is and what it's seeking to achieve are here. I have a professional interest in Total Place because I see the Right to Control - a significant transformation project that aims to bring together several funding streams which provide choice and control for disabled people - as a kind of...

• Radio 4 and the social model of disability

  It was disappointing to hear on last Friday night's 7pm news bulletin on Radio 4 someone described as "severely handicapped". The term used should have been "severely disabled". I am by no means the PC police and I recognise an institution like the BBC (and particularly Radio 4) probably doesn't want another ticking off by anybody about its use of language. But in this case (and you knew there was a 'but' coming), what flows...

• Kent County Council to publish monthly accounts

  The Kent Messenger reports: Plans to reveal more details of how Kent County Council spends millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money by publishing monthly accounts have been backed by county councillors. The move is expected to result in the authority setting out much more comprehensive details about how it spends £1billion on goods and services each year... Cllr John Simmonds, KCC cabinet member for finance, said he wanted KCC to take a lead in meeting...

• Service user involvement in commissioning

  Through the excellent Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Age Concern London yesterday published an interesting paper on involving users in commissioning. (I've covered previous JRF publications in this area here and here.) For anyone who is interested in user engagement or user-led work, Age Concern's report is well worth a read. Partly to support the launch, I gave a talk about Community Care Live today on this topic, the text of which is below. The main point...

• Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010

  Yesterday was Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010. It's the day when: all around the world, disabled and non-disabled people will blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination. In this way, we hope to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we've made. I believe it's coordinated by the excellent Diary of a Goldfish, and you can find all of the posts from the day here. Do please read whatever...

• Quango mergers: a simple process?

  That's the question, posed by Guardian Public: Departmental agencies and non-departmental public bodies look ripe for merging in a bid to save money by the next government. On paper it looks simple but how will it work in practice? And the answer? Merging organisations is never as simple as it appears on paper and the process of merging public bodies is no less complex than in the private sector... [I]n merging, it is important to...

• Old school / new school networking

  This seems like a spot-on distinction to me: Old school: Networking is a "necessary evil to get a job." New school: Networking is a professional competency that helps us DO our jobs well. (Via Josie Fraser)...

• More tea please?

  Having brought you cake as a management tool, here's another interesting one for you management geeks out there. Imagine you are a senior manager in an organisation. It has a turnover of approximately £2m. At the moment, you spend £990 per annum on free tea, coffee, milk and sugar for all staff. This amount represents the best price you can get. You are asked to consider whether this represents the best use of your organisation's...

• Personalisation and White Knights

  This is very complicated stuff. But it always looks so simple to begin with. And with that thought, Paul Clarke finishes a quite excellent post concerning how individuals could interact with government services and how translating what seems like common sense in theory can turn into a rabbit warren of a nightmare in practice. I'd recommend reading all of it....

• "Boring innovation" and Supertramp

  I was struck by Robert Brook's recent note on boring innovation: Oh, sorry — didn’t I say? Ah, yes, innovation has a budget. And a timescale. And a board — you know, just to check that we’re innovating in the right way. Nothing too ... er ... innovative. Wait a minute, I’ve just got to update this Gantt chart. And we’re back. Innovating! Innovating while the budget allows! Oh dear this is dreadful. And, of...

• JRF's two-tier Care Levy

  In their customary thoughtful way, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has proposed a two-track Care Levy which sees each generation pay its own social care costs. (See also the JRF's contribution to the social care debate here). It works on the principle that each generation contributes to the costs of its own care in later life and works like this: part one of the so-called Care Levy recognises that Today's older people have not put aside...

• Interview with a blogging Chief Executive, by @davebriggs

  A great interview from @davebriggs with the blogging Chief Executive of Cambridgeshire County Council, Mark Lloyd:...

• Volunteering and lived experience

  Below is a copy of a talk I gave this week to Volunteering England's conference. It's not a topic I'm hugely knowledgeable on, but I enjoyed the opportunity to talk about some of the work we're doing at ECDP to ensure our volunteering work is based on the lived experience of disabled people. Building volunteering at ECDP through 'Lived Experience' View more documents from Rich Watts. Following my talk there was a question and answer...

• Enable the public to put their money where their voice is

  On the back of an interesting Twitter exchange with @paul_clarke and @jackcabnory, I wanted to get some thoughts down about budgets, transparency and the public. I'm afraid it is likely to be a rambling, incoherent post; it is also written by someone who has a keen interest in finance issues but who has literally no professional qualifications in its practice. Please do keep these health warnings in mind when you wonder what the hell I'm...

• Cake as a management tool

  As someone with a passing familiarity with management techniques and tools (as in, they tend to pass me by), I was immediately taken with Hadley Beeman's suggestion on Twitter that cake can be an effective management tool. This on the back of one of my current colleagues making some excellent cakes regularly and the knowledge that at least one other tweeter (@GeorgeJulian) makes cakes for her teams. And Hadley, of course, is entirely right. A...

• IPCC investigates the Pilkington case

  As much as anyone can be pleased with anything to do with this case, I am pleased to see that officers from Leicestershire police are being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission over the tragic Fiona Pilkington case. I don't say this because I take comfort in any individual being hauled over the coals for what they have or haven't done, though I understand this is likely to be an outcome of the investigation....

• Right to Control Trailblazer launch

  I enjoyed attending the launch of the Right to Control Trailblazer yesterday. I attended as a representative of a user-led organisation in Essex - one of eight successful Trailblazer areas. The Right to Control represents an innovative project that seeks to bring together a whole range of funding streams so that disabled people have more choice and control over how they use the funding they're eligible for. It's actually really easy to get into the...

• Disagreeing with the TPA's budget cut analysis

  I more than disagree with the analysis proffered by the Tax Payers’ Alliance on how to implement budget cuts in the public sector. Stef uses the euphemism ‘thought provoking’ to capture his thoughts on the article; I prefer to call it a load of crap, for the following reasons: 1. Mark Wallace has it precisely the wrong way around: Councillors may be elected, but (in my experience) they are generally poor quality. It’s the managers,...

• Quango merger quango

  The news came last week that the cost of setting up the Equality & Human Rights Commission was £39m. As well as criticising the cost of the creation of the EHRC from the 3 existing equality commissions (disability, gender and race), the Committee of Public Accounts also said that the organisation itself wasn't ready for business with key business areas still needing work. According to the committee, the process for creating the EHRC was 'patently...

• On Purpose

  A new 'fast stream for high fliers' in social enterprises looks promising.

• Budget constraints as way to address poor performance?

  Addressing poor performance shouldn't just happen because the financial environment requires it.

• Customer journey mapping

  Customer journey mapping (CJM) looks to be a fruitful area of work for public service delivery. It's surprising it hasn't cropped up before, isn't it?

• Your social care reader (for now)

  The three main protagonists in the social care 'debates' today clashed on the Politics Show. You can see the crux of that discussion here. The key point made was this: Why do we have a debate where we need to rule out options before we get to the table? I have been covering the issue of social care reform on arbitrary constant since the publication of the Social Care Green Paper back in November. Thus,...

• Social care blog round up (updated)

  I'm just catching up on the blog reaction to the social care 'debates' over the last few days (for more from me on this topic, see here: 1, 2, 3, 4). Here's a round up of those reactions from the blogs I follow which covered this vital topic. You'll note primarily focus on the posters rather than, you know, the policy content. Ho hum. — Events, Dear Boy, Events: Oops! Another Cameron fail: The Tory...

• Social care: how would the Conservatives pay for it?

  The very issue I wrote about yesterday was raised as part of the 'debate' at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday, and in various exchanges played out in the media. David Cameron asked Gordon Brown to rule out a levy of £20,000 on people to pay for their social care. He also asked the question "Where is the money coming from?" and noted that various people (local Councils of all political persuasions amongst them) had asked questions...

• Social care 'death duty': C4 fact check

  Following on from my post yesterday, Channel 4's Fact Check has picked up on the issue of the social care 'death duty', as mentioned by David Cameron during Prime Minister's Questions. You can read their analysis here, the conclusion of which is in line with my findings yesterday. Fact Check concludes: We'll have to wait for the government white paper to know for certain. But for now, compulsory insurance of some sort remains firmly on...

• Targets

  I find it remarkable that the use of targets in the public sector (in any sector, for that matter [1]) could be called into question. They manifestly work, as Peter Preston notes in his column. They key distinction to make is that targets are not a homogenous group. Describing the types of services they monitor, targets are multifarious and multifaceted in nature. In particular, we should draw a distinction between targets aimed at short-term improvement...

• Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein

  Proving how I am always ahead of the zeitgeist, anticipating trends before they happen, and living up to my reputation of informing the politics of the future, I have just read Nudge. I thoroughly enjoyed the first two sections, detailing how they do the sociological and psychological research which informs much of behavioural economics. As ever, though, the descriptive parts of a book like this don't translate well into the analytical parts, and Thaler and...

• Enabled by Design / @enabledby

  For a while now, I have been following and impressed by Enabled by Design. The basic question that Enabled by Design asks is why should anybody who requires any form of assistive equipment to support them to live independently have to put up with stuff that looks like crappy hospital equipment? The wider question that Enabeld by Design poses, of course, is one that relates to disability as a whole: why is disability — as...

• Watching #ukgc10 from afar

  I have followed with interested the UK Government Camp (#ukgc10) unconference, which was held last Saturday, and after which there has been an avalanche of quality blogging and comment. For an overview of what #ukgc10 is and for links on where to go read more about it, I’d recommend its organizer, Dave Briggs. One of the best posts I've seen summarizing the day (and there are a lot) is that on Social by Social by...

• Compulsory retirement

  There was something ironic about Jon Humprhys interviewing someone on the Today programme about compulsory retirement at age 65 this morning. This, however, is not the point I wanted to make, but merely a comic introduction. The debate around compulsory retirement is a very difficult one. I applaud the Equality & Human Rights Commission, though, for maintaining a good quality, evidence-based debate on whether or not retirement at age 65 should be compulsory. This is...

• Mental illness and school governors

  Earlier this week, Rethink launched a campaign to stop the ridiculous and discriminatory practice that stops people with mental health conditions being able to undertake jury service. In my post supporting the campaign, I noted an update that a similar position may apply to people with mental health conditions becoming school governors. I'm pleased to note that this isn't actually the case. In the Social Exclusion Unit's 2004 report on Mental Health and Social Exclusion...

• Tweeting: the work-life divide

  A good friend asked me if I worry that people from work might read my tweets or this blog. Despite knowing for a fact the only people who read this blog and my tweets are my mum (hi mum) and my 7-week-old son, I indulged myself and gave the question some thought. Of course, there have been a couple of high profile cases where people have been sacked for slagging off their work on their...

• Making toast

  When I was 14, I wasn't that keen on toast for breakfast. As a result, I would get a plate out of the cupboard, put a piece of bread in the toaster, spread a few crumbs of the toast on the plate, leave it out on the side, and throw away the piece of toast in the bin outside. This all in an effort to convince my parents that I'd eaten some breakfast. After a...

• Peer support for parents of disabled children

  This is a welcome announcement: Local authorities are to recruit parents of disabled children to help other mothers and fathers in similar situations under a government scheme to improve access to childcare announced today. Funding of £12.5m will also pay for specialist training for childminders and nursery staff to enable them to work with disabled children. By far the most important element of the announcement is the peer support that parents of disabled children will...

• On the disability reality show Cast Offs

  I'll admit to feeling some trepidation about the first in the series of Cast Offs — a "darkly comic drama series telling the story of six disabled characters sent to a remote British island for a fictional reality TV show" — tonight. As someone whose day-to-day business is disability equality, it's obviously excellent that a series like this, which is receiving so much attention, is about to be broadcast. Of course, it's also slightly wearying...

• Doing Seniority Differently: leadership and disabled people

  RADAR has recently published an excellent report, called Doing Seniority Differently, which looks not just the inclusion of disabled people in the workplace, but at the issues of disabled people’s career progression and ensuring there are disabled people in senior positions in a range of organisations. We know that there is a focus (rightly) on gender equality in the workplace, both in terms of pay and ensuring equal representation of women at senior levels across...

• Dave's progression shows his party's regression

  I was pleased to see David Cameron support all-women shortlists. It's a progressive action which is a proportionate action to address the institutional under-representation of women in Parliament. (In fairness, the Tories have to do something about their record on this: only 18 of their 193 Tory MPs are women. Only 28% of all their candidates are women.) But the general reaction of his party was what made me really pleased. This from John Strafford,...

• Legg it

  So far as I can see, the only thing that has distracted newspaper editors and subs from the content of the story regarding Sir Thomas Legg's recommendations on MPs' expenses has been the potential for puns arising from the retired civil servant involved. My own poor and totally unrelated attempt is given above. Why not? The rest of the story is a joke. For the last 20 months, I have been claiming £22.50 for half...

• Equality issues in important matters

  You wouldn't think there'd be much that links the X Factor with the governance of the country, but there is. When Dannii Minogue uses someone's sexuality as the basis of her feedback, as she did to Danyl during Saturday's live show, she was making the same mistake as those people who used the results of Gordon Brown's recent eye test as an opportunity to suggest he is unfit to be Prime Minister: she used something...

• Digital inclusion

  This is one of the most interesting slideshows you could possibly spend a few minutes looking through: Digital Inclusion: The Evidence. It starts from the commonly-held assumption that Everyone's using digital technologies ... and then blows that assumption, correctly, out of the water. Some key stats include: — 29% of adults don't use the internet — 25% of adults have never used the internet — 35% of households don't have the internet — 70% of...

• "Promoting the Safety and Security of Disabled People"

  The Equality and Human Rights Commission has today published an important report into targeted violence and hostility against disabled people. The report is called "Promoting Safety and Security of Disabled People", and is sobering in its findings (key statistics of which are re-produced below): — Disabled people are 4 times more likely to be victims of crime compared to non-disabled people — 47 per cent of disabled people had either experienced physical abuse or had...

• Obama's 'Special Olympics' comment

  Not good: irrespective of the calls of political correctness gone mad etc., it's not good for Barack Obama to refer to the Special Olympics in a disparaging way. Here's the coverage of the Independent and The Times. John Rentoul highlights the political consequences for smart arses, whilst Norman Geras notes that Obama hasn't specifically said sorry, when he should do. As I say, not good....

• In-sourcing

  As opposed to outsourcing, what's the trend regarding the in-sourcing of public service delivery? According to Public Manager, it's a growing trend: Council services that do precisely what they say on the tin and are delivered directly by teams employed by local authorities may have been out of vogue, but it looks as if they may be back in style. Evidence is stacking that local authorities are "insourcing" - bringing back in-house the services previously...

• Unemployed graduates: try the voluntary sector

  One of the main bits of news over the weekend was that there is a crisis facing graduates looking for jobs in the downturn. Basically, there aren't any. This is undeniably true, especially in the sorts of jobs that graduates might be interested in (schemes with Accenture, civil service fast stream etc.). I think, though, that graduates should at least look at jobs within the voluntary sector. The experience and responsibility of working in what...

• Why I like Twitter

  I spent most of my Christmas holiday trying to explain to recalcitrant friends and relatives what's so good about Twitter. Below are a few personal reasons why I like Twitter, all of which are quite in addition to the normal reasons someone might cite (e.g. keep in touch with friends, keep track of what I'm doing, keeping up with famous people etc.) The first reason is a nice email I received from a cousin a...

• Following through

  One thing I learned fairly early in the world of work is that, if you say you're going to do something, you should do it. I was to see this in action a while later, when someone threatened to hand in their notice if something didn't go the way they wanted it to. It didn't go the way they wanted it to, and they, well, didn't hand in their notice. Essentially, their bluff had been...

• Daily routines

  I think this has been linked to a fair bit elsewhere, but the Daily Routines blog is pretty interesting. See for example: — George W. Bush He's a fast eater - always ready to get back to work. — Truman Capote Essentially I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon. Obsessions of this sort, and the time I take...

• Disability in public

  I was ready to lambast Barbara Ellen for her column in last week's Observer, it being under the headline Camerons win the Christmas card showdown Ready to lambast, not because it praised David Cameron, but because it was about the point of David Cameron and Gordon Brown and their disabled children. I should, though, have given Ellen more credit, since the point she makes is a good one: [S]urely it is invaluable for charities to...

• Tough times for the voluntary sector?

  I am starting a new tag on the blog, called "Work". This is becoming an increasingly important part of my thinking and writing, and I'm hoping to use arbitrary constant to capture some of this. Let me know if there is anything you'd like to see covered in here. I work for a disability charity based in Essex, and for whom a good proportion of our income comes from contracted services. We've been thinking carefully...