Turning the Tide
Today we see the result of over year’s work with Making Every Adult Matter – the publication of our joint Vision Paper for multiple needs and exclusions, Turning the Tide.
Over 60 individual stakeholders contributed to the development of the paper – including service users, current and former civil servants, voluntary sector leaders and academics. We undertook this extensive consultation to ensure that it wasn’t just our vision, but a collective vision of a critical mass. This is the result:
Our vision is that in every local area, people experiencing multiple needs are:
- Supported by effective, coordinated services; and
- Empowered to tackle their problems, reach their full potential and contribute to their communities.
We know that a small number of individuals and local areas are already working hard to achieve this vision. But our vision is that it happens in every local area.
The paper outlines five key areas of action for national and local government that are needed to make this a reality. As well as government ministers and local leaders, the paper is aimed MPs, peers and local councillors – people who can help us to influence those leaders to recognise this issue and do something about it.
Leadership is a key theme of the paper. In recent years, recognition of multiple needs has grown, but there has to date been no top level recognition or prioritisation of the issue. We therefore call on the Prime Minister to make a clear statement that tackling multiple needs and exclusions is a priority for government, and for the government to develop a strategy on multiple needs to support this commitment. Furthermore, we ask local leaders to take up this message and lead action in their local areas.
Leadership is of course closely related to responsibility and accountability, another key theme of the paper. Although people experiencing multiple needs and exclusions are among the most vulnerable and marginalised in our communities, more often than not, they are not eligible for support frameworks which ensure coordinated support for other vulnerable groups such as elderly people or people with severe learning disabilities. This means no one is responsible for ensuring they get the coordinated support they need, and no one is held to account if it is not provided.
When a homeless person who has been sleeping rough on the streets dies, there is rarely a public outcry. No interrogation of the Director of Social Services asking what went wrong? What support was provided? What opportunities to help were missed and why? The Vision Paper calls for the nomination of specific roles in national government and in every local area to be responsible for people facing multiple needs and exclusions and accountable for the provision of effective support.
The paper goes on to explore the challenges of making outcomes and commissioning work for this group, and getting the finances right. Closely interlinked, both these challenges derive from the fact that multiple problems mean needing support from multiple services. These are all funded from different budgets, and have different commissioners working to different outcomes frameworks. We call for a jointly agreed cross-departmental framework of outcomes for people with multiple needs, and the development of area-wide financial incentives encouraging commissioners to work together to put coordinated services in place.
We are launching the paper this evening at a parliamentary reception, which will be addressed by. The Rt. Hon. Oliver Letwin MP. As Minister for Government Policy and a key member of the Social Justice Committee, he is well placed to take this work forward. Far from being the end of a piece of work, this is in many respects just the beginning, the start of an important process of persuading those key leaders that this does really matter. We can make a difference. And we all have a key part to play.
