The Community Paradigm

As many people have commented, we cannot afford to keep salami slicing the funding for services to people in Surrey. And despite the ongoing passion and commitment of professionals across Surrey, many of the problems that our children face – domestic abuse, mental ill-health, substance abuse and more – are not going away.

There is increasing evidence across the country that radically different models of engagement are proving popular. These models, put much more of the power and responsibility in the hands of communities and the charities that serve them. These bring huge benefits, they serve our citizens better, with a holistic, preventative agenda, not a crisis response, they make best use of community asset and they encourage individual responsibility.

Across Surrey, people are daring to think very differently, as was demonstrated at the Surrey 2030 Vision event yesterday. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing about projects from around the country yesterday, particularly from Adam Lent of the the New Local Government Network. I thoroughly recommend reading their document:

The Community Paradigm: Why public services need radical change and how it can be achieved

However, this type of change cannot be driven from the top. There are many thriving community projects and charities across Surrey, which bring huge benefits to Children, Young People and Families (CYPF), many of which the public sector is not funding or only partially funding. Many of these have a very holistic view of people’s lives and do great preventative and supportive work which is hugely valuable to individuals and to society at large – making a huge difference to wellbeing.

For me, these are the starting point for an engine for change. I believe that there is the potential to achieve far more for our communities by working with our communities - bringing people and professionals with energy, enthusiasm and skills together to share, learn and work in a more coordinated way. To improve the lives of the most vulnerable, despite shrinking public sector budgets, there is a need for all sectors of society to work together. We need to achieve a cultural shift where people needing help play a greater role in their journey – in decision making at a personal and community level, in helping to support their peers and more.

This will require change on all sides, both within commissioners and within the third sector. In fact, I have heard the opinion expressed that actually the third sector needs to change more than the commissioners for this to work. Looks like we (Surrey Youth Focus) will have our work cut out for us to help facilitate this change.