If you take one thing away from this series, it’s the insight that the only way to make savings sustainably is to start from how services can be better, not from how to save money.
An important challenge now for chief executives and service leaders is how to create the right environment for radical innovation across the organisation, supported with the right balance of risk and reward. But this doesn’t mean creating an innovative culture for its own sake, but a culture where staff feel empowered and supported to affect change and adapt their own practice.
Meaningful community participation can be a powerful way to respond to social challenges and to prompt redesign of public services. With appropriate support, communities can and want to get involved.
Partnership with service users is part of the day job for many frontline staff. Teachers can’t teach if students don’t learn. Doctors can’t heal if patients don’t comply with treatments. And yet public services are rarely designed with these principles in mind. The implicit assumption – in design terms at least – is that service users don’t want to play more of a role, and that it’s only the domain of professionals to take decisions and direct resources.
There’s a perception of innovation as something that’s expensive, or only the task of experts. This doesn’t need to be the case. We’ve come across countless examples of innovation in public services driven by the staff who work in them using low-cost tools and speedy processes.
Following last week’s Spending Review, it’s likely you will feel under pressure to cut new approaches or those that at first glance appear marginal and low impact. But it is these approaches that will save money and alleviate pressure on public services in the future.
Last week’s Comprehensive Spending Review has made the challenge critically clear: how can we save money in public services without significant harm to society?
It's taken a while, but at last a new type of high street bank has emerged from the wreckage of the credit crunch.
A jaw-dropping piece of research was published last week on the power of putting patients in control.
Chris Sherwood sums up the discussion and debate on the role of older citizens in society, from our Ageing Society seminar at Civil Service Live.
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