Social care reform is stuck because the politics are awful. The government has asked Louise Casey to solve it. Her Commission includes a 'national conversation' to build consensus.

We know what people want: dignity, better pay for carers, no higher taxes and no requirement to sell homes to cover costs. These views are incompatible, and Casey has her work cut out.

Traditionally, public engagement means either a 'maxi' approach - a large survey or open crowdsourcing - or a 'mini' approach - a small group of randomly chosen people working through an issue. The former often gives no consensus and the small size of the latter means it can lack legitimacy.

The best approaches use both, not in parallel, but sequentially. The Irish referendum on abortion, for example, successfully used a citizens’ assembly to identify genuine options, before the wider public made the decision.

The Casey Commission is sensibly following this approach, planning three rounds of maxi and mini consultations.

Nesta’s Centre for Collective Intelligence’s Relay model is the best way forward for this. In our approach, the mini public elements do the heavy lifting, moulding conflicting views and expert evidence into actionable proposals, while the maxi public elements test the appetite for change, identify red lines and reality-check the mini public’s recommendations.

Phase 1: Use maxi-polling to uncover the key tensions

The initial maxi approach would use polling to gauge the public’s mental models - for example, deep beliefs about care as a family duty or state responsibility. It would elicit ‘gut reactions’ to some trade-offs, such as protecting inheritances versus higher taxes. These insights would feed into phase two.

Phase 2: A mini-public develops scenarios

100 representative UK citizens would work with experts to develop several scenarios, each informed but not limited by the preferences from the first phase, as well as from experience in other countries. They would also transform dry policy analysis into relatable human stories, brought to life via stimuli like short animations, as we have done, for example, on public service reform.

Phase 3: The maxi-public evaluates the scenarios, making key trade-offs

The maxi public would now look at the different phase two scenarios, using a 'participatory value evaluation' approach. This means that people are given points to allocate to different scenarios, forcing them to make the trade-offs that exist in the real world. As well as allocating points, participants can explain their decisions - these explanations give insights into the values that drive choices. We use this approach regularly on our Zeitgeist platform.

Phase 4: The mini-public develops a range of plausible ‘how to’ policy options

The representative mini public group would receive the views of the public at large and, with help from policy experts, develop a range of ‘how-to’ approaches. If the public prefers a scenario where social care is almost all state-funded, for example, the group might outline plausible mechanisms to achieve this (such as national insurance vs social insurance models).

Phase 5: The maxi-public stress-tests the policy options

These options would then return to the wider public for an 'acceptability test', for people to say whether they like the how as well as the what - and why they like it, or dislike it.

Phase 6: The mini-public crafts its final recommendations

The representative mini-public would then produce its recommendations. These would have been extensively road-tested by thousands of people from all walks of life and would, we expect, be more acceptable to politicians than proposals designed by any other route.

Who the Casey Commission chooses to run the consultation matters, because poor consultation design will generate noise and confusion, rather than insight. Nesta is not bidding for the work, rather, we are ready to help the Commission and Department of Health and Social Care evaluate the bids and to help the successful bidder do what is needed.

The Centre for Collective Intelligence is part of Nesta, working to transform the way society collaborates by breaking down barriers to participation, reimagining civic engagement, and rebuilding trust between people and institutions.

These ideas are part of our wider work on revitalising democracy, discussed in Creating a Citizen Participation Service and other ideas. If you are commissioning public dialogue and want to explore these frameworks, do get in touch.