A seminar with a group of neighbourhood managers on the same day that Prime Minister Gordon Brown returned to the subject of constitutional reform prompts some reflections on how we learn – or not - from policy initiatives in this country.
Neighbourhood Management Pathfinders are a government initiative, the first round of which are nearing the end of their Whitehall-funded pathfinder status. A major national evaluation of them is underway.
They aim to build social capital and work with service providers to ensure that they meet the particular needs of some of most deprived communities of the country. At their best they have secured effective community engagement and begun to shape public services around the needs of specific communities and neighbourhoods.
The themes this group of neighbourhood managers were keen to explore include the part that local politicians could play in establishing a less dependent relationship between consumers and service providers. They were also keen to exchange experiences on ways in which action at a neighbourhood level can feed into more strategic policy making.
These are the things that occupy politicians and policy makers today. Yet the policy and political tide seems to have left Neighbourhood Management (with capital letters) stranded. Because new initiatives have succeeded it, there is far less interest in the programme in Whitehall and Westminster and we are in danger of ignoring learn some important and timely lessons.
One of the successes of some of the NM pathfinders has been to to create spaces in which new approaches to providing public services in deprived communities can be explored and tested. This type of innovation must become more widespread if the challenges that lie behind the Public Service Agreements announced by the Government in the spending review are to be addressed.
One of the thinkers who inspired the thinking of the Tavistock Institute, D W Winnicott identified the importance of play to the development of a child’s creativity and development. From that he developed the notion of “transitional space” in which creativity and innovation can take place, in which anxiety provoking circumstances can be worked with constructively.
As the neighbourhood managers I met this week are only too aware, their work challenges established power relations and therefore generates resistance and anxiety. If some of the pathfinders have indeed created spaces in which innovation and creativity can be nurtured – and the resistance and anxiety worked with - we must learn from them.
We also need a space nationally in which lessons such as those emerging from these pathfinders can be explored – played with? – to inform policy and political debate, rather than being neglected in the rush to the next good idea.
Phil Swann
Director, Tavistock Institute
