The Missing Link in the Greater Manchester Journey.

On Wednesday 22nd January I had the pleasure to be able to attend the Telford Memorial Lecture given by Jon Rouse, held at Manchester Medical Society. It was an hour-long reflection on the Greater Manchester journey, lessons learnt and future hopes.

Jon generally always gives a great amount of thought and consideration to what he says, so it is usually worthwhile taking note, as he is someone who has been working at the heart of the GM system for a good number of years, and indeed leading the entire Health and Social Care system.

Reflecting on the lecture and the lessons learnt from the last few years, I was really struck by one key aspect, and for those who know me its not children and special educational needs, it was actually what was said here as one of the lessons learnt;

“We should have loosened up more around the role of the voluntary and community sectors…… We should have gone further, faster in that direction. “

Since GM devolution there has been a lot of talk, and some action, about engaging with communities, about working at neighbourhood level, about listening to citizens and about learning from lived experiences, about Public service reform etc, it is written big and bold in all the plans, strategies and action plans, but actually the people who understand those communities, neighbourhoods, districts, are the local community groups, the voluntary sector, the social enterprises.

If the GM system (by that I mean public services) wants to really listen to local communities it needs to engage with them, people from within the system need to go out and find the community activists, the people organising the school football club, the PTA, the walking groups, the coffee mornings, because that’s where you will find the real change happening, that is where you will see the communities working to support each other.

As someone who has responsibility for a small social enterprise in Greater Manchester, I understand the world of the VCSE sector and managing a small organisation, which is rooted in supporting people, but now here’s the thing that I don’t think commissioners and procurement understand.

Its Monday afternoon, we have had 4 new referrals over the weekend from parents and families needing support, I have been looking through a tender document from a local authority to provide support for young people with autism. The tender document is 45 pages long, with various appendices, there are rules, regulations and a multitude of different questions to answer, think about and ty to work out what they want you to write. There is no guarantee that we would get this tender, in fact, the odds are stacked against us due to the fact that much larger organisations have bid writing teams, people who do this stuff day in day out and are experts at getting across what they do in order to secure the deal. I have started it, but the deadline is tomorrow morning 9am and I have a meeting this afternoon with a family whose child is home educated. So, I have an hour to try to polish up what I have managed to do so far. We get a call from a distressed parent whose child is on the verge of permanent exclusion by the end of the day! What do I do? Do I finish the tender document which has no guarantee, or do I utilise my skills and expertise to support this family and child?

I choose the family, child, parent EVERY SINGLE TIME!

See that’s the issue, I think most community groups, voluntary groups, social movements, whatever you want to call them are absolutely immersed in helping, supporting and working with the people in their community, whether that is a geographical community or a community of identity. They will always choose people over profit, most do this work without financial reward and they would rather help one family, than fill out a 45-page document.

Reflecting on what Jon said about the role of the VCSE sector in the Greater Manchester system, I would wholeheartedly agree with his comments. I would like to see every single leader within the system spend one day a month shadowing/working in a community group, voluntary group, and I feel this is specifically important for commissioners. They need to understand fully what the VCSE sector offer is in GM and try to ensure that the small local organisations who understand their communities are supported to develop and offer even more to the neighbourhoods they serve. I think statutory services and the people working within them often don’t understand smaller organisations, we don’t have a HR department, we don’t have a business manager, we don’t have a Personal Assistant, we don’t have a stationary cupboard, we don’t have an events team. we don’t have a receptionist; we don’t have layers and layers of bureaucracy and very often have little to no back-office support. Its just people supporting people because we want to make a difference to peoples lives.

The Link to the full transcript is here:

 https://www.gmhsc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Telford-Memorial-Lecture-Jon-Rouse-.pdf