there are no straight lines in real life
TRANSCRIPT
there are
no straight lines
in life
East Sussex 1988 The Institution
Southwark 1992 Professional Gift
Denver 1994 Inclusion Edinburgh 1995
Person-Centred Planning
Glasgow 1996 Individual Service
Funds
England 2003 Personal Budgets
& RAS
Sheffield 2009 Welfare Reform
Liverpool 2002 Keys to Citizenship
UK 2011 Fair Society
England 2014 Rights
North Lanarkshire 2000 Self-Directed Support
& Support Plans
• Theory - What is the mountain?
• Research - What does the mountain teach us?
• Knowledge - What is useful on the mountain?
Base Camp - getting ready to climb
theory
ideas about
the mountain
• Power - mountains and pyramids
• Ideology - our strange times
• Truth - some things to hang on to
1. Theory - ideas
Mountains are symbols of real power and mystery. They are sacred places of revelation.
Pyramids are symbols of human pride and elitism. They were built by violence and terror to house the dead.
What’s the difference between pyramids and mountains?
We must reject the pyramid
all power is sustained by ideas…
Ideas can control us, justifying the most dreadful things…
“No one ever blamed someone if he coordinated [got in line with Nazi thinking] because he had to take care of his wife or child. The worst thing was that some [intellectuals] really believed in Nazism! For a short time, many for a very short time. But that means that they made up ideas about Hitler, in part terrifically interesting things! Completely fantastic and interesting and complicated things! Things far above the ordinary level! I found that grotesque. Today I would say that they were trapped by their own ideas.” Hannah Arendt
“These rulers of our who claim that the prime mover of history is the economic basis have shown by the whole of their own practice that the real stuff of history is ideas. It is ideas that shape the minds of whole generations, winning adherents, imposing themselves on consciousness, creating new forms of government and society, rising triumphantly - and then slowly dying away and disappearing.”
Nadezhda Mandelstam
We are living at the end of an age of dead ideologies. We don’t seem ready to wake up, to start thinking afresh and living for real. Instead we borrow dead words and pretend they have meaning.
Marxism
Liberalism
Neoliberalism
Socialism
Eugenicism Racism Fascism
NationalismUtilitarianism Imperialism
Thought is a living thing an on-going effort to understand what is true what is the good what is beautiful
not a system not an ideology
it is imagination in the service of love
Don’t let Self-directed support become about
Market competition Cost-cutting Consumerism Regulation Commodification Personalisation
These are the empty words of dead ideologies.
Instead self-directed support must serve justice and human rights citizenship and equality real wealth and human flourishing
after all, that’s why these ideas were developed…
so here are 3 thoughts,that may be useful
why needs are not enough
why we citizenship matters
what really makes someone wealthy
research
facts about
the mountain
• Ignorance - the problems of research
• Evidence - clues to what’s possible
• Understanding - possible explanations
2. Research - information
“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is.”
Yogi Berra
The Great Gulf“Theory like mist on eye glass obscures the facts.” Charlie Chan
“I call it theory-induced blindness: once you've accepted a tool and used it as a tool in your thinking, it's extraordinarily difficult to notice its flaws. If you come upon an observation that does not seem to fit the model, you assume there must be a perfectly good explanation which you are somehow missing.”
Daniel Kahneman
we are not always asking
the right questions
in the right way
about the right things
Here I want to focus on some recent research about a very Scottish innovation: Individual Service Funds
- in terms of Self-Directed Support Act - the middle option
the road less travelled
Research on Inclusion Glasgow showed, over a period of 5 years, support costs had reduced by 44%.
Research on Choice Support showed savings of 30% over four years.
The most plausible hypothesis I’ve seen, that explains these facts is
not ‘market efficiencies’
but that when people have more control they use money better - by building on their own real wealth.
This has important consequences for policy on self-directed support.
It means its value lies in
transparency, flexibility,control andcreativity.
Recent research on ISFs in England suggests that this not how the current system thinks - e.g. providers are being contracted to deliver ‘person-centred support plans’!!
ie. flexibility, control and creativity are being critically undermined - in the name of personalisation itself!
experience
climbers tales of
the mountain
• Expertise - the real and the phoney
• Guidance - things to remember
• Challenge - what we must not forget
3. Knowledge - guidance
It’s not tools, but people who climb the mountain.
In England the misuse of person-centred planning & support planning has become toxic.
It is like pyramid-selling,each new technique promises to deliver what the old one couldn’t
and all at a price.
People are forgetting that real power comes from within people.
We each must find our own purpose, our own mountain to climb, in our own way. To support others we must listen with our heart.
A good life is not planned it is lived.
A good life need others, relationships, people you can ask for help.
Focus on the mountain you agree on not the molehill you don’t.
It’s not budgets - it’s people that make the difference. Always seek to build community.
Don’t lose sight of the real mountain.
When we just focus on the latest idea we can stop paying attention
to what is really going on.
Don’t let your mountain become a pyramid: just another part of the bureaucracy just another system change another empty target something dead
It is justice we seek.
There is no rule of one man here: it is a free city. The people are lord here, taking turns In annual succession, not giving too much to the rich. Even a poor man has an equal share.
When the laws are written down, then he who is weak And he who is rich have equal justice: The weaker ones may speak as ill of the fortunate As they hear of themselves, and a lesser man Can overcome a great one, if he has justice on his side
Euripides
