by Chris Hatton
Ever since I was asked if I wanted to write a blog for
#socialcarefuture I've been struggling. I'm not a deep thinker,
more a shallow magpie thief of others' insights. I'm not a doer
(come on, I'm an academic!). I've not been on the receiving end of
social care (yet). My blogposts have been known to make people
nauseous rather than optimistic. I waffle. And my thoughts on
social care are as coherent as socks in a tumble dryer. So - all
I've got are two whirligigs of confusion to share with you.
First of all, what exactly is social care? There's
lots around on raising awareness of it, reframing it, fighting for
it, but what is it? As far as I can see it's either defined by what
it's not (stuff the state decides to maybe help people with that
isn't healthcare or education), or by current institutional
administrative convenience (it's what social care services
do/commission/ration). Public perception of the NHS? Free, there
for us all, owned by us. Public perception of social care (if there
is one)? Have to fight to get it, only begrudgingly free and have
to pay for some of it, mainly for other people, at the mercy of a
market. Is social care helpful as a descriptive term, rallying cry,
or organising principle for how people help each other?
Social care also often doesn't seem to be about engaging with
people as complete human beings. The heartbreaking live tweeting of
Richard Handley's inquest (@HandleyInquest)
showed that people in a supported living service no longer
considered it their job to pay attention to Richard's health, such
that a man in his 30s died (died) of constipation.
Years ago Susie Baines and I did a project where social care
workers were for the most part actively hostile to the idea of
supporting people's engagement with religion where this was
important to them. And the same can be found when it comes to
people falling in love, having sex, having a social life that
extends beyond 9pm, wanting meaning in your life, and so much else.
If these things aren't the very essence of social care, what's left
of it but cruel warehousing?
This depressing picture, together with the operation of violent
bureaucracies, the violation of human rights, and the spreading
dysfunctionality of social care 'markets', makes me wonder if
social care as we know it is fundamentally bust, and any amount of
tweaking or extra money won't fundamentally help.
Which leads me to my second whirligig of thoughts. This starts
with the question - is small good stuff the future of beyond social
care? I'm a big fan of so much that's happening at the moment (some
of which has been described in other #futuresocialcare
blogs) that's about helping communities to support each other in
ways that are outside the purview of a social care 'service' -
small, starting from where people are, helping people to help each
other. I find myself really drawn to these - their human scale,
their anti-bureaucratic nature, their focus on bringing people
together, and their ignoral/subversion of what a 'service' is. Can
they be a big part of the answer? I hope so, but sock in tumble
dryer questions that nag at me are…
Q1: Can they go big without going bad? Examples are legion of
the 'scaling up' of good ideas resulting either in bloated,
sclerotic organisations that lose sight of their original purpose,
or a duplication of them that, without the commitment of their
originators, turns a bit 'meh'. Is this inevitable? Do ideas like
'scaling across' rather than 'scaling up' help, or not?
Q2: Does naming and describing a good idea pin it, fix it and
kill it in shiny innovationitis and bureaucracy, particularly when
the idea becomes approved by branches of the state? If this is a
problem, how do good things spread?
Q3: Many of these good ideas rely on the positive properties of
communities - but communities can and do segregate, exclude and
discriminate. How can small good stuff encourage (insist on?)
inclusive communities?
Q4: Do these approaches have the potential to entrench or worsen
existing inequalities, and what are their limits in terms of
supporting people?
There is also a bigger question about small good stuff - what
I'm going to call the 'folk politics' question. In their book
'Inventing The Future', Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams rather
sniffily describe the 'folk politics' of what they call the left as
a set of preferences that rather alarmingly map closely on to many
of the characteristics of what I'm attracted to in the kinds of
small, local ways of doing things springing up in #socialcare
future. As they describe it "Against the abstraction and
inhumanity of capitalism, folk politics aims to bring politics down
to the 'human scale'", involving being reactive and spontaneous
rather than having long-term strategic goals, favouring the local,
small and unscalable, preferring actions taken by participants and
emphasising the importance of personal experience.
Their (perhaps harsh) critique of this approach is that it is
startlingly ill-equipped to deal with the big issues - it is
overwhelmed by the complexity of how the world works so seeks to
occupy some niches within it, and it offers no vision or strategy
for defining and working towards changing the structural rules of
the game to offer a future that works for everybody. In my shallow
reading of the book for my purposes here, are these approaches
trying to play a game within rules set by somebody else, with the
deck stacked heavily against them? If so, a vital question for
#socialcarefuture is what rules of the game need to be changed for
basic humanity, the currently not guaranteed bedrock of social
care, to sustainably flourish in ways that are equitable? Some of
these are questions that go way beyond whatever social care is or
might become, for example:
1) If we are to live together
better, people's available time, confidence, mental space and
money/resources need to be much more evenly distributed. Does
something like universal basic income have potential here?
2) Do we need a market for social
care that has the visible shell of a competitive market
(commissioners, tenders, endlessly complicated procurement
processes, prospectuses, business park offices) but none of the
supposed benefits? We don't need state-run behemoths either. Can't
we look at participatory budgeting (where communities control the
cake), regional investment banks to support new good small stuff to
set up, ways to make it impossible to make a quick buck, local
ownership, and/or limits on the size of organisations providing
support?
3) What does eligibility policing
get us? More violent bureaucracy, relationships that are poisoned
from the start, mistrust and constant anxiety. And a whole host of
potential problems for people stored up to bite them harder later.
We all need support all the time (public transport, clean air and
water, schools, roads), it's just that for many of us it's not
always in the kinds of ways that look like a 'service'? Why not
make 'social care' part of the basic, universal infrastructure -
which may well mean much of it wouldn't look like social care at
all?
4) Much more routinely accessible
and affordable housing, so people's homes can be more adaptable to
people's needs over their lifetime within communities where people
have laid down connections.
5) Again, the Richard Handley
inquest showed us how, when 'everyone is responsible' across
artificially imposed bureaucratic boundaries, then all too often
no-one is. Everyone loves to diss 'silos', but without them you
presumably just get your fields flooded with sileage. Starting from
the point of view of us all as human beings, what boundaries are
least harmful and irksome?
6) Finally, recognising that
everyone is a human being, and everyone contributes. Cleverness is
no virtue - what about kindness, bringing joy, honesty, making
someone laugh, being loving (in all its forms) - and then being a
person that receives any or all these with grace?
See what I mean about my confusion? The upshot, I think, is that
for small good stuff to really reclaim humanity and community, the
rules of the social care game need to be radically changed. And -
does this mean the end of 'social care' as an entity?
@chrishattoncedr
#socialcarefuture
has been developed to create a space, including a gathering in
November, for a wide range of people and voices to debate and take
action for a positive future.
We want to get past just thinking about stabilising the
current system which isn't fit for the future. We want to make a
contribution to a much more positive vision, share what's going on
now that helps get us there, and find ways of supporting each other
as we build the future.
In Control is part of the informal group supporting
#socialcarefuture and as part of this we are hosting this blog
series. Many people will be blogging and their views are their
own.
Last Updated : 14 February 2018. Page Author: philippa.barker.
