With the summer holidays just around the corner, this week felt like a good time to reflect on a positive first six months for Capacity and look ahead to the rest of 2024. Things continue to move at a dizzying speed for the team. We’ve been able to work on great projects with brilliant clients in health, children’s services, adult social care, and civic data.
Bringing together leaders and doers from across Liverpool City Region and Cheshire for a series of Fundamentally Different events has been energising – for us and them. It’s a rare moment when so many people are in the same room actively tuned into tackling the same challenges. We heard smart, passionate people all with stories to celebrate and committed to transforming public services in the region. At such a critical moment for public services, here’s three things I’ll be keeping an eye on in the months ahead.
1. Mission driven government
Against a difficult economic backdrop, the new government has been careful not to make too many promises. But there’s already a positive narrative for change in public services emerging. It’s something we’ve heard from local authority clients, adding to their sense of optimism. It can make a big difference. It was encouraging to see metro mayors in Downing Street so soon after the election.
A new government can give public service innovation much-needed impetus. The Office of Public Service Innovation (OPSI) is one example close to home. It gives Liverpool City Region the green light to pioneer modern approaches to public service reform and the Combined Authority is already doing good work behind the scenes to capitalise on the opportunity.
2. A new movement
There’s a quiet revolution taking place in the Liverpool City Region. It’s being powered by a wave of people and organisations reshaping public services. The work of organisations like Wirral Council, Local Solutions, Kindred, Open Door, and Juno is bold, ambitious, and groundbreaking. New and radical public service design is happening across the region. And every day more organisations are redefining our expectations of what public services should be.
This year we’ve held two events to ask leaders in the public and third sectors ‘what does the future of public services look like,’ ‘how do you see yourselves in that future,’ ‘is there another way to provide public services’? What jumped out is a group of thinkers and doers ready to work together and with a new vision for public services in Liverpool City Region and Cheshire. But they also told us transformation can’t wait. Like Capacity, they’re restless for change – to turn ideas into action.
3. Local people defining local outcomes
The world is changing faster than it ever has. Transforming public services, tackling outdated approaches, and creating the conditions for communities to be heard, actively participate and lead change is at the heart of making a difference to people’s lives in the region.
That’s why it’s exciting to see Liverpool City Council, Plus Dane, Merseyside and Cheshire ICB and Transform Lives amongst many others using community-powered change in children’s services, supported living, health, adult social care, and employment. Community co-design is the centrepiece of their (and our) efforts to bring different perspectives to reshaping public services and how we address some of society’s biggest challenges.
Wrapping up
Across the region, people are doing things differently; bringing local communities together to solve problems, building relationships to deliver a relational model of change that will finally shift thinking from the treatment of problems to prevention. Calls for innovation in public services are becoming mainstream. But what sounds so obvious requires a huge effort to execute in local government and the public sector. We hear the same frustrations from people mired in broken, outdated systems, who want to turn new ideas into action.
It’s a big part of our job at Capacity to identify the sticky issues and design new ways of working that help our clients make public services people services. Accelerating this work in the second half the year can put the city region on a new and decisive course to transforming public services.
Enjoy the holidays.
Chris Catterall, CEO, Capacity.