First Wales Coproduction Network event - Swansea 4th October 2012

1. Social Care and social cooperation
● Reflections on the creation of a ‘social’ Social Services.
● Rick Wilson - rick.wilson@communitylives.co.uk
It is interesting that the recent visit of John Restakis from Canada and his presentations about social
cooperatives were so positively received across Wales. His message seemed to strike a chord in our
ongoing national discussion about sustainable approaches for the creation of social care and support
within our communities up and down the nation.
Reactions to the ‘cult’ of individual budgets or what our Deputy Minister Gwenda Thomas described at
the 2009 ADSS Conference as the ‘marketisation of care’ has been strong in many places in Wales, as has
the commonly expressed dismay to the large scale re-tendering exercises that have taken place in some
local authority areas of Wales which have disrupted relationships and created so much anxiety. These
approaches seem very different but seem to be united by a sense that they are are not the ‘Welsh way’
or what we call Citizen Directed Support.
For me however I don’t think we have established what makes the ‘Welsh way’ uniquely different from
all the other flavours of personalisation of social care developing across the UK and beyond. What
is our ‘USP’ to use the marketing lingo, our ‘unique selling proposition’ which marks our position on
personalisation as right for us and unique from the others.
The discussions that I have had with many other people making change happen across Wales seem to be
driven by a strong belief that social care or support is not a commodity that can be bought, owned, sold,
produced, and consumed, in this sense it is not what economists describe as a ‘private good’. A private
good is one that is ‘excludable’ in that it can be the property of solely one person, and it is ‘rivalrous’ in
that if it is used by somebody it is not available to somebody else. I think this sense is behind so much
suspicion in Wales about the commodification of social care; either at the individual level through the
overly zealous belief that the individual’s opportunities will be transformed through the presence of
individual budgets, or at the service level through wide scale re-tendering exercises. Both of these things
misunderstand the nature of the ‘good’ we are trying to create through this transformation.
Great social care and support is created at the heart of relationships between one or more people who
all have to work together, the quality of this care is dependent on the quality of their relationships.
When I see this happening, what I see is a social exchange rich in communication, reciprocity, empathy,
identity and shared learning. I believe the care and support we are trying to create through Citizen
Directed Support is inherently both civic and human in nature.
If social care and support isn’t a ‘private good’ then what is it? I believe social care and support
represents a particular type of social good. Liike a private good ‘rivalrous’, if you are receiving support
from somebody then they are not available at that time to support me, however unlike a private
good it is not possible for any individual or group to prevent the access of any other person from
being supported or offering support, and thus it is ‘non-excludable’. These type of goods are known
as ‘common goods’, and are resources managed and used by a group of people but owned and
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2. ultimately controlled by nobody.
When people think of a commons, people often think of a shared forest, or fishing ground. The
phrase ‘tragedy of the commons’ coined by Garrett Hardin in 1968 who argued that humans will
inevitably destroy a commonly held resource, because it is in the interest of each individual to take more
than their share of what the resource can sustainably provide. He argued to protect these resources
they should be either privatised; each individual being able to own, use or manage their allocation
through the market, or nationalised with the state playing the central role in ensuring that each
individual takes no more than they are allocated.
Here we are back to a recognisable social dilemma whether; to give the individual choice and control
through the market but to risk leaving them isolated and potentially vulnerable to less scrupulous
individuals around them; or to nationalise and make the state responsible for the management and
delivery of all resources and cast the individual as increasingly helpless passive clients.
These feel like the large scale choices we have debated for a long time, however if we explore our ability
to offer each other human and high quality support in our communities as a social commons then new
possibilities present themselves. From the late 80’s the nobel prize political economist Elinor Ostrom
and her colleagues started to consider how people across the world had come together to self manage
resources that they had to rely on but share. Far from destroying them through individual self interest,
they could make them grow and flourish through structured cooperation. However they needed to be
supported and encouraged in the right way.
People need to be supported to create their own systems for membership to create clear boundaries
around the groups and individuals choosing to work together, they must be able to create rules about
how people can use the resources created and managed by the group, and they need to agree active
arrangements how they will monitor the use of resources and if necessary sanction members who take
too much or behave inappropriately. These rules cannot be imposed but must be created and agreed by
members, the resultant group identity is essential for success of the group and it’s resources. The state
has a clear role, but it is not to lead and control. It’s role is to facilitate the meeting of citizens who share
a common need and interests, it must create opportunities to develop skills and confidence through
participation in community organisation, it must also create legitimacy by endorsing and supporting the
framework of rules established by citizens where their interests are compatible. Government agencies
can do this best when they are not too large, but are of a scale where they can relate well to local
communities and interest groups.
Ostrom and her colleagues work over the last 3 decades has shown that where citizens are given
permission to self-organise in particular ways they create robust and highly efficient systems. These
systems are not soft, research has highlighted that citizens will create firm but fair rules for resource
allocation, and will volunteer time and energy resolving disputes and sanctioning free-riders. However
this will only happen where people can take ownership and control over the resources that they all rely
on and share.
Right now in Wales we have the opportunity to create a new paradigm in the way we care for and
support each other. This is important because our existing services and the people they serve are facing
profound sustainability challenges, our population is aging, people’s expectations for support is rightly
increasing, while the state funded system for professionally delivered social care is struggling due to
declining public sector funding. Meanwhile the personal networks of family and friends supporting and
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3. caring for loved ones which provides the vast majority of support to people in our communities is under
growing pressure.
We have a choice to overcome the traditional debates around public service and whether we need a
paternalistic state or choice and control through the market. Instead let us look closely at how social
care and support is created by people and recognise it is the product of human cooperation and thus
fashioned from human qualities like shared purpose, reciprocity, communication, reputation and
belonging. We need to overcome our polarised distinction of formal social care commissioned by the
state and informal care provided by families with sporadic professional support. For me this ‘social
commonwealth’ of support and mutual aid is at the foundation of citizen directed support. The
allocation of money and other resources is undoubtedly important but plays a supporting role.
If we were to organise from the basis of the creation and development of these social commons what
would it look like:
● In line with the large body of research on the self management of common resources by groups
of individuals we could see groups of citizens working together united by common concern
and the need to share the resources available to them. These resources would include their
skills, time and expertise. To help them they would agree their shared purpose, rules around
membership, behaviour and cooperation. Citizens would also spend time monitoring how
resources are used, and where necessary sanctioning members where they were taking to much
of not making a fair contribution. There could be many different forms of association, some of
these would be long-term and some could be more transitory and focused on particular issues.
● People would not do this spontaneously local authorities and other local organisations like
CVCs would play a crucial role working in partnership with these groups, this would involved;
catalysing new groups through supporting their development and legitimising their agreed ways
of working, helping people to connect with existing groups, creating opportunities for people to
develop citizenship skills and build their confidence, connecting groups together where there
were shared synergies, helping groups resolve disputes either within them or between them.
● Local authorities would not escape their central role concerning money, they would still allocate
resources to individuals to meet their needs and to groups on the basis of the outcomes
that they achieve, however one of these outcomes would be the creation of greater social
participation and citizenship. They would also have a key role in helping groups to develop
income themselves from the creation of social firms, fund raising and raising funding.
● This is supported by a legislative framework that incentivises civic engagement and partnership
working, is built on a clear statement of outcomes. This framework is promoted by a national
government that promotes and models direct citizen participation wherever it can.
● This is a world where time-banking, social cooperatives and participatory budgeting all become
central approaches in development of our social commons. Cooperation across group and
agency boundaries is prized and rewarded, and the divisions between the helper and the
helped, or professional and ‘service user’ become at least blurred and often seen as unhelpful.
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4. This world of social support as social commons is not too far off, in the Social Services Wales Bill
consultation document there is a proposal for the creation of a catagory of ‘people in need’ who are
any individuals whose well-being or independence are at risk. This is a wider group of people than those
who will be eligible for social care. Local authorities and the NHS would have the duty to maintain and
enhance the well-being of people in need in their area. Talking to colleagues in statutory agencies, and
citizen groups this recommendation seemed to cause consternation, for citizen groups people felt the
last thing that was needed was another dependency creating label and another threshold that needed
professional gatekeeping. For statutory sector partners, the prospect of responsibility for a wider group
of people to manage with the declining resources available seemed unworkable.
However if these ‘people in need’ are reframed as people with a shared interest in our continuing well-
being and independence then these ‘people in need’ can be joined by the many of us who look forward
to the time when we need support, or get involved because of our commitment to friends and loved
ones. All of these people have skills, interests, and experience, that are assets that can be shared and
developed through cooperation with other citizens, groups and agencies. This then looks alot like the
makings of a social commons.
The recognition that social care and support is a shared resource that we create together as citizens,
but rely on as individuals is for me the fundamental heart of citizen directed support. Through this
understanding I believe we can create social commons that help us all to meet our shared needs with
the resources that we have. I also believe that this approach will help us to create stronger more active
communities through which we can address the wide range of social challenges that will face us in the
decades to come.
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