Talk given to the Social Policy Research Unit in York on the birth of individual budgets and the development and transformation of the innovation - with particular reference to role of research in social innovation

1. Inside an Innovation
the development of individual budgets
Dr Simon Duffy ￭ The Centre for Welfare Reform ￭
SPRU Event at University of York ￭ 7th February 2012

2. Questions
• What is a social innovation?
• How do innovations spread?
• How are innovations resisted?
• What does this mean for research?

3. Focus: Individual Budgets
• A particular solution to the reform of the
welfare system, especially as it relates to
disabled people.
• Development by In Control, then became part
of government research programme, and then
changed to Personal Budgets.
• Long-term prospects uncertain, still highly
contested, but has arguably helped to bring
about some useful changes in perspective.

4. Social Innovation =
a new way of doing things,
to improve our shared world
Innovations, usually,
precede policies;
and policies, usually,
end innovations

5. insider’s perspective
1988 visited Leighton Lodge
1990 seconded to Southwark Consortium
1996 started Inclusion Glasgow
1999 tested SDS in North Lanarkshire
2003 started In Control
2009 started The Centre for Welfare Reform

6. part of a bigger picture

8. What is the innovation?
1.Self-directed support
2.Individual budgets
3.Resource Allocation System (RAS)
4.Support planning
5.Outcome-focused review
6.Personalised support
7.Community brokerage

9. IB = IF + ‘budget-first’

10. personal motivation
Why NOT
citizenship entitlement neo-liberalism
creativity americanism
universal - radical professionalism
transparent (?) cost-cutting
but intention doesn’t fix meaning...

11. Diffusion of Innovations
Diffusion of Innovations Curve - Everett Rogers
(amended by Duffy)

12. 1. At the Margins
• Long-standing issue within advocates of
Individualised Funding - how to define budget?
• Early work in Southwark, Glasgow and North
Lanarkshire failed to get traction.
• In Control happened at the right time and the
right place.
• In Control was designed to maximise possibility
of increased take-up.
• A Trojan horse strategy to transform a broken
system from the inside...

13. NOTE: goal was
citizenship

14. success factors
• experience and 10+ years intellectual property
• branding, values and communication
• social justice - empowerment, without
privatisation
• luck - retiring senior managers
• luck - Ladyman visit to Wigan
• luck - Life Chances of Disabled People
• luck - VPST’s problems, CEO opportunity

15. 2. Policy Wars
• In Control was highly controversial and
challenged on: data, cost, ethics, legality,
feasibility, policy...
• Split between official Individual Budget Pilot
Programme and In Control’s second phase and
total transformation programmes.
• War ended in 2007 - Putting People First
changed the language to ‘Personal Budgets’ and
defined future policy.

16. NOTE: use of DH goals

17. success factors
• membership programme - over 100+ LAs
• problem-solving and open source approach
• temporary dependence of DH on In Control
• difficulties inherent to the IBPP
• luck - Ivan Lewis
• luck - Charlie Leadbeater
• luck - lack of money

18. 3. Implementation
• Shift to a centrally driven, funded (£0.5 billion)
and defined government policy - paradoxically
focusing on ‘making local government do it’
• In Control’s outsider role becomes problematic.
• No focus on underlying problems of entitlement
and the complexities that will inevitably emerge
at the health-social care boundary - instead
‘Personal Health Budgets’.

19. running out of luck...
• too much money - funded the competition -
inside and outside government
• Ivan Lewis’ departure and collapse of the
‘social care funding debate’
• DH needing to assert ‘leadership’
• Civil service desire to make it an
implementation issue - despite inherent flaws
in legal framework
• In Control has made it all seem ‘too easy’
• In Control seen as ‘too challenging’

20. 4. Success/Failure
• Nominal success by 2013 high likely.
• Value of success will be reduced by the
inefficiency of the delivery and by the poor
definition of the goal.
• Not a transformation; but nevertheless a
positive shift in perspective.

21. Failure brings...
• opportunity to revisit the health-social care
divide
• chance to build wider alliances and new public
understanding of the issues
• build better supports for social innovators and
critics of the current system
• think deeper, think longer - do better next
time

22. Resistance to Innovation

23. Diffusion driven by
1.Belief...
2.Status...
3.Usefulness...
4.Necessity...
motivation evolves with success,
and success is not inevitable

24. Systems Resist Innovation
1.Keep innovators at the margins
2.Question evidence of success
3.Make innovation adapt to current norms
4.Make innovation optional
this is not irrational, it reflects:
differences in rationale and
differences in belief

25. Innovation harder when:
• Copyright has no value
• Innovation has no commercial value
• Permission, not forgiveness, is required
• Innovation threatens politically powerful
economic interests
• Mass testing, rather than incremental
experimentation is necessary
• Key values or assumptions are threatened
i.e. social innovation is
very hard indeed

26. Impact on researchers
1. Pilot instead of develop
2. Redefine or weaken the definition of the
innovation
3. Undermine the implementation process
4. Undermine the research process
5. ...and many others...
dangers to integrity

27. What is the link between
design and research?
Protecting research integrity

29. Collaboration?
• Do we know the purpose that the innovation is
trying to achieve?
• Do we understand how an innovation really
works and are we able to ‘take it apart’?
• Can we find methodologies that enable us to
explore why an innovation works?
• How can we increase the cycle of improvement
and development?
i.e. social innovation

30. For more information go to
www.centreforwelfarereform.org
These slides are © Simon Duffy 2012 ￭ Publisher is The
Centre for Welfare Reform ￭ Slides can be distributed subject
to conditions set out at www.centreforwelfarereform.org ￭