We had an interesting round table discussion with two of the leading thinkers and do-ers in the worlds of social enterprise and mental health yesterday – Mark Brown and David Floyd.

Mark is editor of leading mental health magazine One in Four, whilst David runs Social Spider – the social enterprise, which, amongst other things, publishes One in Four.  David also writes what in my opinion is the best UK blog on social enterprise, Beanbags and Bullsh!t.  Well worth a read if you want an honest, front-line take on the world of social business.

We’d invited Mark and David to Leeds because we’ve been chatting to various people over the last few months about exploring new ways to support people with a mental health need.  And, just as importantly, exploring ways that people can help themselves.  Mark and David had written a thinkpiece about the potential for a Big Society approach to helping people to improve people’s mental health – so we were keen to hear more.  The thinkpiece is excellent (but not available online yet) and yesterday’s discussion was fascinating.

I’m no expert in the field of mental health – I’m just someone who cares about this stuff and is interested in trying to work out how to do things better.  But it strikes me that some of the things that can contribute to a person’s improved mental health and sense of wellbeing could include:

• Active involvement in the development and delivery of the support that they receive and the opportunity to influence things (you might call that co-production)
• Support from and contact with peers – people who are – or who have been – in a similar situation – with an emphasis on self-help and peer support
• Appropriate, non-institutionalised, personalised services
• A sense that they matter – they’re not just a statistic in a faceless world of health and social care

So, with that in mind, you can imagine how an approach – which you might call Big Society – could work.  People setting things up themselves to support eachother.  Local charities and social enterprises setting up services which are funded through contracts and charges to paying customers.  All sounds great doesn’t it?

Except the discussion yesterday – whilst highlighting the potential of a Big Society approach – also emphasised the barriers that are in place if more of this stuff is to happen.  Fundamentally, it comes down to money.  Where is the money in the mental  health field?  Much of it stays within the NHS and the local authority.  Some of it goes out through contracts – to deliver pre-determined outcomes, tightly monitored through Key Performance Indicators.  And a bit of it – if you’re lucky – might go on innovative, local, risky, do-it-yourself initiatives.

And please don’t tell me that Personal Budgets could fund this kind of thing.  They could – in theory – and should.  But our experience – and increasing amounts of evidence such as this report into Personal Budget pilots in Scotland – suggest that few people with a mental health need are getting support which is different in a meaningful way through a Personal Budget.

Locally, we’re hearing that the local authority will approve a Personal Budget to cover someone’s transport costs to get to an activity (which could be a Big Society, DIY, self-help/peer support activity) – but they won’t pay for the activity itself.  So how is the service supposed to develop?  And, given that many people with a mental health need are on pretty minimal benefits, they will tend to struggle to pay for that activity.

Solutions?  I doubt there are any quick fixes.  But, as always, the starting point needs to be an honest assessment of where things are.  Big Society approaches aren’t going to magically spring up out of thin air.  If the State decides that more of this kind of thing should happen, then we need to invest in it.  In Leeds we’ve made a start with the Ideas That Change Lives investment fund, which has teamed up with UnLtd to offer support to people with good ideas.  It’s a good start, but we need plenty more.

I went along to Revive Leeds this morning for the launch of the Vision for Leeds 2011-2030 – Our vision to be the best city in the UK.

More on the Vision later, but first a few words about Revive.  It’s an idea that’s been a long time coming – I chatted with someone there who was exploring this idea eight years ago, and someone else reckoned he’d been talking about it fifteen years ago.

Revive Leeds is a Re-Use Shop which is based at a tip (sorry, recycling site) in East Leeds.  It’s run by a Community Interest Company – which in turn is a collaboration between three well established Leeds social enterprises – Emmaus Leeds, St Vincent de Paul Society and Slate.

The idea – and it’s a good one – is that people can drop off stuff that can be re-used whilst they’re dumping other stuff at the tip.  As someone who despairs whenever I go to the tip at what people are throwing away, I’m delighted to see this up and running.

First impressions?  The shop is attractively laid out and has a good range of stock.  The stock was generally good quality.  I think there’s work to do on pricing – as a charity-shop regular I think some of the pricing was a bit on the ambitious side.  £10 for a second hand iron, £175 for a decent but unremarkable three piece suite, didn’t strike me as realistic.  But these things take time – and they’ll have had to second-guess who their customer base will be.  They’ll know better who their customers are in six months time – and I’m sure their pricing will reflect that.

It made me think of my visit a few years back to another Revive (unrelated) in Liverpool – part of the FRC Group.  They take stock primarily from their Bulky Bobs bulky waste collection service (which I notice has today been successful in the Big Venture Challenge) and sell it in their high-street shop.  Shaun Doran, who was responsible for Revive, was frank about they got it very wrong in the early years at Revive.  In short, they took little notice of who their customers were – who was walking past their shop front in that part of Liverpool.  Once they realised who they were really serving, the shop became more successful.

I liked their emphasis on quick turnover of stock – I can’t remember the detail but let’s say it was something like “Have an item for two weeks at full price, two weeks at half price, then move on”.  It’s important that customers see fresh stock regularly – it’s what keeps people coming back.  You might make a bit less on each item, but you’ll sell (and divert from landfill) a lot more stuff.

I also liked their pricing strategy – with different prices for products depending on whether you had just walked in off the street, were on benefits, or had been referred by a FRC partner organisation.  It sounds like a logistical nightmare, and could be a bit embarrassing for people if it was implemented poorly, but it seemed to work well.  The £175 three piece suite brought this pricing strategy back to me – who’s the customer with £175 in their back pocket?

But let’s not take anything away from the people who’ve worked really hard to get Revive Leeds up and running.  They’ve done a great job and I wish them every success.  And it’s been a long road.

Which brings me to the Vision for Leeds.  This was the softest of soft launches I’ve ever witnessed – I’d be interested to know why the Council has gone for this approach to launching the Vision.  At most there were 50 people there – perhaps 10 of whom were unrelated to the Council or to Revive Leeds.

I’ll be honest, I really struggle to get excited about long-term visions.  The ten minute video which accompanies the Vision (not online yet) is all very nice but voxpops with loads of people saying how great Leeds is (it’s friendly, it’s diverse, it’s a great place to do sport/learn/do business etc) just leave me cold.

But, let me try my best to suspend the scepticism.  There’s something quite refreshing in the idea of trying to be the “best” city in the UK.  As the Vision says:

“Not the richest or the biggest, but the best for all who live and work in Leeds – our children, our communities and our businesses.”

Maybe that’s something I can get excited about over time.

It’s worth reflecting on the story of Revive Leeds, alongside the Vision for Leeds.  Revive Leeds will hopefully do well, but we can’t wait another 8 years for the next great innovation.  The Councillor at today’s event was very proud of the Council’s collaboration with three local social enterprises – and that is undoubtedly a step forward.  But we have to get better – and quicker – at coming up with creative ideas which make a real difference.

And this is where things might just get interesting.  Leeds Council – according to this article by the Council Leader in the Yorkshire Post – seems to be opening up and suggesting that in the future it needs to become more entrepreneurial – for example by collaborating more with other organisations.

As someone who’s worked with the Council closely for a number of years, let me just say they’ve got a long way to go before I’d use the words entrepreneurial and Council in the same sentence.  But acknowledging that things need to improve is a starting point, at least.  The hard bit will be moving from nice words to messy practice.  Councillors and Council officers have a steep learning curve ahead of them.

We ran a seminar with Adult Social Care at Leeds City Council yesterday exploring the idea of timebanking.

If you’ve not come across timebanking before, you can find out more on this Scoop.It site that we’ve put together – or by visiting the Timebanking UK website. You can also find out more about Just Add Spice – whose co-director, Tris Dyson, spoke at our seminar yesterday. In essence, it’s about give and take. People offer time to eachother, and get credits in return – which can be used to buy in the time of someone else in the timebank.

If you were to look inside my head you would discover the remnants of a lifetime of discussions between my sceptical self and my idealist self. I love the values behind timebanking. The idea of helping people to focus on what they can offer, as well as what they need. The concept of everyone’s time being of equal value. The importance of putting some kind of value on the social capital which makes life worth living.

But I worry that it’s one of those things which is much better in theory than it is in practice. My worry isn’t about people abusing the system – taking and not giving, or perhaps even stealing. Instead my concern is that people won’t take enough. They’ll give for a while – and then not get round to taking. For timebanking to work, we need people who are willing to accept help and support – as well as people are happy to give it.

There was a lot of discussion yesterday about how a timebank would work – in particular focusing on the role of the broker – the person who will help to ensure that people give and take. The impression I get is that in most cases we have to aim for a fairly light-touch broker, for two reasons. One is that there isn’t much money about – so we’ll struggle to sustain any timebanks which rely too much on paid staff.

Secondly, I think part of the attraction of timebanking is its DIY nature. I fear for timebanks which end up with a broker housed within a third sector or public sector organisation – unless that broker sees their role as that of a catalyst – moving on – or at least stepping back – once things are running smoothly. We really don’t need brokers who feel they need to cover their backs by routinely getting everyone to have CRB checks for example.

I’m not gung-ho about safety concerns, but I think part of the value of timebanking is the opportunity it gives us to start taking some responsibility – and making our own decisions about whether we want to accept a service from someone. I think there’s far more danger in communities that don’t talk to eachother than there is in connected communities where people are dealing with eachother on a more regular basis.

But as I say, the scepticism – and the desire to work out what might stop timebanking from working in Leeds – is balanced by a real sense of what it could achieve. There were various ideas discussed yesterday – from simple neighbourhood (person to person) based timebanks, run on a voluntary basis, to slightly more involved ones, (often agency to person) where people might be able to redeem credits not just for services from within the timebank, but for services from the local authority, or local businesses. So an hour at a Housing Association consultation might be exchanged for an hour at the local council swimming baths – which needs more customers to survive. Or a local coffee shop might want to acknowledge the efforts of local volunteers by allowing for a time-limited exchange of credits for coffee and cake.

But isn’t that going against the very nature of volunteering? There’s a discussion to be had about that I think, but my own take is that we need to lose this idea that volunteering is all about selfless giving. Self-interest – what’s in it for me – is an important part of the reasoning behind giving. If people give more because they’re acknowledged, and get something in return, then in my opinion that’s no bad thing.

Personally, I’m most intrigued by the anecdotal evidence I’m hearing time and again of the impact timebanking can have on improving people’s mental health. It makes a lot of sense. I know myself – you probably do too – that one of the best ways of dragging myself out of occasional dark places is to do something for someone else, to be reminded that I have skills to give and have a value to others. There’s far more to better mental health than that, but it could be a starting point for some.

I’ll write more about this in the future – but in the meantime, if you’re in Leeds and you’re interested in exploring timebanking more please get in touch. The Ideas That Change Lives fund that we work on is interested in investing in timebanking – and we’re planning another get-together later in the month. We’re particularly interested in chatting with individuals (not just people working in organisations) who want to see something happen in their community.

Research published today on behalf of Think Local Act Personal paints a pretty positive picture of Personal Budgets – you can read the press release here and a research summary here.  You can read a Guardian report into the research – which includes quotes from me – here.

I have read the research summary – but as yet I’ve not read the full report.  But I think it’s fair to say that the researchers are painting a pretty positive picture, with a few important caveats.  Here’s their brief summary of the report’s findings:

“..it seems that personal budgets are likely to have generally positive impacts on the lives of all groups of personal budget holders and the people who care for them. The likelihood of people experiencing a positive impact from a personal budget is maximised by a personal budget support process that keeps people fully informed, puts people in control of the personal budget and how it is spent, supports people without undue constraint and bureaucracy and fully involves carers.

Under these conditions, personal budgets can and do work well for everyone” (My emphasis)

I’d like to focus on that last line.  You would hope that that would be the case.  If a person-centred approach is taken, if a person and their carers are involved in their support plan, if the process isn’t overly-bureaucratic and if they end up with the support that they need, then things should turn out just fine.

The problem, in our experience, is that those ifs are not just big, they’re enormous.  As research from ADASS, published last week, confirmed, nearly all of the people who were classed as receiving personal budgets in the last twelve months (around 170,000 people) received what is called a managed budget – where the local authority continues to manage the budget.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that the majority of people who receive a managed budget end up with a package of support which is pretty much the same as what they had before.  Even allowing for the fact that some people might be happy with what they had, such an approach doesn’t feel like it fits with the principles of Personalisation.

Which leads me onto one of the other findings of the research:

“Those managing the budget themselves as a direct payment reported significantly more positive outcomes than people receiving council managed budgets.”

So, if we combine this finding with the data which suggests that just about everybody in England who received a personal budget in 2010-11 actually received a council managed budget, you could conclude that personal budgets have had limited impact in the last twelve months.

Our reading of the situation (which may or may not be correct) is that the incentives that Councils received in order to reach the 30% of people on  Personal Budgets by April 2011 target has ended up distorting the market.  Councils have concentrated on getting people onto managed budgets – which is a far easier process than going through a proper, person-centred process like the one the researchers point to above. A majority of Councils have achieved the target, so Ministers and Local Authorities can say that Personal Budgets are working just fine.

But our experience is that they’re not working just fine.  I won’t rehash the arguments – they’re detailed in this post and this post – but we would say that the research finding that “the survey revealed markedly different outcomes across councils” is an accurate one.

The research does point out that there is still work to be done – such as the following finding:

“Overall, less than half felt that the council had made it easy or very easy for people to change their support, choose the best option from a range of services, or voice their opinions or complain.”

So, if we go back to the big ifs in the research summary, it would seem that a lot of local authorities have not managed to “support people without undue constraint and bureaucracy”.

This is of particular concern if we look at who completed the research.  Nearly 80% of the 2000 respondents were from ten “demonstrator sites” – which, I assume, were local authorities which were involved in piloting Personal Budgets.  (Note, 23rd June – please see clarification on this in the comment below)  They, of course, had more money and resources to commit to making Personal Budgets work.  So, if a significant number of them haven’t managed to crack the bureaucracy nut, can we realistically expect those that follow to do much better, with fewer resources?

I really believe in person-centred services – and I still believe that Personal Budgets can work.  And I acknowledge that I’ve read the summary, not the full report.   But I’m afraid that our experience of Personalisation doesn’t chime with the generally positive tone of the research summary.  I’d be interested in your experiences and thoughts.

I wrote last week about our experience of Personalisation.  I talked you through the early stages of the self-directed support process, highlighting some issues that we’d come up against at each stage.  I’ll continue now with the next stages of the process, before considering what to do to change things for the better.  Again, your thoughts and experiences – in particular any examples of where things are working well  - would be much appreciated.

• Let’s look first of all at the support planning and brokerage stages.  We’ve witnessed a lack of creative thinking here.  There’s lots of terminology here – and how this is done differs in each local authority area.  But the basic idea is that a person is supported to work out how best to meet their desired outcomes (support planning).  They can then be supported to find creative, person-centred ways to meet those outcomes, by identifying appropriate services to buy (brokerage).

  We are finding that, even though support planning and brokerage can, in theory, be done by organisations outside of the social care system (eg an older people’s support network could do it for one of their members) the majority of this work is done by social workers.  Social workers who are under immense pressure, and have very little time.  Social workers who are accustomed, however person-centred they may be in their philosophy, to offering people what the system can offer.  It’s hardly surprising that (according to anecdotal evidence) the majority of people going through this process are ending up with pretty much what they had before.  In other words, services which the system can deliver.

  Let’s just pause and think about that for a while.  So a load of money, time and effort is being put into this, and it seems that a majority of people are coming out with what they always had.  Isn’t that a bit ridiculous, even if we accept that some people may actually be quite happy with what they had?  Well, what might seem more ridiculous is that, statistically at least, this person counts as someone who has accessed a Personal Budget (and until April 2011, councils received a financial incentive for getting people onto a Personal Budget in this way).  Even though nothing has changed for them, and the council still manages their money (sometimes spending it only on services provided by organisations with whom the council has framework agreements (contracts).  This is what is often referred to as a Virtual Budget. This statistical massage is why Ministers can confidently proclaim that all is well with Personalisation.

• One of the things councils have been charged with is stimulating  a market in social care.  They are required to produce what are called Market Position Statements – in order to communicate with other providers (third sector, private sector) how they would like to see the market develop.  In one area where we’ve done some work in the past, the consultation event on the Market Position Statement has been postponed twice, and we’re still waiting for a new date.  That’s not a great way to stimulate a market.

  But how do you stimulate a market?  I think it’s a really hard thing to do.  And to be fair to the councils where we’ve worked, they’ve each put money into encouraging third sector organisations to set up services.  But at the same time, they’ve been less than forthcoming with the kind of information which would give organisations confidence to take the risk in setting up services.  Simple information, like how many people in the city have got a Personal Budget, and how many of them ended up with services which were materially different to what they had before.

  So you can understand why, when they don’t get answers to these questions, organisations may assume that few people are being enabled to access new services.  If this is your perception, you’re hardly likely to set up a service are you?  Which, of course, means that there are fewer services to choose from – which makes it more likely that people will go for what they’ve always had.  And so we go on.

We do what we do because we want to make a difference.  I write stuff like this not to point the finger, but to acknowledge that things aren’t working as they could do.  I think, with a policy as radical as Personalisation, it’s natural that things will take a while to work out.  But you need to feel that things are at least moving in the right direction – and that issues are acknowledged.

I think that recently people are starting to publicly acknowledge that we are struggling to make Personalisation work.  I really think we need more openness about this.  But it doesn’t come naturally to local authorities to admit that they don’t have the answers.

What are we doing about this?  We’re continuing to work on Personalisation (some paid work, some speculative work) – and in particular we’re focusing on what we’ve called Personalisation – Made in…. We ran a Personalisation – Made in Bradford open space event earlier this month – and we’ve set up a network in Leeds too.  The idea is to bring different people together – who all have a stake in making this work.  Service providers, people who receive social care support, investors, service designers, social workers.  We believe that we’ll find ways to make Personalisation work by bringing people together to discuss issues openly, and then collaborating to make the system work for people.

One of our main areas of work over the last couple of years has been the Personalisation of social care.

Personalisation, in summary, is about making services more person-centred.  In a social care context it is associated most closely (but not exclusively) with the idea of Personal Budgets – also known as Self Directed Support, Individual Budgets or Individual Accounts.

The idea behind a Personal Budget is this:  you decide how any money which is allocated to you for your care is spent.  Previously, you would be assessed, and if you were eligible for support from social care, they would tell you what you could have, in order to meet your desired outcomes.  Now, in theory at least, you get to decide how that money is spent.

I say “in theory” because our experience over the last twelve months is that there is a significant gap between the aspirations of personalisation and the reality for a lot of people.

Let’s not underestimate how much of a culture shift this is for the social care system.  We’re talking about power – spending power – being passed down to the people who should have that power.  Traditionally power has been in the hands of people who, as professionals, have been given the responsibility of choosing what care other people should have.  It’s natural that such a shift will take time.

Logistically, this is a massive shift too.  It’s much easier to run systems where those running the system choose what the system will offer, in bulk form.  So it’s easier to run a meals-on-wheels service which will offer meals (which you’ve chosen) to be delivered at some time between 1115am and 130pm, Monday to Friday.  Or to offer a homecare service which puts someone to bed at some time between 830pm and 11pm.

But what if that person wants to watch the 10 O’Clock News, and doesn’t want to go to bed at 830pm?  Or what if they reckon that meals-on-wheels, for all their official nutritional balance, taste like you might expect a meal to taste if it was cooked 200 miles away, frozen, reheated and then carried around in a van for two hours?

This is why I believe in Personalisation.  I believe all too often people get the support that system is able to offer, rather than what people actually want and need.  And, rather than being efficient, routinely giving people services that don’t particularly meet their needs is a terrible waste of resources.  All of this in a system which, I’m sure we’d all agree, needs a lot more resources.

Let me focus on what we’ve witnessed.  Our experience is primarily in two councils where we’ve done some detailed work on Personalisation – and is backed up by anecdotal evidence from elsewhere.  I really don’t think the cities we’ve worked in are much better or worse than anywhere else when it comes to making Personalisation work.

Over the next few days I want to look at some of the issues that we’ve come up against. I’m highlighting these issues not to point the finger of blame – but to acknowledge that there are practical problems which are making it difficult to develop person-centred services in the way that many of us would like. What’s interesting, I think, is that when you consider each issue, it makes you realise two things.  One – there’s a lot to sort out.  Two – you can break down seemingly intractable problems in “the system” into chunks – each of which could be sorted out – if there’s willingness to sort things out.

I’ll look at each stage of a person’s journey through the system – and highlight some of the issues that we’ve come up against.  I’d very much welcome your thoughts – and experiences.

The first problem to overcome is getting an assessment.  The social care system is under immense pressure and it can take far too long to get an assessment.  When you get that assessment, it may be undertaken over the phone – which I’m sure you’d agree, isn’t the best way to assess someone’s complex needs.  One thing’s for sure – this initial stage doesn’t make it easy for someone to consider doing something different – like getting a personal budget.

A complicated process for the assessment of needs:  at the heart of Personalisation is an assessment process (usually called something like a Self-Assessment Questionnaire) which aims to work out what people need.  We’re aware of a Questionnaire (which, in theory, can be completed by the person themselves) which is 60 pages long.  I say “aware” – again it’s only anecdotal evidence – because the council in question won’t actually send us a copy of the questionnaire.

Problems at the next stage – the Resource Allocation System (RAS).  This is the points make prizes bit. Somehow (again, we haven’t been allowed to see the detail) the responses to the questionnaire are fed into a system which allocates points to each answer – which then translate into £££’s – which form what is called an Indicative Budget.

We’re told anecdotally that there is little faith in the RAS – and anecdotal evidence suggests that when the actual Personal Budget is allocated, it tends to be lower than the Indicative Budget (even though guidance suggests that you could actually allocate more than the Indicative Budget, if such spending was deemed necessary to achieve the outcomes in the person’s support plan).  Is this because there is little faith in the RAS?  Or because there is pressure to ensure that Personal Budgets don’t cost more than traditional services?  I imagine it’s a bit of both.

Next time I’ll look at the support planning and brokerage stages of the process.  As I say, I’d welcome your thoughts on this – in particular your experiences – and any examples of where the system is working better than I’ve suggested above.

The Government recently announced who will be the Prime Providers delivering Work Programme contracts across the country.

The Work Programme is basically about supporting people to get them back into paid employment.  I don’t doubt for a minute that we need some fresh thinking here, and I’m not opposed to private sector involvement.  But there are various issues which are causing me some concern in the way that things are happening.

Social Enterprise Magazine has done some good work looking into this in more detail.  The Department for Work of Pensions and the Minister for Civil Society have been keen to assert that 40% of the work will be carried out by voluntary sector providers  – as sub-contractors to the (mainly private sector) Prime Providers.  In other words, this is a massive boost for the Big Society.

But it’s not easy to work out exactly where that 40% figure has come from.  A quick look through the letter from Chris Grayling, (see pdf at bottom of article) outlining which sectors the subcontractors on each Prime Provider contract come from, invites you to challenge whether 40% of the fees will find their way to third sector providers.

Take, for example, my patch, West Yorkshire.  The two Prime Providers for our area are BEST and a collaboration between Ingeus and Deloitte.

The letter from Employment Minister Chris Grayling seems to suggest that none of BEST’s subcontractors will come from the third sector, whilst 8.2% of the work on the Ingeus/Deloitte contract will be delivered by the third sector.

That doesn’t feel like a victory for the West Yorkshire branch of the Big Society.

What bothers me here is that it feels like another example of dogmatic belief getting in the way of hard analysis of facts, and experience of how such contracting arrangements may not always work in the best interests of smaller providers.

I’ve written before about how I see parallels between the category management approach often adopted by supermarkets, and the Prime Provider system which the DWP is using.  Whilst, of course, there’s a world of difference between purchasing tinned fruit and procuring job-readiness training, I think it’s worth acknowledging that there is potential for difficulty when a big company (the Prime Provider) is tasked with collaborating with lots of smaller providers.  Government would have us believe that they’ll all play happy families, nurturing the young’uns and small’uns so that together they can share the proceeds and make the contract a success.  I’m afraid I just don’t believe that it will turn out like that in a lot of cases.

Others have written about their concerns about how the Work Programme will pan out.  There certainly seem to have been issues with regards to an over-emphasis on low prices, in place of quality.  That doesn’t bode well – and certainly doesn’t feel like the kind of environment where the smaller, perhaps more innovative, approaches will thrive.

We ran our first Ideas Circle last night, for the Ideas That Change Lives investment fund.

The aim was to give a group of social entrepreneurs the opportunity to pitch their idea to a group of people to get useful feedback, ideas and contacts.

A few years ago, we would have made a play of how it was a bit like Dragon’s Den (like we did when we ran something similar as part of our Starter for Ten course in 2006) – but it’s fair to say that other than the pitch, it’s got very little in common with that format, which to be frank I can’t stand.

We invited people we know – a PR man, a lawyer, an accountant and a Charity chief exec and a couple of social care professionals – to listen to the pitches.  They all gave up their evening free of charge.  We also asked the entrepreneurs to be part of the circle for the other people pitching – to encourage a bit of collaboration and to get past the idea that we’re all competing against eachother.  In the majority of cases, most of us, as small start-up businesses, will have far more to gain from collaborating than we stand to lose by competing.

We were really pleased with it.  The focus was on giving people constructive feedback – so that (with our support) they can revise their business plan before it goes to the Investment Panel next month.

Needless to say, a few relationships were made and no doubt a few deals will be done too, so that’s all good.

We’re keen to do it again – taking advantage of the fact that a lot of people are keen to help other entrepreneurs, if the opportunity is a good one.  I also think it’ll be increasingly important as other sources of support (such as Business Link) disappear.  We need to find ways to effectively support and nurture eachother – particularly start-up entrepreneurs.

If you’re interested in us running an Ideas Circle for your investment fund or grants programme, please get in touch.

I fell off my bike yesterday – a victim of icy roads.  Nothing broken, but I can hardly move, so have spent most of the day sat on the sofa.  It’s a bit of a pain, as I’ve got loads to do, but as always it’s handy to stop, think and read every now and then, even if the thinking is through the fug of painkillers and anti-inflammatories.

One of things I did was watch a TED video about collaborative consumption:

The talk is by Rachel Botsman, co-author of What’s Mine is Yours – The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, which is released in the UK next month.

I’m a sucker for neat concepts and smart phrases such as Collaborative Consumption, but Rachel thinks this is an idea which has staying power.  She reckons we’re hard-wired to share, and it’s only recently, in the age of hyper-consumption, that we’ve begun to crave ownership of more goods, rather than focusing on just securing access to goods or services.

In a world with finite resources, there are clear, negative environmental implications of us all racing to own and consume.  And there’s a decent argument for saying that our desire for private, exclusive ownership doesn’t do our communities much good either.  If we don’t need anything from anyone else, we’re less likely to engage with anyone else.

But the reverse is true also.  If we acknowledge our interdependence, and also recognise that sharing things can save money, be more green and perhaps build a bit of community then we may well find that our neighbourhoods feel a bit more like the kind of neighbourhoods that most of us aspire to live in.

As I dipped in and out of Twitter today there was plenty of talk of library closures in the UK.  It’s anticipated that lots will close as local councils struggle desperately to make ends meet.

I don’t want to discuss the politics of that just now, but I do want to reflect on the rise of collaborative consumption and the apparent fall of the public library.  If some are saved and run by volunteers, will they continue to deliver the same service ?  Or might they re-imagine their service as a local hub for collaborative consumption?  Maybe I could borrow a guide book to Paris, alongside a power drill?  A power drill that someone else in my community has offered up for sharing – at a fee – shared between them and the library? It might be mission drift, or it might just make libraries relevant to more people.

I spend a lot of my time working with third sector organisations.  Usually – and this isn’t a criticism – it’s just the reality – what people want from me is a little vague.  Often someone has been tasked by their management committee to “find out how we can become a social enterprise”.  Whatever that might mean.

What does it mean?  It’s a question perhaps for another post.  My response to that kind of question is to fall back on the social enterprise as a verb not a noun stuff.  What is it that you do that is socially enterprising?  How are you enterprising in achieving your social mission?  How could you be more enterprising, more effective?  And how could I help?

The trigger for many organisations exploring “becoming a social enterprise” is that the markets that they work in are changing rapidly.  Funding is increasingly hard to come by, and, in fields such as social care, money is starting to follow individual “customers” – rather than being allocated to organisations as a block grant.  These issues present massive cultural and organisational challenges.

This transition – I saw it described the other day as “from wholesale to retail to bespoke” won’t happen overnight – but the direction of travel is clear.  And in my experience this is causing significant anxiety for a lot of third sector organisations.

If we borrow the language of the transition movement, how does an organisation respond to “peak funding”?  The problem we have is that peak funding has already happened – whereas peak oil is perhaps a few years away.   How do organisations plan for a pretty immediate future where they’ll need to be more resilient in order to survive?  Funding being cut, contracts shortened, commitments from commissioners postponed.  It’s very tough.

I don’t have a simple answer.  There isn’t one.  But perhaps we can look to the transition movement for inspiration.  What is inspiring about the transition movement is that people are coming together to come up with practical ways to help their communities to become more resilient in difficult circumstances.  They aren’t relying on others to sort out their problems.

It’s not quite that simple for third sector organisations.  But I do feel that there’s a tendency amongst some people to look outside of their organisation for a solution, rather than considering what they can do themselves.  And of course I know that lots of third sector organisations are proactive and are coming up with ways to do more with less money.  But I see plenty of others who seem to be waiting for someone else to sort things out.

I have news for them.  They’ll be waiting a long time for that bloke on a big white horse to come galloping over the hill.  I hear he lost his job in the cuts.