Establecimiento de la credibilidad

The release stage of the lifecycle involves the collapse of rigid, powerful rules and institutions; the generation of new interactions; and the (re)combining of ideas, people and resources. Suggested policy options are those that offer approaches for sense-making around complex problems and in situations where no tangible innovation clearly exists (Moore et al. 2012).

i) Releasing social service design through co-processes

La 27e Region41 _{is a not-for-profit public innovation lab supported financially by} the French Government and the European Union. Established in 2008, it works

with Local Authorities across France to introduce co-design processes into how social services are designed and delivered so as to more effectively meet the needs of citizens. The interviewees for this study were the Managing Director and three Project Officers of the initiative; plus three staff members from the Regional Council of Champagne Ardenne, who had been involved with the project over a number of months. An interview with all participants was held at the Council offices in Champagne, France. Additional individual interviews with the Managing Director and Project Officers were also held there.

La 27e Region’s aim is to equip policymakers with new skills and capacities, and so improve public services across a broad range of social policy domains. By improving public services, its practical focus is on the incremental domain of social change activity. La 27e Region engages Local Authorities in designing and developing implementation plans for a specific social service improvement project. A cross-disciplinary team is established within a Local Authority, involving officers from departments that often do not traditionally collaborate. This team then works with other policymakers, elected officials, citizens and key regional stakeholders to develop scenarios around a specific social service issue. In addition to the collaborative approach to design, the user orientation reframes issues in terms of citizen priorities, improving understanding of the perspectives of intended beneficiaries of services. The action research methods involve participants in sense-making around complex issues and, to ensure a practical outcome, ‘reality-tests’ whether the proposals could be feasibly integrated with existing systems and processes. It also builds the capacity of local citizens to engage meaningfully in planning around other local services. In addition to improved services, these processes generate social value through improving social relations amongst a range of local stakeholders – including through participation in decision-making that affects them. La 27e Region is a neutral actor in the process and its independence from local politics is key to the success of the model.

Different Local Authorities and their communities choose to focus on different social policy issues. For example, the Champagne-Ardenne Regional Authority’s project was ‘My School Tomorrow’, where a broad range of school inhabitants were engaged in imagining the school of the future and in fundamentally rethinking the role of schools in communities. The Burgundy Regional Authority focused on the ‘village of the future’, and particularly land management practices; the Loire Regional Authority developed its ‘Loire 2040’ strategic plan through the program; and the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur Regional Authority explored innovative approaches to addressing youth unemployment issues.

These and other projects act as demonstrations for how co-design approaches can open up often static traditional processes, reconfigure interests and resources, and engage a more diverse range of actors in meeting social needs. For policymakers, the La 27e Region case demonstrates how the release stage of the lifecycle can be enabled through co-design methods where the policy objective is to involve service users in the development of improvements and adaptations. La 27e Region works with Local Authorities that have identified specific projects through which they are interested in exploring co-design approaches to achieve specific policy objectives. La 27e Region does not attempt to enrol large numbers of Local Authorities in a program that ‘pushes’ into potentially unreceptive environments. This approach to diffusing the La 27e Region co-design model builds slowly, drawing in interested parties and translating the opportunities into their contexts. By attending to the ‘release’ activities for each individual Local Authority in this way, the approach is building capacity and shaping new norms of practice across Local Authorities in France. In this way, the La 27e Region approach is also prompting disruptive social change, as the new practices and cultures become absorbed across the sector.

ii) Releasing social service production through co-processes

East Dunbartonshire has the highest proportion of older people amongst all Scottish local authority areas, along with a rapidly ageing population - with over 75’s projected to increase by 71 percent by 2024 (EDDC interview). Obtaining services for dementia sufferers can be difficult and confusing for family members. The East Dunbartonshire Dementia Clinics (EDDC) initiative is bringing about incremental social change through an improved service that addresses an institutional void in the local care services available for dementia patients and their families. The East Dunbartonshire Partnership Lead for Dementia was the interviewee for the EDCC case study.42 _{The interview took place at the East} Dunbartonshire Council offices, just outside Glasgow in Scotland.

The model is designed to support people to live independently at home or in a homely setting, including helping people keep active and engaged in their local community. Originally established as a knowledge exchange, the collaboration evolved over time into a co-production initiative that coordinates across local services. The EDCC involves the Local Authority’s Social Work department, the Community Health Partnership (Scottish government designated entity), and three key local third sector service providers. Each of the partners offers bespoke information and advice to individuals through Clinics, and acts as a gateway to specialist services. Previously each acted independently, with little communication, and as a result some services were duplicated while there were gaps in other areas and little capacity to develop improvements.

The collaboration provided a vehicle for the entities involved to work together to make sense of the issues and to then reconfigure resources in new ways. For policymakers, this demonstrates how social innovation assemblages can be enabled around policy objectives that seek to open up existing processes and explore new approaches to service provision. As a result of the co-production process, overlaps have been significantly reduced, and partners now draw on each other’s resources and capacities. Pressure on frontline Council services and

budgets has been reduced, as have hospital bed days required and the numbers of acute care cases. All of these efficiencies have been achieved while also improving the quality and effectiveness of care, and the savings made have been invested in developing further innovations. Initiatives to encourage the establishment of small niche service providers who can cater to specific needs are being introduced. Social relations between the public sector actors and local service providers have been improved. Dementia patients and their families have better access to information to inform decision-making, and service delivery options are also being improved.

The success of the model has resulted in a project with the national Joint Improvement team. This project is exploring the use of co-production models for working with people who have dementia, for replication nationally and internationally, and focuses on three key areas: co-production with hard to reach groups; peer support for and by people with dementia; and social enterprise delivery models to enable the creation of dementia inclusive communities. The national ‘macro actors’ involved in the project promote the expertise of the local actors, including recognising the importance of contextual specificity in designing diffusions models. This approach indicates ways in which models developed by local social innovation assemblages can be diffused more widely whilst retaining the ethos that shaped their development (St. Martin, Roelvink & Gibson-Graham 2015, p.20). ‘Releasing’ social service production creates opportunities for a wide range of individual participants to participate in decision-making that effects their lives, and for diverse enterprises to be involved in the delivery of care services.