El ideal del amor romántico

Since the completion of this study in 2011, there have been significant changes in the local, regional and national landscape, both economically and politically. The drive for different

types of organisations to work together in partnership has gathered momentum, as represented in the literature and in the experiences of this study’s participants. These changes can be explained, in part, by the economic contraction in public finance. These have resulted in an ever greater need to make financial savings, but also in the policy frameworks which contribute to the framing of these initiatives. This further emphasises the need for policy-making to be effective in its support and realistic in its expectations (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, 1993). Unfortunately, the contraction in public funding may also have made it even more difficult for individuals, and less well-resourced third sector organisations, to gain funding to research their own practice. It may also have made it more difficult to deliver more ‘outcome’ rather than ‘output' measured opportunities with some of the euphemistically termed ‘hard-to-engage’ learners (Grief et al, 2002).

The national political and economic dynamics which have taken place during the period of this study 2008 - 2011, have impacted on the role of partnership working for many organisations operating across all three ‘sector’ arenas of public activity. The extent to which this has taken place will be the remit of other research studies to measure. What is clear, from the experiences of this study’s respondents, is that the ‘cocktail’ of global economic recessionary pressures, welfare reform initiatives and the change of government in the United Kingdom in May 2010, continues to exert, and to exacerbate, what was already perceived as ‘a challenging environment to operate in’ by many o f this study’s participants.

It is important that appropriate resources are made available to community organisations, to be able to contribute towards the empirical knowledge-base relating to TSOs and their activities. In so doing, this would further contribute towards capacity-building for those individuals, their organisations and local community networks. It is only in recognising

and supporting a wide-spectrum of partnership stakeholders, that a more detailed picture of the dynamics of how they deliver, or under-deliver, can be understood and be appropriately supported (Taylor et al, 2003). This underpins a truly equitable base on which to build policy and allocate resources in the future (Yanow, 1996).

A survey of policy-making in 2001 found that a limited range of evidence appeared to be used by government departments in the evaluation of domestic and international research and statistics (Bullock et al, 2001). According to the Cabinet Office (1999), ultimately policy-making is about delivering outcomes which result in desired change in the real world and are informed by a representative evidence base. The gaps in the literature suggest a need for more 'sustained interactivity' (Huberman, 1987) between researchers and practitioners and practitioner-researchers. There is also a need for and an awareness that “egalitarianism in sources of evidence” is not equally represented across all sectors (Nutley et al, 2002:3). Given the importance of policy-making to “the strength of the government as a whole, and that of the country at large”, the necessity for policy-making to “confront reality” (Hallsworth et al, 2011:4) makes a case for more effective policy­ making an imperative. However, I find it strange to hear ministers and civil servants, who are central to creating policy, described as producing “a narrative created and believed by a group of people which distract attention from a puzzling part of their reality” (Yanow, 1996:191). This is hardly the type of image one wishes to have of policy-making or policy­ makers.

In their qualitative review and analysis of the policy-making process in government over the past fourteen years, Hallsworth et al (2011) found that attempts to make improvements to policy-making have been undermined by the gap between theory and practice

(Hallsworth et al, 2011:5). What they described as a “striking finding” emerged from their detailed study into policy-making in government:

“The picture that practitioners painted was very different from the one suggested by attempts to improve policy-making. A gap between theory and practice became apparent. In other words, policymakers lack the resources to deal with the real problems they face; they often know what they should be doing, but experience difficulties putting it into practice (Hallsworth et al, 2011:30).

I suspect that this is not an altogether surprising insight for many practitioners. Many may question how many of the euphemistically termed ‘dots’; that have the potential to facilitate links between theory and practice, actually remain to be joined or were joined-up properly in the first place. Practitioners may indeed question, and have done so in this study, if the ‘gap’ between theory and practice; that is seemingly so elusive to bridge, is the result of inadequate policies assembled by insufficiently informed policy-makers.

The findings, from this 2011 report, identified a number of specific problems. It was suggested that they were located in the nature of the process, qualities, structures and politics of policy-making. Hallsworth et al (2011) suggest that the dominant model of the policy process was being unrealistic in its expectation and that, whilst there was “clarity on the desired qualities of policy-making”, there was not when it came to how to achieve them. This was seen to result in attempts to embed them failing to make ‘notable progress’. Furthermore, structural changes were viewed as being ‘incoherent and incomplete’. They were viewed as facing “new challenges as Whitehall downsizes” and ministers as having a “limited view of the environment within which all policy is made” (Hallsworth et al, 2011:30).

This report is relevant to the findings of this study as it suggests several fundamental flaws in the policy-making process of government. Many academics, whilst not always making helpful suggestions to ministers and civil servants on how this situation could be improved, agree that it is a flawed process (Kingdon, 1995; Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993). Some academics go as far as to describe the policy process as, “the shell of policy presented for public and media consumption” (John, 1998). Policy frameworks were cited amongst reasons for some of the difficulties experienced by this study’s respondents. Some respondents did not feel that policy frameworks, in principle, favoured one organisation over another. However, there was considerable derision over the interpretation and application of national policy frameworks that focused on the third sector as if all constituent organisations had similar needs. There was further criticism of policy initiatives that did not fully reflect the realities that were precipitated from different types of organisational practices with highly differentiated levels of resources. The next section explores the implications of this study for practice.