Remembering Judy Scott – paying people on benefits expert

Posted on by Pete Fleischmann in A Place 2 Think, Co-Production

This Sunday I attended a wonderful and moving memorial event for Judy Scott the user payments expert and campaigner. It was organised by her son Chris and held in Meanwhile Gardens a community run park in west London. I didn’t know that Judy was one of the small group of people that set up Meanwhile Gardens and established a work project there for people with mental health issues.

Swiss finishing school and mushroom foraging

As often happens at such events you find out that you only really knew about one part of someone’s life.  With Judy I soon realised I there was quite a lot I didn’t know.  I found out from other guests and speakers that Judy went to Swiss finishing school and was related to the architect that designed Battersea power station and the iconic red telephone box. I also learnt about her days as a radical feminist, a clothes designer, her breakdowns and periods of penury her passions for sea fishing and mushroom foraging and that her nickname was ‘JudyMan’.   In this tribute I focus on the part of Judy’s life that I do know about her work around paying people on benefits which is a vital aspect of many co-production and participation projects.

Notional earnings

I really got to know Judy when was working for the Social Care Institute of Excellence (SCIE)  and Judy had become the national expert in an arcane but vitally important   area of benefits legislation called user payments.  Basically, organisations like SCIE wanted to pay disabled people and people with mental health issues and cover their expenses to help shape social policy and services. But the benefits system prevented this. Lots of people were terrified of receiving any sort of payment as it could result in their benefits being stopped.  There was a rule called notional earnings that meant that even if you refused any payment, you could still be treated as if you had been paid.  In the past the payment of any expenses associated with attending a meeting could also be treated as earnings. We basically have Judy to thank for getting the Department of Work and Pensions to change those two rules.

Judy knew more

Judy knew more than anyone else about user payments and the benefits system. She knew more than the civil servants that created the system and wrote the legislation, she knew more than anyone who worked in job centres who were responsible for managing the system, she knew more than benefits experts at the citizen advice bureau who were supposed to be able to advise people about their rights.  She knew more than the people who worked in the finance departments of local councils, NHS trusts and universities. She also knew more than the accountancy firms and lawyers that advised local councils, NHS trusts and universities.

Adventures in the House of Lords

My work with Judy was partly about making sure that people had simple accessible advice about the regulations.  There were lots of loop holes and work arounds that Judy discovered and we made sure that this information was widely available. The other part of the work was more exciting – we campaigned to change the legislation. When I say we really it was Judy who put together a consortium of likeminded organisations who all chipped in to pay her to work as a consultant. Then Judy did the hard work of making connections and finding sympathetic politicians.  Judy’s efforts led to many adventures. She had particular success in the House of Lords through her contact a disabled  Lib Dem peer called Baroness Thomas of Winchester or Celia as she insisted, we call her.  Our visits to the House of Lords became quite regular.  Baroness Thomas was very helpful and got us in front of more and senior officials and politicians.

People reacted quite differently to Judy and her knowledge – some people were overjoyed that someone actually understood the system and could tell them what to do. But other people whose job it was to know about this stuff tended to get a little defensive. Especially when Judy knew the regulations and the legislation better than the people that wrote them and the people that had to job of enforcing them.  I used to take a quiet pleasure in meetings watching people’s discomfort as Judy corrected them on some very detailed but nevertheless vital aspect of the welfare system. It was rather enjoyable to see a senior Department of Work and Pensions official’s blithe confidence fade away as it dawned on them that Judy knew more than them and that Baroness Thomas and I were better briefed than they were.

The Fleischman clause

I have many fond memories of working with Judy.  Once she sent a me a copy of Hansard. It showed that the government had accepted what Judy called the Fleischmann clause. This was something I had suggested in a meeting which unbeknown to me actually got into the regulations. It meant that if someone on benefits didn’t want to accept a payment, they could donate it to a charity of their choice.

Jeffery Archer

Another time Celia invited us to lunch at the House of Lords dining room. We were celebrating some small victories in increasing the rights of people on benefits and protecting them from accusations of fraud for pretty small amounts of money. Ironically who was dining at the table opposite but Jeffery Archer, onetime tory party chairman and notorious convicted fraudster.

Judy’s Legacy

I was very lucky to have worked with Judy. The work we did together at the House of Lords was a career highlight. She was not someone who suffered fools gladly, so I felt privileged that for reasons only known to Judy I was admitted into the small circle of people she trusted. I miss Judy personally and professionally.  There really is no one else like her. She took a very complex issue that most people thought was impossible to solve. Against the odds Judy made a real difference and had a huge positive impact on many people’s lives.

What’s going on under the surface of organisations?

Posted on by Pete Fleischmann in A Place 2 Think

We spend most of our time on the rational ‘surface’ of our organisations. Getting things done, making decisions, responding to internal and external pressures. And most of the time this mind set gets us through. But sometimes there’s a problem that doesn’t respond to our usual approach. Maybe we just ignore it and pretend it isn’t there hoping that it will go away by itself. But ignoring something can be incredibly draining and our weariness can seep into other areas. Or perhaps we’ve tried everything but still nothing changes, and we feel exhausted.

Reason is emotion’s slave
The psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion said that ‘Reason is emotion’s slave and exists to rationalize emotional experience’. On first inspection it seems that Bion has got things mixed up. Surely, it’s the other way around? The common-sense view is that we make decisions based on ‘reason’ or in more straightforward language; we decide things based on our logical assessment of the available data. But what if our interpretation of the data is coloured by strong emotions? And maybe because these emotions are uncomfortable, they exist under the surface, and we are unaware of them? I think what Bion is getting at is that what appears to us to be a rational approach can be driven by a powerful emotional response to a particular set of circumstances. The emotion reaction comes first and then we make up what seems a rational and logical argument to justify our essentially feeling driven response.

Making sense of what is going on
But this is not a counsel of despair. There is a path through which seeks to understand troubling emotions so we can become aware of them and thereby recover our ability to think. In organisations this process can be helped by an independent consultant who can help stakeholders understand and make sense of what is going on. And then it can become possible to think more clearly and take some simple practical steps to address problems which previously may have felt intractable.

Check out The Place to Think’s Pay what you can consultancy offer

Photo by Yannis Papanastasopoulos on Unsplash

Learning from Experience

Posted on by Pete Fleischmann in A Place 2 Think

“They never taught us really useful things like how to light a cigarette in the wind, or make a fire out of wet wood…” All Quiet on the Western Front

I think this quote vividly illustrates something about different kinds of learning. We can learn a lot from books, the internet and training courses but this does not always prepare us for the reality of our day to day experience at work. There’s a difference between learning something that might increase the amount of information we have and learning that changes us and how we think and feel. The psychoanalyst, Wilfrid Bion who at the age of 18 was exposed to horrors of the trenches of World War one, France called this kind of deeper learning – learning from experience.

Learning from experience or put more simply learning on the job is one of the most important ways in which we learn.  This is because when we learn from experience, we are dealing with the reality of our working lives rather than something which is abstract or theoretical. The question then becomes how can we maximise or accelerate our learning from experience? This is especially difficult to achieve in the hectic, digitally mediated, churn of our working lives.  One answer to this question might be Reflective practice. Reflective practice is fundamentally a method for learning from experience rather than from theory.

The Reflective Practitioner

The term reflective practice was first used by Donald Schon in his 1983 book the Reflective Practitioner.  Schon looked at a range of different professions including engineering, architecture, town planning, management and psychotherapy.  He argued that intuition and reflexivity had been squeezed out by a narrow focus on technical expertise. He advocated for a more creative and individualised approach to working with people and on problems. Schon wanted to shift professionals focus from working with theory to developing the ability to respond to real world situations. He called this reflection-in-action.

Reflective Practice groups offer an opportunity to learn from experience and for reflect-in-action with a trusted set of peers in a confidential and safe space.   Find out more about Reflective Practice Groups offered by A Place to Think here

Sign up to attend a free reflective practice taster session here

Next one is 26th March 1.00 – 2.00

For on this topic

Bion, W., (1984) Learning from Experience London, Karnac Books

Schon, D., (1983) The Reflective Practitioner, How Professionals Think in Action London Basic Books

What is group sentience and how can it help us understand why co-production is anxiety provoking?

Posted on by Pete Fleischmann in A Place 2 Think, Co-Production

Photo by Max Böhme on Unsplash

 In most organisations there is resistance to and anxiety about co-production. This is the case even if on the surface the organisation is positive and enthusiastic about co-production. There are many possible ways of understanding co-production. Accounts of co-production often talk about issues such as power imbalances, inequality and how to level the playing field. These discussions are key to comprehending what is going on in co-production. However, this blog seeks to understand resistance to and anxiety about co-production using the concept of group sentience which was developed by Eric Miller and A. K. Rice in 1967.

Organisations have a sentient boundary. Sentience in this context refers to a ‘system or group that demands and receives loyalty from its members’. A boundary defines what is inside and what is outside an organisation or group. Being part of a sentient group within an organisational boundary provides its members with a sense of identity, a feeling of being part of something and some measure of protection from anxiety. Staff will feel group sentience towards their organisation. In a similar way people with lived experience will experience sentience if they are representatives of a user-led or community organisation and/or if they identify as belonging to particular marginalised groups.

In co-production two groups of people with differing sentience come together to work jointly on a task.  Including in a task, groups of people who are outside of each others sentient boundaries is problematic. For the staff of an organisation, co-production requires bringing in an out-group. This will inevitably disrupt the organisation’s existing defences against anxiety. The citizens engaged in co-production will also experience anxiety as they breach the organisational boundary and enter a realm whose rituals and norms maybe unfamiliar. Citizens may feel unease about whether they will be accepted by the staff group. They may also fear merger with the other and the consequent loss of individual identity. Furthermore, co-production leads to several dilemmas around role. Not only what roles are members of the public going to take up in the organisation but also how is this going to disrupt existing staff roles.

According to Miller and Rice group sentience is likely to be strongest when sentience and task are aligned and when members share a common understanding about the objective of the group. In co-production members of the public are brought in to work with staff specifically because they have a different perspective. Members of the public and staff may not share a common understanding of the task.

Using the lens of sentience the resistance and anxiety provoked by co-production becomes more comprehensible.

For more on this topic see Miller, E. R. and Rice, A. K. (1967) Systems of organization. The control of task and sentient boundaries. London: Tavistock Publications.

 

 

How Reflective Practice Groups can support Co-production Specialists

Posted on by Pete Fleischmann in A Place 2 Think, Co-Production

The co-production role, is challenging

The co-production, engagement, participation, or public and patient involvement role in organisations is challenging.  At times it can feel overwhelming and lonely to be leading or managing co-production. Especially if one person or a small team is expected to manage co-production in organisations which have thousands of employees and clients.  There’s no blueprint for how to do co-production, there’s no established right or wrong way to do it. This makes it both exciting and daunting. Often workers are trying to manage the high expectations of both senior leaders and people who draw on support. There may be resistance, misunderstanding and envy from other staff. And this can lead to feeling isolated and under supported.  In addition, we bring so much of ourselves to the work of co-production. Many of us are drawn to this work because we share experiences of distress, disability and/or being let down by the health and welfare systems.

Reflective Practice can help

Reflective Practice Groups are a well established and powerful approach to supporting people doing complex and demanding roles.  A group offers

  • Protected time to step back from the day to day
  • A confidential space to work through challenges and opportunities
  • Build trust with a group of peers
  • Share learning, give and receive support
  • Activate your capacity for finding creative solutions

What did participants say about the Co-production Reflective Practice group?

I have been running a reflective practice group for co-production specialists for two years now. It’s been a wonderful experience to support the group and watch people develop and grow over the year. The group has given members the time and space to explore a range of issues and dilemmas. These have included the power imbalances inherent in the co-production role and how working with this is sometimes uncomfortable. The pressure to be fair and just whilst also setting boundaries, and the complexities of creating safe spaces for everyone participating in co-production.

Group members said they benefited from the regular time to be reflective and to honestly share dilemmas. Over the year they experienced the value of getting under the surface of an issue before leaping to solutions. They learned how helpful it was to pay attention to how issues make one feel and to use this as data to help make sense of things. Members said how much they learnt from each other and how hearing about the struggles of other members reduced feelings of isolation.

“Being part of this reflective practice group has been invaluable to my work in academic patient and public involvement (PPI). In the midst of a busy schedule, it has offered a meaningful space to pause, reflect, and reconnect with the core values that drive my co-production work. The sessions have helped me stay grounded and intentional, and I’ve found the shared insights and support from others in the group both affirming and inspiring.”

Dr Sarah Rees, Public Involvement Lead, National Centre for Mental Health, Cardiff University

The co-production reflective group is open to new members join here

 

Pay What You Can Consultancy

Posted on by Pete Fleischmann in A Place 2 Think

It was in a question-and-answer session with groups from Birmingham’s voluntary and community sector that the idea came to me. We were talking about how useful independent consultancy can be when organisations get into difficulties. Perhaps there is a conflict between the board and staff, or an important partnership is not working out or maybe staff and management are at odds about how to address a financial deficit.   A participant said he thought that an outside perspective can be so helpful, but the problem is charities just can’t afford to employ consultants. That got me thinking how can I, a freelance organisational consultant address this issue. And that’s how I came up with the idea of ‘pay what you can’ consultancy.

At first, I thought why don’t I offer some organisations free consultancy. The problem with that is that people tend not to value things they get for free. Organisational consultants are not magicians. To make progress on an organisational issue requires time, commitment and energy from the client. In fact, consultants are really facilitators supporting clients to take a fresh approach to a problem.  As a consultant I need to know that the client organisation will allow me access to staff and set aside time for meetings.  The payment of a fee, however small is concrete evidence of a client’s commitment to the process of organisational consultancy.

To begin with I was going to call the service pay what you can afford. But when I googled this I found that lots of arts organisations venues such as the Barbican and Battersea Arts Centre and also some restaurants use the term ‘pay what you can’. They offer tickets at a big reduction publicising a guide price to help people judge what to pay.

So, I’m offering the same deal with pay what you can consultancy. I hope in a small way this helps charities access the support they need. And I encourage other consultants to do the same.

Apply for pay what you can consultancy here https://coproductionworks.co.uk/pay-what-you-can-organisational-consultancy-a-place-2-think/

Reflecting on problem solving

Posted on by Pete Fleischmann in A Place 2 Think

Where and how do we have our best ideas? 

Archimedes famously had his eureka moment in the bath and then ran naked through ancient Syracuse. So perhaps the answer to the question is to have more baths and streak more often?  Newton discovered gravity not in a laboratory but by sitting observing apples falling from a Lincolnshire tree. Maya Angelou said, “You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been”.  Einstein advised that problem solving takes great patience.  Anthony Sheldon the biographer of every Prime minister since John Major said that one thing, they all had in common was a shared regret about the lack of time spent thinking through what they were trying to achieve. But only in hindsight could they see this clearly.

What is negative capability?

The poet, John Keats defined negative capability in 1817 in a letter to his brother as;

“…when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”

Negative capability is the ability to be comfortable with mystery, with not knowing. It is about being fully present in the moment without any preconceptions or judgments. It is the calm in the eye of a hurricane. Negative capability includes the ability to take some time to think about an issue or dilemma without leaping to conclusions or having a knee jerk reaction.

How can we cultivate patience, reflection and negative capability?

In the hectic digital world of modern organisational life, we really need to cultivate the virtues of patience, reflection and negative capability. Yet just when we require it the most the pace and demands of our working lives make it increasingly difficult to set aside time for reflection.

 

Reflective practice groups are a way of activating the intuitive and creative parts of ourselves. Attending a group provides a space and a fixed time to step back from the day to day and to engage with our experiences at work in a deeper way. When a reflective practice groups is working well participants spark off ideas in each other and solutions can be found to problems which previously seemed intractable.

If you think it might be helpful to find out more about reflective practice why not attend a free taster session or join a group 

Reflective practice

Posted on by Pete Fleischmann in A Place 2 Think

What is Reflective practice?

Sometimes when I engage with a piece of art, listen to some music or become aware of the natural world around me something happens. I get in touch with a sense of what it means to be human, just to be with whatever feelings arise, without reaching for solutions or answers. This simple sense of being with our humanity in all its complexity is not something we associate with our working lives in which decision making and action is typically our focus. it can be extremely fruitful if we set aside a regular time to activate a reflective mode of being and apply it to the dilemmas, we encounter at work. For me this is what reflective practice is all about. In today’s hyper-busy, technocratic and digital work environment we surely, need to re-engage with what it means to be human. Reflective practice is one way of doing this.

How are Reflective practice groups used?

Reflective practice can happen within one-to-one supervision but is most often used in groups. The groups follow a set format that provides a secure environment in which participants share dilemmas, give and receive feedback. Reflective practice groups can be ongoing or time limited. They can be themed around a particular work role and involve people from different organisations, or they can be for teams who regularly work together. Sometimes organisations commission reflective practice groups during periods of significant change for example mergers and restructures.

What are the benefits of reflective practice groups?

Reflective practice groups help people find new and creative ways of approaching problems which may previously have felt intractable. Reflective practice groups promote more meaningful discussions, creative thinking and personal development. Teams can learn to better understand each other, anxieties are surfaced, better understood and eased. Reflective practice leads to personal development, better decision making, decreased burnout, reduced turnover and stronger teams.

If you think it would be helpful to find out what reflective practice could offer your organisation or professional grouping click here to find out more

 

What happens to trust in organisations responding to budget cuts?

Posted on by Pete Fleischmann in A Place 2 Think

Right now, the pressure on public sector organisations is intense. Many organisations will have been through several restructures aimed at making staff redundant and achieving a leaner more commercial focus. Further public sector cuts appear to be looming large on the horizon. Whilst all organisations are different and will respond to these pressures in their own ways. One thing that seems to happen in lots of organisations is a substituting of external demands with internal conflicts and a breakdown in trust between staff and management.

When confronted with the current harsh economic and governmental situation we tend to feel a sense of both hopelessness and helplessness. But rather than face the reality of this hardship and uncertainty, splits between staff and management harden. Staff might identify the management as the enemy. They may lose any faith they previously had that the management care about their safety or well-being. At the same time management despair of staff’s ability to be concerned about the future survival of the organisation and project their own feelings of helplessness and fear into the staff.  Managers may feel that only they are holding the welfare of the organisation as whole in mind. Whilst staff may feel that only they are standing up for the values and integrity of the organisation.

When organisations go through periods of significant and sustained change independent consultancy can provide support to the whole organisation. Consultancy can help by supporting everyone to face the reality of loss and change in a safe way. Surprisingly it is only by admitting that a situation is unbearable that it can become bearable. And it is only when a genuine sense of the reality of a situation is reached that a sensitive and thoughtful way forward can be found.

If you think it might be helpful to find out what some independent organisational consultancy could offer your organisation why not get in touch and arrange a chat. Costs are flexible to suit your budget. https://coproductionworks.co.uk/aplace2think/

For more on this topic see Lohmer, M. & Lazar, R, A. (2006) The Consultant Between the Lines of Fire: The Dynamics of Trust, Mistrust and Containment in Organisations Organizational and Social Dynamics. v. 6 (1), p42, 21p.

The troublesome personality or the troubled organisation

Posted on by CPW-Administration in A Place 2 Think

Systems psychodynamics is an approach to making sense of what goes on in organisations. Systems psychodynamics can address challenging organisational dilemmas and improve effectiveness. This is the third in a series of blogs which aim to summarise in an accessible way different aspects of the systems psychodynamic approach.

We often have a very individualistic way of thinking about problems in teams and organisations. Sometimes a problem can get located in one person, or group who everyone starts to see as troublesome. It appears that their behaviour is getting in the way of everyone else’s good work.  We feel if only that person or group would change or disappear everything would be alright. This view is very appealing, hard to resist, can be perversely enjoyable and is often acted out by the development of a gossipy blame culture. Another way of looking at things is that the person or group is expressing something on behalf of the wider system. So rather than the whole organisation owning the need to reduce budgets, one individual or team is selected by the group to take the blame. Or perhaps one person appears to be refusing to budge on a point of principle but another way of thinking about this is that this individual is expressing everyone’s anxiety around the dilemma presented by a particular decision. If we can step back from seeing things only in terms of individual personalities, we have a better chance of understanding organisational dilemmas and arriving at creative solutions.

If you think it might be helpful to find out what some independent organisational consultancy could offer your organisation why not get in touch and arrange a chat. Costs are flexible to suit your budget.

Contact pete@coproductionworks.co.uk or use the enquiry form