Size Matters?

Of course it does!

Its been great! As my son has been growing up he didn’t fit any of my clothes. Now that he’s 16 and the same shoe size things mysteriously disappear. However as I write I’m thinking that this could work both ways!!!

I remember too the upset caused when one of my kids was refused entry to a fun fair ride because they didn’t make the minimum height restriction. That day size really mattered a lot!

In a changing Scotland today the issue of size is a huge question. What size and shape should our public services be in the future? Over the past year the preventative spending review and the Christie Commission  have both added to this debate.

There seem to be two big themes here:

1. Scale Up
The Work Programme promised much yet created a framework for application that excluded everybody other than the richest organisations in the land. It took a view that only the largest organisations could deliver and in the process save monies.

The Scottish Government launched a new £7m fund, ‘Early Years Early Action’ and created criteria that only large centralised charities could deliver.  

2. Prevention

The second big theme is becoming widely accepted, that research evidence tells us that we need to invest long term in preventing and in nurturing the most vulnerable in society to effect significant change in terms of demand on public services. This requires public servants giving ground and responsibility to local community and voluntary initiatives.

Alongside policies such as Changing Lives and Personalisation this theme steers policy towards the individual, towards local community solutions.

Are these two emerging themes competing? How can we seek to save money and deliver services using bigger structures yet at the same time build relationship and offer services. 

Perhaps these two themes are very different but equally efficient ways to save money, the first more obvious and quicker because the contract costs less, the second longer term and therefore less obvious.

Hopefully there are ways to engage both approaches together. Hopefully we will develop policy and practice on criteria that require both best value and most effective outcomes. Hopefully we can do what we always say is so important in actually engaging local people and local communities in developing their own solutions and in shaping their own services.

This is such a critical time of change for us, such an opportunity. Lets be careful to choose change that is sustainable, that may even only flower long after we’re gone, that builds on the right foundations. Size shouldn’t really matter that much!