How do we make sure the people most in need don't keep falling through the cracks?

In this episode, Joe sits down with Ron Charlton, Data and Information Lead at Changing Futures Northumbria. Ron explains why transactional, target-driven public services fail people with multiple disadvantages, and how a relational, human-centred approach can transform outcomes while reducing crisis demand.

Drawing on decades of frontline policing and system leadership, Ron shares how rehumanising data, using bottom-up, real-world information instead of abstract metrics, brings leaders closer to reality and enables better decision-making across public services.

This is a deep dive into relational practice, systems change, and why traditional performance frameworks often create harm rather than help.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why referrals and assessments often fail people with complex needs
• How relational practice outperforms transactional service models
• What “rehumanising data” actually looks like in practice
• How lived experience and shared power change outcomes
• Why psychological safety matters for learning and innovation
• How relational approaches reduce crisis demand across systems

Rather than asking people to fit into broken systems, this work asks a different question: What if we redesigned services around people, not process?

This episode is especially relevant for:

• Public sector leaders and commissioners
• Policy and systems-change professionals
• Practitioners working with complex needs
• Data, insight and service design teams

Stay connected:

• Follow Joe on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/joseph-badman
• Read the latest chapters from our upcoming book: https://relationalservicedesign.com
• Master the methodology: https://basistraining.co.uk/
• Partner with us: https://basis.co.uk

Hi, Ron, thanks so much for joining me.

Thank you for having us, Grace.

So you're one of the leads of the Changing Futures program in Northumberland. I suspect that most people watching this will have some sense of what that work is, but in case they don't, can you tell me about the work?

What is it trying to achieve and where did it come from to begin with?

So I'm part of Changing Futures. No, Fumbri. I'm the data and information lead. I didn't start my journey that way, but that's where I ended up, bizarrely.

But Changing Futures is funded by the Ministry, Housing Communities and Local Government and jointly with the National Lottery and Community Fund. And over there it's been funded over a period of five years, which is due to end in March, coming next year to the Tudor of 98.1 million.

Now, this is funding areas across England, 15 areas, and the purpose behind it is to, particularly in terms of multiple disadvantage, where people are suffering from or experiencing, sorry, substance misuse, domestic violence, touching with the criminal justice system, mental health.

But basically the whole purpose behind it is to understand how we can actually deliver services away and connect services across the statutory public service sector, the voluntary, charitable sectors, to better coordinate our approach to letting people thrive, especially in the world of multiple disadvantage, because they can end up with a series of chaos and then just present repeatedly in crisis where they're misunderstood and they fall through the cracks of services.

So I think this is a government's attempt and recognizing that this is an issue, to try and create some real learning where we can impart that across the public service network. So it may be worthwhile talking about changing future, Northumbria in particular. So I wasn't part of the Bay process.

I think I was still in the police at the time when this was going on.

But basically when the, when the, the, the leads did the bid process, what they wanted to do is move away from the traditional assessment because we think people have been assessed enough already.

Yeah.

And then basically if you go to places where people are, you can just throw a stick and you know for a fact you're going to have people with multiple disadvantages. So what I mean by like, like a homeless drop in or might be, you know, you go to a department and the like.

So what we did is we set up a number of touch points.

One in the homeless sector and a homeless drop in, one in an A setting, particularly around the freak of attendance, one in domestic violence setting and one in the alcohol and substance misuse setting. The purpose from that, I Think it sort of proves a concept that doesn't matter.

Bear in mind we're covering six local foraging areas and that's from Scotland down to Durham and across to Cumbria.

It shows that what we're trying to do and important the methods we use and our philosophy can work across different settings in different geographical locations. So.

Well, let's talk about the work that's actually happening. I really want to zone in on the data because some of the work that you've done around data is influential on a national level and is.

Is incredibly innovative and has helped to demonstrate the impact of working in a relational way, in a way that people have hoped for for a very long time. So I don't want to forget about that. We're going to come back to it, but for some more context. What does the work look like?

What do the interventions look like in some of those communities?

We didn't want to be another service in a landscape of lots of services. We really were committed to the learning environment and actually learning from this because. And what that demands really is low case numbers.

But actually you've got to recognize that the work is really intensive, both on a time consumption and emotional sort of sense around that. So we work to. Originally we work to two rules. This is the liberated method I'm discussing here, which will stay legal and cause no harm.

The legal is the statutory responsibilities and everything else you would expect from a. A service. They do no harm. It's not just do no harm to individuals, do no harm to the reputation, do no harm to the organization.

And the whole package goes around that. And then there's a number of principles which underpin that, which allows wriggle room.

And so what we're basically doing is we're shifting the power from abstract decision making where they'll remove from context, from the ground what's happening and putting the power in the hands of the people who know best, who are doing the work. So things like decisions are made that work.

So if somebody needs something, by the time you go up the chain to a management, get permission to use it, that time may have passed and actually their condition may have worsened. So they're given a small budget to facilitate that and there's a whole structure we have around that and a playbook in place to do that.

We don't close cases like you would traditionally expect. So it takes the time, it takes. We go where people are. So that's sort of the gist of it.

But what we do is we've got our caseworkers work in Pairs, you'll have one from like a traditional service, like it may be from the probation service, from the nhs, etc, who. Who know the system, know how to navigate it. But then we've got lived experience as well.

But they're significantly long, their recovery journey to a point where, you know, so it's not right for everybody, but in that place. But we're really keen to make sure there's equal parity of power here.

And that's the second person in the pair is somebody with lived experience.

Yes.

And so the work together, and I'll explain why that's really important, but they're given the same pay, they've got the same job and they've got parity throughout.

What the power is now, where it really comes to the fore of that lived experience and utilizing this way is when people come to us, we're dealing with the far end of need they're in people on chaos, they're in crisis, the generally homeless, substance misuse, untreated, unrecognized trauma and bouncing around multiple services. So when the first come to us, they need that high support because you need some stability.

You need what I call the three pillars of, you know, somewhere to live, something to do and someone to love. But in our sense, it's like somebody's got your back.

So you need stability, first of all, to start work with people, to really gain that trust and you need that. You need time to do it, to get that relationship going.

So people trust you when they perceive services as letting them down, which invariably most of our cohort do, and they're misunderstood. So it really gets into the weeds of that. So where their lived experience comes in is the high challenge.

So when you get some stability and you've got people from a traditional service, and I want to make the point here that everybody's got lived experience and actually that's really something in public services, we should release and allow people to innovate, but that's a sidetrack. But in terms of that high challenge, they've been there, they know it. What that does two things.

It gives the respect from the individual you're working with, but also they can say, get off your pity pot, this is what you need to do and actually really challenge them. So we've done. We are really about learning the culture, what we do. And through that learning, what became apparent is the sense of purpose.

What I mean by sense of purpose is, you know, they've got to do some things as well.

And let's face it, if you want people to move from high support to a place of self determination, you need to change their view of themselves and the view of the world. And it's like.

And quite often our caseworkers act as role models because of the, the not in all cases where the dysfunctionality of the upbringing at times is, you know, they've never really had a role model to which to aspire to or to recognize as like good behavior, if that makes sense. I don't mean that in a, in a bad way, but it.

Yeah, but also actually interesting again on the sideline is what we've also found is those people who've had like a lot of agency beforehand transition back into that sort of self determined determination much quicker because they know what it's like.

Right.

There are so many different angles to where we could take this because we're talking about the literal model of having a pretty unique pairing of people. We're talking about the actual activity they do with people.

We're talking about the sort of different sort of strengths that they bring to that partnership. I mean, I think this is something that I think about a lot is that there's no perfect answers to the problems that we're talking about here.

People that have got multiple disadvantages, really complex life circumstances. These are some moves that you've made that have resulted in some real progress and that's why I'm sort of fascinated in all the nuance detail here.

But what you really need is the safe space for people to work in. You need that support network around your workers as well. And that's equally as important.

You need to make sure they're in a place of safety where they could be themselves and articulate this. And it's really important from a learning perspective because if you don't get that, you don't get the true essence of what's actually going on.

So tell me more about that. So it sounds like you're talking about psychological safety. So what does that look like in practice? How do you get there?

Because that's something that needs to happen in leadership teams as well, isn't it? And is very frequently not present.

Then as a result it becomes very difficult for people to productively disagree with one another's or with one another or to abandon beliefs that they've held for a long period of time.

So we've really concentrated on that.

We've brought in the services of Helen Sanderson and actually the leadership team do that type of work in terms of team agreements aing how they want to be in the workplace and help what their expectations are. But also everybody hears that, then we agree a set of principles that we will work to. So everybody knows what their place is.

For example, I've got a tendency to, if somebody's talking, I've got 20 things going on in my mind and I just need to spill it out. But actually what I'm doing is I'm interrupting the flow of what they're seeing and actually that's not fair on them.

So I physically sit on my hands now and I go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and I count.

So I don't interrupt that floor because actually what I've learned is if you don't interrupt the floor, there's actually some really crucial stuff coming out of there. So you need to create that space. So that's just one simple example of how this could work in the team dynamic.

So in terms of the workers, so all our teams are employed through people who are involved in the recovery business. So we work with waythrough and recovery connections. Each team have got a team leader and they're paid up in that combination I said before.

So there's a group of sessions we have, for example, group supervision, individual support and other sort of support mechanisms where people can a. What their, their personal feelings are in the work and what the troubles, what they're experiencing.

And actually it's in that open environment where everybody feels safe. So but actually what it elicits is a lot of people who've sort of got good ideas around this.

So it's very much a team effort what we do in terms of coming.

Up those solutions and then how do they get taken?

Because that, so I can imagine this environment that's being created and it makes it possible for ideas to emerge in a way that perhaps doesn't in more traditional settings. How do they then get sort of harvested and put into practice if something isn't quite working, what's the sort of step on from that?

So what's really important, and this is where we're sort of dipping into the data world, is you need to articulate that in data you need evidence. And what you need to do is pull the leadership into the core of the work. By doing that.

If you take a bottom up approach to data which is based in real life situations, real context of what's going on and the leadership are aware of that and involved in that, what that does, it frees up a much more informed process of decision making which is not via for example, abstract metrics which are demographics, which don't relate to the reality of what's going on in people's lives.

So we were talking about the need for getting leaders into the, into the work and having their decision making influenced from the bottom up. How does that work in practice and what's, you know, in, in your work?

What, what decisions have changed as a result of them being much closer to the data and the information that's coming up from the team.

So one way we get the leadership close to the work is we do what we call learning reviews. So it's not a case review in the traditional sense.

So we get the pays in and there'll be a membership, a member of the strategic team there, even myself, and then the operational lead. And what we question them about is how are you finding the work?

And we talk particularly around where's the areas of stuckness, where's the areas where we need to improve? And basically what we're doing is they're getting firsthand what's actually going on in the work.

We're not particularly talking about the cases themselves because there's other mechanisms to cover the, the casework and load and how that sort of present itself. It's more about what we're listening, eliciting from the collective cases those, those, those parents are working with.

An example of a, a change is we.

There was two rules to deliberate method and the third rule of purpose came in because what we found is we thought that the workers would like this liberation and be free, but actually they need some safety net around them as well and some sort of help and support in terms of how they frame that sort of liberation in what they do. So from the learning reviews, the agreed purpose came out that, and that then became a third rule, something we must adhere to.

And that's definitely about, you know, setting the expectations with the individual people you're working with around what the work is, what you're trying to achieve. So there'll be discussions. We use a tool called Signal. What signal is.

It's a, it's a tool where there's like a visual representation based on the poverty floodlight stuff where. And actually the made one be spoke for us now, which is talking about certain areas around, you know, housing in all these areas.

But all that, what that does, it elicits a space to have conversations with people, to start going beneath these layers of the onion and getting in the weeds.

But ultimately what we do is we decide, decide between the caseworkers, that relationship, what matters to the individual and then the work on a plan, how they're Going to deliver what matters. And that plan is both ways. It's a collaboration, true collaboration. And you, you'll find over time is.

With the individual, you mean?

Yeah, with the individual.

And what you find is over time, the actual root cause of their things you have to do you're healing layers until you get to the core, the core reasons why they're in the position they're on. But you need to go through that process and that's represented.

And I've got a number of measures to show this intrinsic shift in people to internally from where they were to where they're going to. And I can talk about that later.

But signal in particular gives you a traffic light map of their priorities, but it also allows them to articulate this is my priority, this is the reason why it is. So what we do, I am going to digress a little bit.

So what I captured in the platform, which we call what I created, which is called Reach, Relational Evaluation and Case Activity Hub.

So when they become a beneficiary, often in chaos, what we'll do is we'll, you know, might take a couple of meetings, we go where they are and the people we're dealing with are with services are really struggling to engage and these will not engage and they can't find them in a lot of cases. So that's why we go to the points where they'll be, such as a homeless drop in, etc.

So we'll agree, we'll have those conversations and then what we'll do is we'll agree with purpose, with them, what matters using tool signal. But that's not the only tool, it's those conversations. So you're building up this relationship.

But we'll also do within the platform, we stamp what the community looks around them. So you know, what's your family connections, where they are now, what's the strength of those relationships? Are you involved in any community groups?

And we do all that at that time and we capture the single life map and also that purpose. So this is what the priorities, we agree, this is what we're going to do about it, but then six to eight weeks later we'll do it again.

So what you've got here is right, what's your community around you like now? What's that look like? And particularly in the areas of substance misuse in those five sort of categories, multiple what's your signal life map.

So what's the transitions in your traffic light system but more importantly the weeds behind the scenes of why you're doing it, what you're doing it along with the purpose in terms of this is what we've done, this is where we're at. So, for example, with Green Purpose, we'll say things like, what really matters to you?

And for example, you might have somebody who is fleeing domestic violence and they might say they feel safe, so actually feel safe because they've got the perpetrator of the violence of the fleet still trying to find out where they are. They're absolutely petrified. We'll say out of 10, what does really good look like for you? And they'll articulate that and we'll capture it.

How would you score yourself now? In various. Quite low, 2, 3, 1 or whatever it may be. And then from there we work out what we're going to do about this together with the citizen.

Then six to eight weeks later we'll go through those priorities and say, where are you now? Are you three for why are you scoring yourself that way? Are you happy that you've achieved what you need to do?

So what we've got here is a capture of real things, what matter to people. You've got. We do journaling in between. So we've got the. How you achieve what you're doing and also where the progress of stage is.

Where the stage is in that sort of development, that progress.

But also if you think about it on a helicopter level view, as you look at cohort, we're starting to develop themes, themes of what it takes to do things, how things are achieved and like commonalities across different types of multiple complex needs.

So patterns that are emerging from the.

System and they're really starting to pop out now. Really popping out now.

What are some of the things that you're observing at the moment?

Even when we are. So when we work with people, we need their consent. So.

And as I've already said, people are really hard to find and because what we've done is we went to a number of different services such as a. And such as like the homeless place, alcohol and dependency. Say, who are the 10 people you're most worried about? Then what we do.

And there's a whole lot of governance structures around this, which wasn't my bag, but I've learned it, I've had to learn. Which is like, yeah, but. But then what we'll do is we'll actually go out and try and find these individuals in the places where they are.

But what we're also doing is capturing what it's like to try and find people. So this is what I call Mark Smith Sort of framed it for me initially, but it's around system values.

So, for example, this sort of stuff, outreach work, happens across public services. But how do you evidence and capture that? So this is something which is agnostic.

What I mean by agnostic, this is something which happens in the system, but it's not really measured.

So actually if you start measuring the agnostic stuff, and there may be stuff in the agnostic stuff which is not normally done within public services. And for this type of work, you need to normalize it.

So what you're actually doing is evidence the reason why you need to do this and you have the evidence chain about what, what it achieves. And this is maybe something you need to bring into services and design into your work going forward.

It's like the stuff that you wouldn't even think you needed to commission if you were commissioning something, but is actually the core of what enables the service to work.

Yeah, I mean, my personal view is you need to commission to learn, because we're based around learning.

And actually, once you start collecting data in a different way, not only do you learn a whole new bunch of things, but you also listen really important questions which you wouldn't have even thought about before.

Yeah. If you're still here, my assumption is you're finding this conversation useful.

We're recording these interviews because we think it's important to share stories of people who are leading and designing more human impactful and relational public services. And we'd like as many people as possible to see them.

If you think it can help us with that, then I'd be so grateful if you did one of three things you can just like the video and that'll help other people to find it in future. You can leave us a comment and let us know why you stuck around, or you could subscribe to the channel.

And honestly, I've got no good reason for that other than it would cheer me up. Okay, back to the interview. So let's get into the data stuff. Thanks. I know this is your sort of bread and butter, or is now.

Anyway, this is your bread and butter. You talk to me about the idea of rehumanizing data and we talked a little bit about bottom up and outside in approaches.

What, what are those, what are those things mean and why are they important?

So I think it's important to frame it first. So this speaks to new public management. So what's the history of new public management? So in the 70s they couldn't read the UK.

I'm talking about experience, a lot of unemployment High inflation and a lot of issues. And there was a perception with across the public and in government that public services were inefficient and ineffective.

So Margaret Thatcher then followed by Tony Blair and other people.

And if you put yourself in their mindset at that time, it probably made sense is they decided to go along to marketize businesses with the idea of, you know, if you go with business practices that makes things more efficient, more productive, you can contract people get best value for things, et cetera, et cetera.

And so in terms of delivering that sort of humanistic service, the more efficiency drives you do, the higher you get up the chain in terms of what you do, then the further removed you are from context. So this is nothing new, it's nothing, you know, exceptional here, but it's just understanding what matters.

So to give you an example of this, this is again before my time, but in Gateshead council they did a bit of a pilot. This was based around council tax.

What normally happens in council tax, if you default on your payments, then you probably get like a first letter saying look, if you need to pay this, there'd be a bit of a warning behind it. Then if there's another sort of warning come out, if you're not paying it, then you get another warning.

Then obviously that eventually leads to eviction, which is, I think you're costing for that is in the 30,000 really expensive thing. But actually what's actually going on there? Let's ask the question.

So what they did is instead of sending out the letters initially, the random said can I come and have a chat? So one example which has been related to me and I wasn't part of it, but I think it's a powerful example is was lady tenant.

I'm not sure of her age, but in the latter years had been a tenant for a number of years within a council property, never defaulted on any, any payments or anything like that. And being like a model, I mean never even crossed the, the sphere of public service in terms of come to attention.

But when I had the conversations and there was a bit of asb happening around our address and our gardens were getting disheveled etc around there. When had the conversation. A husband had died about a year ago, right. And basically he looked after the finances and kept everything clean.

So this is at the point where she potentially could have been evicted and then all the spiral which potentially could happen from that. So there was a quick intervention of, you know, let's make sure your benefits are right, let's get some youth, youth groups in, bake your gardens.

Right. And there's still, as far as I'm aware, in that tendency. So what that's done is that's a signal in the work.

If you could look at existing data in data sets across local government and other organizations, you can start picking up themes of where you move from a transactional response and mobilize a relational response. And what this does, it gets people before they walk to the river to jump in and float down it before that.

And actually it saves a lot of costs, et cetera, in relation to that makes the person have a better life and thrive. It also it reduces the demand placed on services.

So that's an excellent example of a signal that you spot in the data, I suppose by being conscious of the context that's going on and figuring out the context in this case is through conversation, human to human conversation. Are there any other examples of signals that you sort of spot in the data?

I think the building platform would be worth mentioning here.

Yeah, let's talk about that.

So the SRO at the time, Mark Smith and the rest of the leadership team recognized from the very off of us commencing this work that they didn't want a program where, which at the end has like a nice glossy report and a lot of slaps in the back and then just go on the shelves and gather dust. We wanted to make a real difference to people's lives.

But what you need to do is create the space to have a conversation where people of influence are going to listen to you. And actually you might need to reset the frame mindset of individuals.

I'm talking particularly in the central government here, certainly the ministers, because their perception of what reality is going on may not be matching to what it actually is going on for whatever reason.

So I basically got an instruction, probably on the back of a cigarette sort of packet along the lines, have a look what it's like for people with multiple disadvantage across the whole service, see what that costs and then show me the change in trajectory of not only what it looks like for them in terms of thriving, but also change the trajectory of cost. So you got that comparison.

So that was me brief and, and I've never really had a data background as, as I sort of said earlier on when they, you know, so I really had to sort of start feeling what on earth, what am I going to do here? But the fact that our work is anchored in people and relationships and all our data, I'm going off sidetrack again.

Is anchored around that relationship with the citizen and the caseworkers and they're touching with the wider service system. I decided to start with the people. So there was three case studies we did.

When I say case studies, I mean I've really built up a trust relation with all these individuals.

There was some ethics involved where I work really closely with the, what we call high intensity caseworkers because that's exactly what they do to understand whether at a level of stability so they can give the true consent and want to be part of this.

And incidentally that was me having two or three hours conversation with them where they just wanted to offload and then another conversation where it was a similar thing before we even got the consent. Then over several months I sort of built these relationships and starting to get into the harsh realities about what's going in life.

And what I was trying to get at is when you're touching different services, what's the impact on you? What effect does it have on you?

So we're getting their lens and their perspective about what's actually really going on here in their lives and how it's affected lives.

And what I would say is in these three case studies, and what I'm seeing across the rest of the cohort we've got is people who experience a motor disadvantage when they interact with services because they're siloed and fragmented in the way you are, they label people in different ways according to what service they deliver. They're not getting better in the free case studies. Yeah, they got worse. And I'm not saying that's across this piece because it won't be.

That's just the examples I can make a great reference to. So it was a necessary process to go through because I needed all the scars, the battle scars, to see how we could do this in a more effective way.

So I got the stories. But what also that gave me not only like the impact on them from their sense, but also what services they've been interacting with.

So a lot of them, you could already guess what the services were you needed to get sort of data from. So. And I had to cut me cloth A little bit, because how wide you go. So I kept it into the public statutory organizations such as the police, NHS etc.

But there was 14 organizations I approached which included four local authorities, five NHS trusts, two police forces and a prison service and probation service and the local ambulance service.

What I was asking them to do, bear in mind the resources capacity issues, because demands escalating on and on and on, is I'm asking them to give me some data about.

I want to know every single interaction these individuals have had since they've been an adult with, you know, since age 18 with your service, what was it for, what happened and were any other services involved? And the reason why I did that was to link together. So if there's an interaction that there's a lot of services respond that interaction.

So a typical example will be somebody maybe in a, you know, the case of Newcastle, where I'm from, the big market, it's like lots of pubs and all around, people sort of drink around the area, but you might have somebody who's like passed out unconscious with drinks. So you normally get maybe a member of the public rating concern about the individual. It might go to the police, it might go to the ambulance service.

So the police might show up and then, you know, the individual might walk up and actually they could see there's some issues there.

But they might, you know, because of the way they be woken up or by the way they behave or the level of alcohol they've taken, they might sort of kick off. So they might be arrested, but actually there might be a medical concern. So.

So then the ambulance gets involved, then they'll get taken to the hospital. So there's an AA presentation, then when they'd finish there, they're back to the police custody suite.

There's a process there and so there's like an investigation process, there's a corporate.

So you could see how I wanted to marry these all together and I was able to do that from my experiences in services, which I know you might talk about later. So what I've then done is I displayed this data and I had to go through it in forensic detail to make sure there's no duplication.

And actually, for every single event, I tied up all the services what involved in it from the data service agreements I had matched it with the impact these interactions had with the individual. It also costed all that out as well. So for. Across the.

Yeah.

So it's quite a lot of data, to be honest. This is a real underestimation of the real costs and that's for a number of reasons.

One, you have people didn't record the data that I wanted for the information because why won't it. Because they're accountable according to their KPIs and that's what people. You know, what's recorded is like know happens.

Yeah.

Or over that period because of gdpr, the General Data Protection Regulations. Yet retention periods might have gone. They might have got rid of data or people have changed the systems. So. And in the.

And none of the voluntary services either. Right. So because you'd cut. You cut the cloth to just be.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So it'd be much more than that. So. So, yeah. So in terms of the costings. It's, it's, it's, it's a real underestimation.

If you think that's just three individuals and then the perspective for changing futures. When it came out for central government, the housing.

I'm not sure it was a housing minister but somebody involved in that sort of quote that there's estimated to be 363,000 people in England alone who've got complex needs. I suspect the number is much greater than that. And I can talk to how do you make the invisible visible and things like that. But yeah.

So if you do the maths. It doesn't make sense. It actually. What it really surfaced. We thought it was, you know, there's a burden platform there, but not the extent.

And the eye watering startling results that I had. Which really calls for, you know, it really highlights inequalities in terms of health, et cetera, et cetera.

Then what I did is because of the really high intensity relationships the caseworkers had with the individuals we started capturing. Bear in mind in the case studies, people are still in chaos. They've still got absence. You've still got like substance misuse issues.

Lots of things going in life very chaotic. So they're still presenting in crisis. So I'm capturing all that data.

So what I'm doing is showing this is historical data and then this is what it looks like now. And what we found is very, very quickly with that relational support and wrap around them. So another important principle is we don't refer on.

We keep a hold it.

Yeah.

But a person might need specialism. So we'll hold, we'll refer, but we'll go with them. So we hold that anchor point.

But then you could see the bounce amongst all these services because all these forklift servers got reduced. It got changed from unplanned, uncoordinated crisis presentation to coordinated value demand.

So on some occasions the value actually went up, but it was added value to what they do, but over.

Because they're actually attending now, right? Yeah, they're going to the appointments that have been booked.

Let's talk about getting hold of this data because I don't want to trivialize that because I've worked in public services for, I don't know, 18 years, something like that, and this is an issue for everybody. How do we get access to this data in the first place across multiple agencies becomes really problematic. Data sharing is really hard to do.

Maybe you'll say it's not. And then how do you then turn that into numbers that actually. Yeah.

Help make the case in a way that makes sense to people that need to release funding. This is hard stuff, but I know Mark is beyond complimentary of your sort of unique capability of doing this.

So I want to know what the secret sauce is.

So it's just basically hard graft and just perseverance and not saying no, simple as that. Well, no, it's not as simple as really hard place to be.

So the way I went around getting the data, it's really important, if you can, to get strategic buy in of the organization in which you're doing it. So the leadership team played their part in that, but it doesn't stop there by any means.

So the next thing you got to do, the individual service information and governance teams, you need to persuade them of the merits, even though they've been sort of said, look, you need to do this because actually there is a risk aversion out there.

And you know, I could understand why it's there around releasing personal data about people, but I had the explicit consent here of these individuals, say, yeah, I'm happy for you.

Which you've gone to great pains to get. Not just a cursory can I do this? You build a relationship with them and they really had given you consent for this.

Yeah, because I think if you don't do that, it's not ethical and it's a bit immoral and it doesn't sit right with me. Yeah, so yeah, you do that. So you have conversations over time and time to actually get this information.

There was one occasion with one service where I didn't have a strategic buy in and I didn't know where to go. So I started at the bottom end doing like an asset Information check, like asking this information.

I worked me way to where I needed to be at the top of the organization to create those conversations.

Yeah.

And to demonstrate how hard it is.

One organization in the criminal justice sector, we had agreement from the regional lead in terms that they're happy for the data to be released, but I had to go through the processes they had in place.

So I had to go to the National Research Committee and there was an Excel thing I had to fill in with eight different tabs, which was full of information.

So went there and then when it went there, which is two months sitting, apparently, and then it got rejected and I thought, well, I'm not having that. So I, I, I looked at the why they sort of rejected all that and I, and I worked around it and sort of filled that in.

But I also pulled in some, you know, the mhc LG were really good in this and empowered about the need of this and actually help articulate that and put in again. And I eventually got access to the information, well, permission for access to the information.

But then when you come back, the regional area blockers went up because actually there was a strategic thing, but in terms of the IGT governance, there was blockages there which had overcome and that took, so it took us about two years to get that data released. So it's really hard. But actually you can do this. The legal framework is there.

So, for example, I've worked with the DPO breed people in Gateshead Council and worked up what we call what I've called the regional agreement. So essentially what I've done is I've created a suite of legislation.

So when we're asking a particular service about can we have data for these individuals? In fact, the purpose of this one is what we want to do is we want to build capacity back in the system.

So what I mean by that, so we want to release resources in the police and the nhs, et cetera, to concentrate on what they do best from your own experiences in the police.

And one B Rolls was a force operations manager, but I looked at, I looked at all the operational activities across the whole force area and I mean, I haven't got exact fear, guys, it's like a feeling, but about, you know, over 50 to 60% of our demand was all mental health, for which we're not experts. Right.

So, but what that, what, what that does is it's, it's pulling police away from where they should work and it's, you know, this is nobody's fault. There's not one protagonist in this this is the what's evolved over time.

New public management's got a lot to answer for in terms of this, but despite a lot of academic rigor around how this is feeling, it still hasn't shift from this paradigm. So we need to move it. I can talk to that a bit later as well.

So basically what we want to do is go to organizations to say to them, who are your top 10 consumers? But it's asking them to give me the names of people who haven't given consent.

So when we, when we do that, I think this will allow us to do this where they can, through legislation, give us these names, then we can approach these individuals and give them an offer of support and get explicit consent.

So if you work on the top 10 consumers across the police, across the NHS, across EA settings, you compare those lists, naturally it's going to surface the top who are like bouncing around all these services.

So then if you work in a relational way to reduce the impact, I've already articulated how much consumption individuals are doing, then what you actually do is releasing capacity back into the services. The problem comes is there's a system stalemate. I think people recognize that things aren't working, local authorities are know going bankrupt.

You can see it happen where demands out straight to make happen, to make hard choices.

But you need to as a burning platform, incidentally, analogy from Stephen, I forget Elop it might be who was the chief executive of Nokia at the time he coined the phrase burning platform and basically what he was saying is I think Nokia was really struggling at the time and obviously the oil rig disaster in the North Sea where people jumped off because I had to make a choice, either stay there and burn or jump in the sea. You need to do something different. And I think that's where we're at now in public services. It's unsustainable to continue doing this.

That's certainly what the Burnham platform brought aside to the forefront.

What you're saying though is that through the work that you've done, not only have you been able to get access to the data on the individuals that you were working with in order to demonstrate there really is a burning platform, but you've also created a suite of legislation that I'm assuming existed already, but it was quite difficult to knit together that makes it possible for people to tell you about the people who most need help and support in the system, is that right?

It's sort of right, but we haven't stress tested it, so there's caveats around it.

So what I'VE used is I've got a suite of legislation which I believe enables certain sectors across the public services to utilize to give the permissions to release this information. They have to determine which one they think is best. That's the idea. But we have not stress test this yet. So that's the next sort of stage in that.

And I know the government, Ministry of Housing, Communities and local government, etc. Work really hard to try and overcome this risk aversion in terms of releasing personal information about people. And it's needed.

Yeah, I mean having risk aversion is perfectly understandable, but what we're talking about is you got access to this information initially in order to be able to make the case that the status quo absolutely isn't working and to demonstrate that investing in this much more relational approach makes sense.

But if you then follow that logic that the way services are organized in a very linear transactional way influenced by new public management over several decades. If you accept that it doesn't work, then in the context of people with, you know, multiple disadvantages. Yeah, because it does.

It absolutely does work in the context of some services. But if you, if you accept that for people with really complex needs, it doesn't work.

What you're saying or what you're trying to get to, I think is, is legislation that allows you to find the people that most. Most need that kind of support without the two years worth of.

Yeah.

Of work to pull every single thread together.

So I suppose what I'm saying is I believe the existing legislation out there allows you to do that. Yeah, it's just how you interpret it and how you. And I suppose this is where the risk comes in. Do you accept that?

And I believe some of it is a statutory duty to do this because again, we're talking about context. If you're making decisions at a strategic level, the higher you get up the chain, the further you are removed from the work.

Bear in mind most people's careers over the 40 years as such of new public management has been based on new public management. It's a really hard cultural shift to move. So that's why the evidence has to be really compelling to change mindsets and hearts and minds, etc.

Around this.

Although I do think there's a situation now in public services where they're at the stage now where they need another alternative approach, otherwise it's just going to continue being unsustainable. So, yeah, so hopefully if we get over that and it needs some central government input of this to say it's okay to do this and then when you share.

So for example, another thing what we do in the work is we have service meetings based around the person. So what I mean by that, you pull in the services to give the best support you can to the individual.

But what you're actually doing and my own experiences as a chief inspector, community inspector in Northumberland, North Tyneside, my purpose, my label was to reduce crime. So that was my main objective, to reduce crime. But every service is dependent on other services to get what they need.

So you'd pull in a group of services and then you try and collaborate in a way that allows for you to achieve your goal. But let's face it, and you know, I'm silo thinking about right what's the police need?

Then you know, all the other organizations will be thinking and the reality is, how can I get as least much work out of this as possible? Or put the frame, the round. The labeling they do with people. Yeah the framed around what they're measured on. So that's the angle they're coming at.

So even though you have collaboration of a sort, is it true collaboration?

What I think is true collaboration is who's the best service to lead on this, who's the best one to hold the ring and how can everybody else contribute to that?

And if we get to that place, I think you'll have informed decision making on the preventative strata, the strategic area which filters all the way down to the tertiary. So you really need to have that context.

And I, and I think you could do it within existing frameworks to a point until you anchor your data into the real life situations going on and then flip it around like a triangle upwards and bringing that all the and allow the people at the work actually to use the data in their decision making in terms of the work itself, then you don't have that going to have that full contextual understanding what's really needed and what matters to people.

So you've done a lot of work to actually develop and build the systems that have enabled you to do this.

And you just said you're former Chief Inspector, so you're not a data scientist or a software developer by any stretch of the imagination, but you've been able to create something that has enabled you to get real understanding, real contextual understanding, real intelligence that has influence not only how people do the work closest to the problem or a better way of putting that is with people that need help and there's then influence decisions at a much senior level. So how did you do that?

So this is very, very hard to articulate but basically it's what we call it, well it's not what I call it, but it's what's called a trustworthy governor platform. So basically this is a set of arrangements around how data is organized.

So currently if you look at a system now essentially if I want to have a case activity hub, for example, a platform to capture all that activity, I would get some software developers in and there'll be a number of meetings where we import what we think the work needs.

They'll go away, they'll come up with say a mock up of it, there'll be a bit of test period and then it's costing you money and it's costing you time and then you'll do, then you'll start using it. But actually that frame, that's starting to frame your work but actually what you're doing is it's a data processing.

So I put data into the system and then it's like distribution. So pipelines like go there, go there, like share the information there, there.

Whereas this, and as I said I'm a non techie at all, but I created that from scratch.

But the power of this is you're not getting any biases brought into it in terms of software developers think they understand what you need to do in the work. It saves a hell of a lot of time because actually it's bespoke, the organization and it's agile to respond to what you learn in the work.

So if I need to change something I just change it like that.

So for example, if MHCLG said right, we now need to know what in your cohort, how many levels of disadvantage I have, I've got 1, 2, 3, what are they? I'll literally go in, change it and deploy it and I can do that in about a minute and a half.

But how, what, what? Because this, I mean this is amazing. But what, but what is it like? What's the, what's the, what is the software like? Where does it.

I suppose it's, I'm working with David Jameson from Patton Filson Group Ltd. Really, really, you know, forefront thinking in terms of what they do. This is the brainchild of Mike Martin, who's a professor at Northam University and Rob Wilson and a number of our colleagues where the architecture.

So basically what it does, it's, it's how for us non tech, it's how things are arranged in the background to do what you want. So basically what it does, if it's doing what it should do. Right. It designs software developers out the process altogether. Right.

But the utility is you can create a platform which can change and evolve with what you learn, when you learn and the time you do it.

You can organize the flows of data information, where it goes, the governance structures within it, who has permissions to say what within that to sort of elicit the information you want.

But also it could break down this silo fragmentation, allow that joint contextual share of information with the right governance arrangements in place.

What do you mean by that? That feels important to me. What does that mean in practice?

So if I create a community, so this is a communication, I create a community. So my community at the moment is changing futures Northumbria and caseworkers access that. I might access it, but I've got different permissions.

So I can edit things, ACORN and things like this.

But if I want the police to be part of this community, I can send them a like an ACORN to them and they can create something which is bespoke to them. But we're on the same communication channels where we can talk.

So if you have governance arrangements in place, then you can talk on the same system and share information to contextualize everything you talked about. So the implicate.

So if you think there's 361 billion pound a year spent on software development, I get a lot of that into the gaming world and stuff like this, and a lot of people might like to hear what I'm saying, but actually the utility of this for public services is immense.

But it's the very, very early stage stages where the first manifestation of this new sort of information technology, but the results I'm getting and elicited from the data and the way I've arranged it, because I've got that intrinsic knowledge in the work. But that's what other people can do. They can make it bespoke to them and you can change it. So I could even like the platform I created.

I could say, if you're in another role for it, say here you go, you have it, you can access it the way I've set it up.

So there's your table and chairs and you might go, well, I like that table, but I don't like it that shape, I'm going to cut it this way, or I don't like that chair, I need more chairs. So you can adapt that to how you want it as well.

I mean, this is pretty revolutionary stuff really, isn't it? Because this is an enormous sticking block for all public services that help Large volumes of people that are spending large amounts of money.

How do you make sense of that enormous amount of data in a way that enables you, not for the sake of making sense of it, but in the way that enables you to be more helpful in communities? And this is something that you're learning at.

I mean, I think this is what strikes me is that not only have you made enormous amount of progress on this, but you're also learning at a really rapid rate. Because the conversations that we're having now, if we had these conversations in six months, I suspect they would have moved on already.

So how does this work in practice? How do you see the benefits? What's it look like for the people doing the work?

So, because the way I've structured it all, what we're now doing is giving them proper relational data information which is useful in the work. And actually what we've found is. So what we do now is for. The caseworker pays for each case they're looking after.

We give them a bespoke monthly report based around this. So this is the intrinsic shift, this is the amount of time you like.

Things like how many services are we contacting and for what are we contacting for? To help what matters for that individual. And then over time, you can see how often are we doing this with these things.

Where's the blockages, where's the themes and how can we unblock this?

And crucially, these aren't KPIs, this is information. Right. That is to help people make the next set of decisions.

So there's something else to talk about here as well.

So I've developed a relational measures framework and the idea behind it, and it still needs develop, and I'm just testing it now, is try and shift this paradigm away from new public management.

What I mean by that is can we produce data which is useful in the work, which is going to inform the work as you go, contextualize what's actually happening in your communities and bring the leadership closer to that so they can make the right informed decisions, but also satisfy public accountability for central government and the public. And I've worked with Hannah Hustle Greaves and Mark Smith helped me with this.

And obviously, you know, Mark Joyce, Francis Tory within Change of Futures, have been really helpful because actually, although I've developed the platform and made it, actually it's a consensus of what people want. Yeah, so that's what I mean. So you.

So the whole idea is you create these policies around what you want it to do as a consensus, and it really Sort of signals to the test and learn what the government want to do. So you can test something, but if it doesn't work, then you can change it.

It's important to say though, the change of futures know from your model is a learning model, low case numbers, as I've already said, and Ministry, Housing and Local Communities and the National Lottery have really been instrumental to giving us the space to do this.

Because what we want to do is learn and try and impart this learning into the wider service system so we're not constrained by the current system, is what I'm trying to say. So we haven't got those pressures. But what it does allow you to do is allows you to understand how you capture data, how you evaluate data.

What does this inform in terms of the way we commission things?

Does it inform the way we sort of how do we recruit people, how do we wrap support around that workforce to actually deliver, allow them to be free to innovate? So it's all this sort of thing all going on at the same time.

Yeah. And I think this last point that you're talking about is how do we demonstrate accountability through.

I mean, historically that's been done through KPIs, but we've already talked about how that can sometimes lead us astray. But that's a big nut to crack, isn't it?

And if out of this work some learning emerges that enables other people to do that, it could be really transformative to the whole sector.

So this is where Helen Sanderson really comes in and was really helpless with this. So this is around self governing teams, this is team agreement stuff, this outcome sequence stuff. And you should listen to Helen.

It's really fascinating stuff, but we've really embedded that practice in our teams. And Tory, who's the operational lead, has put together a playbook to sort of articulate, well, this is what we do. This is how you do it.

This is some framing around the work we do, which would be really useful going forward for other organizations. And that's what we're trying to do, is create a suite of. Because let's face it, data alone doesn't do anything.

Sure.

And actually the most important thing about the data is the relationship between the caseworker and the client and their interactions with the wider service network. All my data is anchored in that. But what you can do from that, you can build it up in layers.

So when we're talking about what does this mean for me, so you understand at the core level for an individual, you can zoom out into a team level, what it means for them, then a core vault level. And then if you start increasing this, then what's it mean for your local community, what's it mean for the region, what's it mean nationally, etc.

Etc. So it's a framing of doing it, the technology in terms of reach.

I know what I need in terms of the widgets, gadgets, I need to be able to enable this sort of stuff. Developers are working on this, David, his team, to get it where we need to be.

So for example, the report and the data I'm getting now, we're having to do this the hard way. We've got the information, we've got it in there, but we're extracting it out and putting it into spreadsheets at the moment.

But this will be automated within the system when these tools are created, what I need. So the way to think about that platform is just imagine you've got a big bag of tools.

So David's company might say, there's your bag of tools where you go, because it's really important. They're detached from what you create because it needs to be bespoke and right and fit for your organization and grounded in the work.

And grounded in the work. And that's what this is. Then if I need more tools, look, I need these tools because I can't do this, how can I do it?

So ultimately we need to get to that place, as I said before, where they're just giving me big bag of tools and these big bag of tools are sufficient. I can fix a car, I can fix my house, I can fix a fridge, I can fix the pathway, I can do whatever I need to do.

Gives me that flexibility once we do that. And an example being is all these different forms. I'll articulate that way, just so people understand forms and data flows within the system.

I can go to individual fields and say, so for example, casework reflects what are your reflections on this? And go across all those different forms, those reflections, pull it all together, say, generate me a report.

And then we're working on AI stuff as well, which is. Was going to be spoke, contained within that data set. So there's none of the biases coming into it.

And we'll teach the, the AI sort of data set what we wanted to do. It spoke for us. So it's a really powerful thing in its infancy, which is really artic. Which is hard to articulate. But now I'm producing.

For example, I've just produced a court report for our ministry houses.

They haven't seen it yet and it mightn't be fit for purpose or anything like that but it just shows an alternative way of capturing relational, real contextual stuff which is useful in the work and making decisions and that's things like for example we're at the stage where we've just re mobilized again and getting citizens on board and as I explained before this really hard where people are struggling to engage with them. So even on the, it's a small cohort I think across, I think we've got over 22 now.

But on this report it's based on about 17 individuals even from what we know was about £159,000 in a six or seven week period of consumption by these individuals which is equivalent to, I think it's a, a police sergeant, a band four nurse, a psychologist of a certain grade which I cannot remember and a local housing.

So just in that short period of time.

Yeah, but the, the important thing is when you articulate that in a way to say look at this is what's released back in the system so they could do what they do best that starts resonating with people. Yeah but then it's all the other stuff which is really, really important around.

Okay, what are the priorities people are seeing in this sort of in the multiple disadvantaged world. But more importantly it can be applied across the whole spectrum of need.

So ultimately what my ambition is is to understand the signals in the work such as council tax and all that build up themes so the system will say to people in the work, oh hold on a minute.

From what learning we've done and these themes you need to sort of maybe speak to this person because actually if you don't, the evidence shows that this is likely to be the pathway what happens so that mobilizes that relational response from a transactional one.

Yeah. And that information is getting to the right people at the right time and when you realize it's not the right information, you can change it.

Yeah.

I mean even the fact that you've sent this, this draft report or you're about to, to mhclg, you know that if it's not right, well you can just iterate, can't you? And you can change it and improve it. That's not, that's not a tech project that's going to take the next nine months to work out and the really.

Important thing to really understand is what is the data collecting, why are you collecting it and the purpose of it and then how are you going to use it? That is fundamental to what you want to get out. So, you know, like a hospital, you know, are there to make people well, well medically fit.

A prison is there to keep the public safe.

What there is in the system that the primary logic, what we've worked out from the information, so what we've been able to do, and I'm not saying it's a finished article by anyway is map the logics of why systems services deliver the services the way they do. Yeah. And the prime driver of it is to maintain and sustain a defensible position. So. And organizations might like to hear that and it's. But that's.

No, not their fault, it's just the way things have evolved over time and you got a lot of good people who want to do a lot of good things. But let's, let's face we're in a, you know, how do you manage your risk? So what's the risks? What's the statutory bodies asking you to do?

What's the complaints coming in? You held account, the public, every accountant and stuff like that. So there's a tendency to default to no.

So what you have is you have pathways like eligibility criteria, assessments, referrals. When the risk and that seesaw of balance tips into oh, that's too risky, what it becomes is a default to yes.

So if we can change the mentality to a position at the starting point of default to yes, then I think the mobilization, the relational responses, where they need to be, will really start emerging.

Yeah.

And I think the work that you're doing is creating the case that I think is making that more and more possible, not just in Northumbria, but elsewhere in the country.

We're jumping around a little bit, but we talked about the burning platform earlier on and the cases that you've described are very well known now because they've done exactly what you were hoping they would do, I think. But the question I've got is how, how common are those kinds of experiences across the, across the wider cohort?

Are they one offs or is that a reasonably common set of experiences?

What I would say is the experiences are of a similar, in terms of, for that person are really traumatic and really puts them in a really bad place and they're really struggling. But each person is unique in themselves. They've all got a story to tell.

What I would like to do is demonstrate that, and this is like replicated in all the stories across all our citizens. And I want to just demonstrate that it goes beyond the burning platform case studies because that is just an example of what it's like.

So I'm going to read from this piece of paper because my memory is terrible. So you will work with a woman, she's in her early 40s from, from this area in the northeast. Our life was a revolving door crisis.

So before she came to US she had 37 emergency admissions into the hospital in that six months before, all linked to substance misuse, alcohol withdrawal, overdose, self harm. She was known across all the services as a heavy consumer of those services.

But behind the label and the different silos, you know, she was in deep, deep distress, I mean painful distress.

She was homeless, she was banned from all the local temporary accommodation and she was considered too high risk to house safely in her home area because her partner was very, very violent and obviously he may find out where she was from. So it was real poor. She couldn't do that.

However, because of connection issues in terms of policies and things like that, it was really difficult for local authorities because of the rules and regulations in place to take any responsibility. So she was caught in this bureaucratic limbo of too complex for one service to manage and too chaotic to meet the criteria for support.

Her life was shaped by trauma. She had a history of domestic violence, mental health diagnosis including emotionally unstable personality disorder, substance use.

She lost a long term partner, was estranged from her family and had a criminal record that made services really wary of engaging with her. She was isolated, vulnerable to exploitation and often spent the night wherever she could, sometimes in places which exposed her exploitation.

And at the time, despite being known to 13 different agencies, 14 from housing, probation, mental health, safeguarding, none were really able to build that meaningful connection. So when she did show up for help, her behaviour with the service was often aggressive and distressed which let her be turned away.

So for example, in the hospital there'll be a red card unless it's I limb, et cetera, they wouldn't deal with her because the way she presented, but she was stuck in this cycle of rejection and crisis and survival.

When we got involved, instead of asking her to fit into system that in her eyes had already failed her, we met her where she was and that's both in a literal sense and an emotional sense.

If we were, you know, able to build some meaningful sort of relationships that, and slowly build that trust but without pressure, you know, there was no pressure put on her. We had no assessments, no forms, just that human connection.

And over time we helped her to reengage with services and this is the intrinsic stuff by not pushing her but by walking alongside her. The staff, you know, they Did a brilliant job.

They pointed out the, you know, company accompanied her to all appointments because she needed that at the time. But this helped her stay calm.

We normally she'd be aggressive because that's what she's been used to advocate for her in hospitals and support her through court because she's in the criminal justice system at the time. We even helped her access food and transport. And actually the activities give her a sense of real purpose and joy. Again, also did something crucial.

And I think this is replicated across the whole cohort. We brought the By Heart center and the person and the support around them and that relationship.

We brought these 13 fragmented services together instead of being disconnected. And there was one coordinated plan and with regular meetings and shared goals.

So what happened, and you know, at the time this was written was she had no plan. Unplanned visits to the hospital in over 10 months, and she was going there daily. She had no arrests, no reports of violence or any social behavior.

She's now living independently in her own home. She's alcohol free and engaging with drug treatment. Our mother, our relationship with her mother was really fragmented.

That relationship has improved significantly.

She's shown pride in all the small things, like instead of literally, she's putting things in the bin, she's managing emotions by herself, unaccompanied in appointments. So I suppose what we said, it's not a story of just one woman's transformation.

It's a story about what's possible when we stop asking people to change before we help them and instead change the way we help. So I just wanted to just import that this is the experiences across multiple disadvantage everywhere. So it's, it's not just based on that.

I just think what f. In important to pull that out from the burden platform conception of these three cases. It's, you know.

Yeah, I think that's very, very well articulated. And I'm sure that that example will.

Will be familiar to people across the country that are working, working with people in similarly challenging environments. I think what, what, what's amazing about this work is, yes, the, the service or the intervention is. I mean, it's relational at its core.

This is a very human way of approaching, trying to be helpful in communities for people that really do need help with a specific moment in time. But what has made this possible in part is, yes, people, people like you being involved. People like Mark Smith being involved.

Other folks in the team.

Yeah, I'd just like to mention Mark, Joyce, Francis, the case workers in particular. And Tori, you answered.

You know, I think it's like minded people who've come together and see the value of this work and we've learned together and it's, it's not been an easy pathway by any means, that we've learned a lot on the way. But it's that innate sense of want to really help.

Yeah, absolutely.

And where I was heading with that was that it's also that it's also the data that you've gathered because it's, it's cleared the way to be able to do some of this work and to sustain it. And Mark said something brilliant at the Relational Public Services Conference in Manchester in relation to you.

He said that in order to build the case for this he needed a detective. He thought he needed an analyst, but what he really needed was a detective. You being from the police force.

25 Years of experience of course sent some chuckles around the room.

But I spoke to him to just a couple of days ago and I asked him about that quote because I wanted to make sure that I didn't misquote it and then I misquoted it anyway. But he said that he sort of really misspoke because what he actually needed was just you. He didn't know he needed you.

And you managed to pull these threads together in a way that I think people across the country have been banging their heads against the wall for such a long period of time. So your contribution to this work can't be understated. So I'm so grateful that you came to talk to me about this today.

One, I want to ask one question before because I know you don't like the spotlight being thrown on you so that you're probably feeling deeply uncomfortable. So I'm saying it's not very comfort zone at all.

But what for people that are watching this, that are trying to demonstrate the impact of their relational work, what's just one thing that they can do not in six months time but next week that might help them?

You know, as the project team and everybody, we've been saying in our last conference, what can you do on Monday? So practical example.

So if you look at for example a housing sort of service there, the standard position is to, you know, maintain standard cities and stock, et cetera. I bet if you look at their demand, so you've got to understand the problem first.

If you look at your demand and look at the activities, I bet a lot of the proportion of the demand is based with a few number of residents.

So if a proportion of your staff worked in a relational way as well as a transactional way, actually, you'll cut that demand down with those few individuals are causing this disproportionate demand and actually release capacity back into your service. So just think about when you're going to do a process. Are we able to do something different? And if we are, let's just have a chat with them.

That's great. I think that's a lovely place to end it. Ron, honestly, I'm so grateful for you coming and doing.

This podcast has been really, really informative for me. This is a very selfish pursuit on my part, but I know that because I'm getting so much benefit from it, then the people listening will also too.

So thanks ever so much.

Thank you very. Much.