Key learnings from People Powered approaches

Ben Hartridge | @benhartridge

Across our projects at Dartington, we are seeing many Local Authorities who want to empower parents and other community members to support each other during crucial times – including during children’s early years. The role we play is to ensure that any ‘people powered’ support works in the best way it can. So far, we have learned three key lessons.

First though, let’s quickly establish what we mean by ‘people power’. It’s part of a movement away from services being designed and delivered entirely by professionals employed by Local Authorities or Clinical Commissioning Groups. In practice, this ranges from public services being delivered by peers of service users (often community members, other parents, other young people etc.) to asset-based community development approaches where action is initiated entirely by people in the community.

Nesta have neatly summarised this variation in their typology of people power (p.93).

Three key lessons

Peer dynamics bring opportunities and challenges

People appreciate being supported by someone who shares their experience for example, when parents help each other. However, peer relationships often have less clear boundaries than professional-client relationship, and this can lead to dissatisfaction when the relationship ends.

We found that people often turn to their peers in order to understand whether their experience is normal. In the early years, this may involve parents referring to online peer groups to benchmark their child’s development against others of a similar age. This can be an effective way of people supporting each other to identify problems, but it’s important that the peer community has an accurate understanding of what is normal.

People power should complement professional support

Randomised control trials have found that professionally delivered programmes can be more effective when complemented by people-powered support from the community*. We’ve already seen that people turn to their community to judge whether their experience is normal. If they feel that it isn’t, then people are likely to then turn to professional help. In this way, communities and people power can act as an informal triage to professional help so that people who need it, get it.

Local Authorities are facing barriers to creating the conditions for people powered support to flourish

To support community innovation, funding needs to be available at a small scale. However, if a Local Authority wishes to maintain strong lines of accountability for the functioning and outcomes of community projects, a large number of smaller funding pots bring heavy administrative burdens.

Further still, although many Local Authorities report wanting to move to a position of creating the conditions for community-led support, a decade of funding cuts has shifted most commissioners’ focus to higher-need families, and away from preventative support to prevent problems escalating. This puts pressure on services and letting families down.

The Covid-19 pandemic has heightened the urgency to build connection and support networks for families. Using a new lens to explore the way in which people power can be structured, strengthened and sustained in local communities is vital for systemic change for the better.

 To read the report, click below:

*e.g. MacKenzie, M. et al. (2004). The Independent Evaluation of 'Starting Well' Final Report. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.