DAVE DOES HOMELESSNESS - DON'T GET YOUR HOPES UP

David Cameron has announced a new Homelessness Foundation on which the heads of many national homelessness charities will sit. He spoke of looking at the root causes of homelessness, including poverty, mental illness, employment and housing shortages. In response, Labour minister Caroline Flint has said the Tories were not serious as they had opposed the government’s laughable house-building targets.

This is an interesting exchange since Dave has hit the nail on the head by identifying the need to look more widely than simply a roof over someone’s head. Caroline Flint’s response suggests that the Labour government’s approach is rather one-dimensional along precisely these lines.

If John Tory is going to be in government some time in the future it is good that the party is developing some sense of society again, although I, like many others no doubt, remain deeply sceptical of any practical ideas coming from their camp.

What this has brought into focus for me is the completely disjointed nature of public services, which I’d say lies at the heart of numerous issues. The BBC ran a programme on the NHS last year in which a management guru (whose name escapes me) marvelled at how different departments in a major hospital simply didn’t communicate with each other or among senior and junior staff. By simply improving communications between staff he helped them to improve efficiency massively. It was an eye opener.

Working in local government, I always smile at the fact that, in my part of the world, the District Council collects household rubbish and recycling while the County Council disposes of it. Now the two sides work well together but this kind of divide between two organisations is frankly stupid. I always imagine that there is some kind of border at which the District Council’s contractor hands over the rubbish to a County Council representative with a formal handshake and a brass band playing.

Another classic tension in this part of the world is between the John Radcliffe Hospital behemoth and the various community hospitals which are part of the trust. They have a mutually dependant relationship, with the community hospitals relieving the pressure on the JR and helping to deal with elderly patients who may need longer care. However, there is mistrust and suspicion on both sides as the trust desperately tries to cut costs, save money and ‘rationalise’ the services it provides, threatening the existence of community hospitals. The result is that fewer patients are dealt with effectively while the number of meetings and arguments multiplies.

It has long struck me that local government does not necessarily need to provide any services directly – and many services have of course been contracted out since the days of the Tories in the 1980s. That was a classic example of a good idea being driven by ideology so that it simply went too far. A market approach to service provision and good value is sensible but it should not be the overriding concern. Public service should have equal weight, not just the bottom line. In my LD authority we manage to achieve good value and good services with external contractors, proving that it can be done - and done well.

What local government could perhaps evolve more into doing is providing a comprehensive bridging service between all the various local bodies, such as hospitals, day centres, hostels, social workers, the police and the armed forces, for example (since a disturbingly large number of homeless people, to return to the original theme, come from the armed forces) without necessarily having to provide the services directly. Councils could become co-ordinators rather than service providers primarily and thus seek the best outcomes alongside the best value.

Perhaps the key to improved public services is not the usual root and branch review and pledge to change everything, bringing in internal markets and instigating deep cleans. The key may simply be to improve communciations and understanding between all the various agencies so that they all speak to each other and they all know what the others are doing – and perhaps to provide a sizeable dollop of funding to grease the newly churning wheels – perhaps with a sizeable dollop of funding to grease the newly churning wheels, natch. Eventual savings would doubtless more than offset the investment.

Finally, a prediction about the Tories’ Homelessness Foundation. It will work well and produce a series of thoughtful recommendations. The recommendations will be spoken of warmly by Dave and by the homelessness charities until the moment (should that moment ever arise) when Dave wins power. He will then launch a ‘further review’ of the review and the majority of the recommendations will be watered down, resulting in the Homelessness Foundation breaking up in acrimony and mutual recrimination. Its work will then be quietly forgotten until, some years later, the opposition decides to launch a further review.

Thus does politics work.