The website is now up and running and ready to take your bookings for the LARIA one-day conference taking place at The University of Manchester on Tuesday 4th November 2014

Reshaping local places and services through local research

This one-day conference offers practical guidance on maximising the use of local research to help reshape local places and services. It covers:

• Getting the best out of customer insight
• Improving policy evaluation to improve outcome
• Using Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs)
• Forecasting and predicting future demand for services
• The role of public health
• The future of performance monitoring
• The skills and professional development needed for local researchers, including the launch of our planned new LARIA professional development framework

The seminar is fully accredited by the Market Research Society as part of their professional development framework.

Please click here for more information and to book your place.

Sponsorship packages are also available, please contact the admin for more details.

Photo credit: University of Manchester by Joshua Poh

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• Methodological challenges
• Innovation
• Maintaining quality
• Research ethics
• Making an impact
• Evaluation
• Funding and commissioning issues.

Presentations are for workshop sessions of 20 minutes (followed by a 10 minute Q&A). One presenter will receive a discount on the delegate fee.

The conference will be held at the British Library in London on 8th December 2014.  The deadline for submissions is 18th August 2014.

For more details:

• Visit the SRA website or
• Download the Guidelines (PDF)

Photo credit: British Library by Steve Cadman

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At this meeting it was clear it would be mutually beneficial to strengthen the working relationships between public health intelligence and the wider local authority research and intelligence community, and between local authorities and Public Health England. Effective collaboration and shared learning between intelligence professionals at the local, regional and national level would provide an increasingly important means of sharing learning and creating synergy in our current financial climate.

A small Working Group of LARIA and PHE members was consequently set up to explore and facilitate this work on behalf of Professor Newton and LARIA Council.

During the last year this Working Group has collaborated with a number of partners in order to address and explore a number of crucial key areas to take the LARIA-PHE agenda forward. Its aim was to gain a better understanding of the current scope of public health intelligence, both in Public Health England and within local authorities, to identify emerging opportunities for developing closer relationships, networking and communities of practice, and to explore the potential for shared training and/or other professional development.
Although the Public Health England and LARIA regional organisation does not work on the same boundaries, the Working Group found that Public Health England and LARIA both have contacts at a sub-national level in England (with LARIA also comprising Scotland and Wales). In addition, a considerable amount of joint working already exists between health intelligence professionals, and provides evidence of much commonality between practitioners, particularly around consultation and engagement. A clear appetite for collaboration also exists, particularly around further joint working/networking/training and the sharing of knowledge. LARIA-PHE Collaboration – Activity summary

A number of ‘quick wins’ (such as sharing information through online communities and regional newsletters and updates) have been identified along with a range of other areas in which collaboration could be fostered, including joint training, and work shadowing and exchanges to increase understanding, particularly of specialist skills etc. Based on the findings of our initial activities, a number of potential priority areas going forward were identified. A quick ‘dot vote’ on these identified priorities was undertaken at the recent LARIA Conference in May to offer a quick ‘finger in the air’ test of prevailing LARIA/PHE practitioner attitudes. Each person was given 5 dots to spend on the priorities listed as they so wished. Better opportunities for joint training received the highest number (47) of dot votes. LARIA 2014 Dot vote – Full Document.

Some issues or barriers requiring further thought and/or ‘workarounds’ have also been acknowledged by the Working Group, such as differences in both boundaries and the everyday use of technologies, and a mutual lack of awareness and overall understanding of ‘how it all works now’ as a result of the ‘quiet revolution’ in public health.

Helen Butcher, June 2014
LARIA/PHE Working Group Chair
LARIA Council/South East Chair

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Investigating the potential effects of the heatwave in Coventry
Presented by Andy Baker, Coventry City Council
Contact: Andrew Baker

Urban Audit – providing comparable urban statistics across Europe
Presented by Bill South, Office for National Statistics (ONS)
Contact: Bill South

Quality markers – co-producing quality monitoring in social care with peer reviewers
Presented by Rach Flowers and Liam Abraham, Warwickshire County Council
Contact: Rachel Flowers

Local spending on adult social care
Presented by Rose Martin, National Audit Office (NAO)
Related Content
Contact: Rose Martin

Land Use Economic Modelling – Delta Package 
Presented by Richard Potter, Analytics Cambridge
(Awaiting PDF)
Contact: Richard Potter

Photo Credit: Coventry City Hall Sheep Purple

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Payment by results is a simple idea: people and organisations should only get paid for what they deliver. Who could argue with that? If your job is to get people back to work, then find them a job dammit.

Plenty of people working in local government and public services are already starting to realise this is nonsense, and a pernicious, damaging nonsense at that. The evidence is very clear: if you pay (or otherwise manage performance) based on a set of pre-defined results, it creates poorer services for those most in need. It is the vulnerable, the marginalised, the disadvantaged who suffer most from payment by results.

Here’s why: payment by results does not reward organisations for supporting people to achieve what they need; it rewards organisations for producing data about targets; it rewards organisations for the fictions their staff are able to invent about what they have achieved; it pays people for porkies.

We know that common things happen when people use payment by results, and other outcomes-based performance management systems. There have been numerous studies that show that such systems distort organisational priorities and make organisations focus on doing the wrong things – and they make people lie.

This lying takes all sorts of different forms. Some of them are subtle forms of deception: teachers who teach to the test or who only enter pupils for exams they know they are going to pass; employment support that helps only those likely to get a job and ignores those most in need; or hospitals that reclassify trolleys as beds, and keep people waiting in ambulances on the hospital doorstep until they know they can be seen within a target time. In the literature, this is known as gaming the system.

Some of the lying is less subtle. People just make up results. Last year’s scandal with A4e provision of employment programmes is just one in a long line of haphazard outcome measurement.

Gwyn Bevan and Christopher Hood, professors of management at the London School of Economics and the University of Oxford respectively, looked at the impact of results targets on the NHS. They concluded that “target based performance management always creates ‘gaming’ “. Not sometimes. Not frequently. Always.

Sadly, the distortion of practice by payment by results doesn’t just stop with managers. The evidence shows that it also undermines the practice of frontline workers. It turns the relationship between support worker and client upside down. When payment-by-results practices are introduced, workers who used to ask their clients “How can I help you to achieve what you need?” instead think “How can you help me to produce the data I need?”

This is demonstrated in Hilary Cottom’s study of what social workers spend their time doing:

Spending time alongside social workers, such as Ryan, who works with Ella’s son Tom, we saw that 86% of time is system driven – filling in forms for accountability and discussing them with colleagues. Most shockingly, even the 14% of time spent face to face with a family member is not developmental. The dialogue between Ryan and Tom is dictated by the forms and their need for data and information. This squeezes out any possibility of the sort of conversation that might be needed to develop a supportive relationship as a first step in fostering change.

There’s a growing momentum behind the understanding that outcomes-based performance management in general – and payment by results, in particular – is dangerous idiocy. It makes good people do the wrong things, and then forces them to lie about it.

I will be taking part in a public conversation with others who are asking questions about payment by results, and seeking alternatives to outcomes-based performance management at a conference in Manchester on Wednesday 6 March. If you’ve been forced into gaming the system or just plain telling porkies in order to meet daft results targets, I’d love to hear your stories. If you get it off your chest you help contribute to changing the system. Let’s make this change; it’s important.

Toby Lowe is a visiting fellow at Newcastle University business school and chief executive of Helix Arts, a charity that transforms lives through art. You can follow him on Twitter: @tobyjlowe

Photo credit: A bus not in service by Barry Lewis

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Lancs CC and Lancs Constabulary: Winners of Best use of local area research

Lancashire County Council: Winner of Best use of health research

Manchester City Council: Winner of Best use of public data

Heather Walmsley, Lancs CC: Winner of New researcher of the year

Linda Frost, Manchester City Council (LARIA NW Region): Winner of Volunteer of the year

 Photos: Gerallt Evans Hughes and Linda Frost

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Michael sums up the conference by themes; focus, co-production, evaluation, peer research and evidence bases.

If you have any feedback to share, please take the survey, or contact us.

Photo: Gerallt Evans-Hughes

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Click here to take part in our survey.

The survey is completely confidential and if you have any queries please contact us admin@laria.org.uk. If you cannot complete today or tomorrow please complete the survey by 5pm on Friday 23rd May 2014 at the latest.

If you did not attend the conference we would also be interested in your views. We will be running a survey of all members to get their views on the kinds of events they would like us to run. If you have comments now please feel free to contact us.

We also have an event on 4^th November – Reshaping local places and services through local research. The full programme will be published in June.

Photo credit: Warwick Aerial View by Warwick University Stats dept

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The main priorities/themes for the conference:

• sharing best practice across the local authority and public sector research industry

• how to raise the profile of the research industry

• how to improve engagement between academic research, and local government

• how to evidence what difference your work makes to local communities

Key websites, projects and tips:

• Stats Users Net: This online forum launched (with involvement from LARIA) last year. You can find out more, become a member and participate in discussions, here.

• The Alliance for Useful Evidence have produced a report “Squaring the Circle: Evidence at the Local Level”. The report looks at how local authorities and their partners are making use of evidence in the current climate of cuts in funding and a sluggish economy. Some of the findings from this work have been used to inform the development of the What Works Centres.

• There was some discussion of the emerging What Works Centres. The four centres (for Local Economic Growth, Ageing Better, Crime Reduction, Early Intervention) are intended to act as a ‘NICE’ for social policy. The centres will not generate evidence, but will work to synthesise and rank available evidence. The format/interface is likely to be similar to the Education Endowment Fund website (the Teaching and Learning toolkit), but will vary between the centres according to the nature of the evidence. The Centres have funding for 3 years in the first instance, and a National Advisor will lead the network and advise ministers. This post will be appointed in the next two weeks.

• Skills for Justice presented on the new Local Authority National Occupational Standards. These present an outcomes-based perspective on the key skills required for the following roles: Economic Development, Communications Officer, and Researcher. Find out more about the skills required by clicking  here.  The Skills for Justice’s local government page is available here.

• Sheffield Hallam University have produced a report on how communities will be hit by welfare reform, and what the associated impact(s) on local economies might be. Find out more about welfare reform and labour markets here.

• The ONS Beyond 2011 Programme is continuing. There will be a further consultation on the programme shortly, and a final decision on the future of the Census will be taken by end March next year. There was some discussion about the importance of responding to this consultation, as this will be the last opportunity to input into the process. It will be important to put an economic value on the Census data in any response.

• John Newton, Chief Knowledge Officer for Public Health England, noted a couple of points about the data that PHE will continue to make available through their eight Knowledge and Intelligence Teams. This will include key products such as the Local Health Profiles, mortality dashboard, public health outcomes framework, GP profiles, NHS Atlas of Healthcare Variation. Also noted that a mapped version of the local health profiles are available at MSOA level, as well as local authority. These are accessible here.

• One of the workshops showcased the work of Kirklees Council’s Joint Surveys Project Board, led by NHS Kirklees and Kirklees Council. The Board has run a joint programme of surveys, with findings used to inform the JSNA and other key strategic documents. More information on the surveys and approach is available from here.

• RTPI held a conference on Planning and Ageing, in September 2013. Details and agenda here.

Case Study: Preparing for the impacts of Welfare Reform, Surrey County Council

One of the most original presentations over the two days concerned a research project carried out at Surrey County Council, looking at preparing for the impacts of Welfare Reform. The council opted for a qualitative, ethnographic approach which was commissioned to ESRO. The research involved ESRO spending time with a number of families and individuals in Surrey who are likely to be impacted by the reforms. It looked at the perceived changes and responses by those individuals. As well as a comprehensive literature review, the research comprised 12 semi-structured in-depth interviews within 3 boroughs of the county.

The research was designed to test a range of hypotheses, including:

“As a result of the reforms…

• Some individuals will be incentivized to work

• Some will find it difficult to meet household expenses due to a reduction in welfare payments.”

The research found that, with or without welfare reform, low-income benefits recipients often already struggle to make ends meet on a week-by-week basis and draw on an array of practical coping strategies when facing routine financial difficulties or unexpected expenses. The changes were therefore likely to lead to more severe, although familiar, financial problems for these low income families. Practical coping measures include things like:

Money:

• Spend or borrow according to cycles of “good weeks” (benefits received) and “bad weeks” (smaller payments)

• Increase in payday/door to door loans

• Extended loan repayments

Food:

• Cut back on fresh food

• Skip meals

• Ask family members to feed children

Spending:

• Fewer gifts

• Cut back on family events

Although manageable in the short term, one of the report findings was that long term use of some of these coping strategies may pose significant risks to housing security, physical and mental health, and outcomes for children.

Amongst other outputs, the research produced detailed budget sheets from the field data. These budget sheets helped to identify the finances and key issues of concern for the families who are likely to be significantly out of pocket.

Issues and outcomes which the research raised were split into “high”, “medium” and “low” relevance. Infographic case studies drawn from the interviews have driven discussions across the Council, and led to much senior level buy-in to the potential issues.

The work has been complemented by a quantitative analysis programme.

You can find out more about the report here.

Sarah Hardwick, South West Observatory 21/05/13

Photo credit: Eden Project. LARIA photo.

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So, what are the three lessons?

1. Focus on people rather than organisations. Many speakers emphasized the importance of focusing on society and people rather than the specific councils and organisations the delegates worked for. Many agreed that by concentrating directly on the people and places they lived, their research would be more valid and personalised—and, therefore, more likely to influence decision making effectively.  This is true in marketing also: by focusing on your consumers’ needs, you can better show the value of your research. If your company is used to making decisions through gut feeling, focusing on customers can help validate your instincts or flag potentially catastrophic business decisions.
2. Demonstrate a link between research and outcome.In a recent study of SOLACE (Society of Local Authority Chief Executives) members, 4 out of 5 heads of local government in the UK acknowledge the importance of robust evidence in decision making. During the conference, we also heard several examples that demonstrated a direct link between research and government action. The research conducted by local authorities is important: it directly impacts how organisations in the public sector manage future demand, allocate resources, and evaluate the success of policies.To remain relevant in their companies, researchers also need to make the connection between their work and how it moves the needle. Data is only important if it manages knowledge and if it can be presented as evidence. If you’re a researcher, you have to present your insights in an easy-to-understand format, making sure that it comes back to key performance indicators that decision makers in your company care about.
3. Build engagement.The constant need for citizen engagement was particularly evident when listening to various presentations and speaking to local authority researchers. Attendees want to get a deeper understanding of the public wants and needs and be able to do this in a time and cost effective way.Engagement is not new to researchers and marketers, and this is where insight communities can play a role. Given their ability to facilitate ongoing two way conversations, insight communities can increase dialogue, build relationships and close the loop on engagement.

Hannah Mumby writes; “The conference showed that local researchers are proud, passionate and enthusiastic about their work—as they should be. In the age of public disengagement, the need for insight-led policy is more important than ever, and local researchers play a critical role in facilitating this. Similarly, as consumers become more fickle and sometimes disengaged, researchers can help ensure the customer’s voice remains top-of-mind for the marketing team and the rest of the C-suite.”

Do you have any lessons to share? 

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