Basically, this means we don’t break the law. Why are we stating this when it’s obviously the case for anything?

This has been made explicit because of the plethora of rules and regulations that get in the way. We may want to ignore laws that make no sense, but this isn’t something we have permission for. 

When a law or regulation offers no wriggle room, we have to shine a light on it and, demonstrate how we got around it without breaking it (if indeed we did). The ability for us to show the folly of an existing law is arguably as important as coming up with new and innovative practice. 

We ensure no harm comes to those we’re helping and anyone connected to them and the work we do. This means through action, e.g. we don't do things that cause harm. This is something we need to guide our level of risk; we shouldn’t be afraid of risk but nor should we be oblivious to it. There is also harm through inaction. We need to ensure we don’t fail to act when harm is is potentially on the way. 

This rule applies to staff as well as people being supported both directly by not putting themselves in harms way and by paying attention to work/life balance and boundaries. 

The existing system is essentially a series of specialisms connected by referral pathways and eligibility criteria. Accessing one of these specialisms requires an assessment, which is generally only concerned with that specialism. This never tells the person’s story. Assessments are about accessing resources rather than working out what matters to someone. Understanding starts with a blank sheet rather than a checklist that you might find in an assessment. It starts with “what matters to you?”, “what does a good life for you look like?” 

We know that whilst specialisms are important, understanding someone’s context is key to helping them. It means specialists can be helpful when they need to be, but they have a list of things they do. Understanding someone creates potential activities that wouldn’t ever be on such lists and no system could ever design and predict. Caseworkers need to hold the ring on relationships with people over time. They can only do this if they build trust and understanding. They are generalists, and we need to show that generalists are absolutely vital to creating support that works.

This is basically saying that nothing is out of scope. Whatever weird and wonderful things people are into (although, see ‘Stay Legal’!), this work takes you there. It might be the thing that helps someone engage, to gain confidence, to meet people and to change their life.

Services are traditionally scoped and defined. If we see where understanding people takes us, we’ll be able to map a broader range of activities than we’d see if we looked at the current system.

This principle helps caseworkers to be creative and think laterally, and it also helps identify points of tension in the existing system when you hear ‘we don’t do that…’ or similar.

Front line staff are often disempowered, even though they generally understand what matters more than anything. Their inability to makes decisions about money, plans, tactics…. means things are escalated to people further away from the work to make decisions that are less likely to be right. This also adds time and often means things get worse and any chance to prevent something or act quickly is gone. 

We want to learn to make decisions in the work, which will mean pulling expertise and advice in rather than farming the decision out and waiting. Operational teams should learn to pull for advice, not permission. Leadership need to learn to respond to this in as close to real time as they can. 

Referrals are the means by which people are moved on from one professional to the other. Whether the professional being passed onto helps depends upon the results of their assessment. That assessment will be narrow in focus and guided by a decision around resources. 

These referrals add up and be for you know it, someone might have dozens of people connected to them and none of them understanding them or helping coordinate this help.

We will not do referrals by choice. Instead, we ensure the caseworker ‘holds’ the case and invited the specialist in (instead of passing them on). We want every citizen to have a go to person that can help them and can navigate whatever specialisms are needed. We pull specialisms in to join the team around the person rather than add to the web of unconnected people. 

Many specialist services in the system stop supporting people for a number of reasons - pressure related to arbitrary targets and KPIs means people are discharged from services before they are ready; services are no longer able to work with someone once their specialism has been 'dealt with'; people become ineligible if they relapse or experience further disadvantage, making them 'too complex'. 

Although we recognise that our programme will come to an end, during the time we are operating we do not close cases unless a person requests it. We continue to support people when they relapse or transition between specialisms as we recognise that this is often when people need support the most. 

Good relationships and trust can take a long time to build.