The idea of the Asset-Based Area (ABA) started life as a blog and was co-produced with input from many people and organisations working in asset-based ways, from the Think Local Act Personal national network for practitioners and commissioners who share an interested in Building Community Capacity. So many areas are doing some community building or transformational stuff, but so few are trying to turn their community initiatives into core business. There is not enough ambition, partly because it’s hard to get past the apparent paradox that the good stuff often feels small and personal, whilst the challenges faced by public services feel huge.

We need whole areas to take up the challenge of becoming asset-based, resetting their relationships with local citizens, as Wigan council and a few others have attempted, with local priorities defined and put into a community plan which is built on local knowledge. So we tried to distil down how an area can become asset-based in everything it does from strategy down to the grassroots, into ten actions, starting with mapping your local assets, and including sharing power with people who are usually excluded, and building a diverse range of community approaches which are now gathered in an online catalogue.

Three years after the original thinking, we are developing the ABA model in more detail through the Social Care Innovation network, and revisiting this as a work in progress as we do. We’ve grouped the ten actions into three:

1. Co-production, partnership and power sharing: building & valuing community capacity and community organisations, tackling inequalities.
2. A strategic approach: a clear story translated into shared outcomes, asset-based commissioning, grant-giving, and provider market development.
3. Diversifying workforces & building local enterprise: investing in volunteers & social entrepreneurs, valuing lived experience, growing mutuals & co-ops.

We are also taking this opportunity to look at where the model needs improving – and as ever we want this to be a joint effort so your views are very welcome.

One key area that the model does not say enough about is self-directed support. Self-directed support, where people take charge of their own care and support packages, often through using a direct payment or another form of personal budget, has been under pressure in many areas, as cuts-hit areas have tried to put more and more rules around how people can spend state resources. This is self-defeating: SDS results in better health, wellbeing and less dependence on formal services when people are free to be creative, not choosing familiar packages from a small menu. For people to be creative with their own support, asset-based (or strengths-based) thinking needs to be built into assessment and planning processes which trust and empower people. But this isn’t enough: people also need to be able to connect with others, to pool resources and to start to influence, shape (and even in some cases, own) the range of provider organisations in their local area. In asset-based organisations, workers will feel more empowered, but this empowerment will be based on their greater diversity, including people with lived experience, who are focused on facilitating, enabling and empowering rather than delivering.

The best people to help people who use support to make creative choices are other people who have their own experience of using and shaping support. So local areas need to invest in user-led organisations. A question that can be asked of every part of the assessment, planning, review and commissioning system is, Could a community organisation do this better than us? Or could we do this better in partnership with a community organisation? Linking to a wider range of organisations including local enterprises can also build the local economy.

We also think there is much more to do to think about the Asset Based Area model from a rights perspective, which includes thinking about the role that basic rights issues such as discrimination and poverty play in shaping how people related to each other and to the local state and services. This means seeking out people who wouldn’t normally get involved and meeting them on their terms, thinking about how services and the way they are delivered impacts on social justice.

If we want others to commit to change, then we need to commit first. We will be very grateful for your ideas and to anyone who wants to share in leading these changes with us, as we try to embed this way of thinking into many more local areas.

In the last section, we revisited the Asset-Based Area (ABA) model which tried to distil down how an area can become asset-based in everything it does from strategy down to the grassroots, into ten actions, starting with mapping your local assets, and including sharing power with people who are usually excluded, and building a diverse range of community approaches which are now gathered in an online catalogue. Three years after the original thinking, we are developing the ABA model in more detail through the Social Care Innovation network. We’ve grouped the ten actions into three:

1. Co-production, partnership and power sharing: building & valuing community capacity and community organisations, tackling inequalities.
2. A strategic approach: a clear story translated into shared outcomes, asset-based commissioning, grant-giving, and provider market development.
3. Diversifying workforces & building local enterprise: investing in volunteers & social entrepreneurs, valuing lived experience, growing mutuals & co-ops.

In this section, we want to think about how we would know that an area had become asset-based. What would we measure and how?

Greater Manchester has adopted use of system activity measures collected every quarter, combined with a range of personal outcome measures collected locally across the city region. These include measures already well-established across public services, such as health outcomes, measures of demand and cost, and wellbeing outcomes: recognising that wellbeing - living a good life in a good home and a welcoming community – is intertwined with more clinical outcomes.

Many areas and organisations have Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Perhaps every area needs Key Human Indicators. Are people achieving wellbeing? That usually means that people who need support are able to experience the right balance of independence and connection for them, which will change at different times in their lives. For workers and systems, KHIs will include warmth, kindness (as set out in Julia Unwin’s brilliant report) and dignity. Networks can be more important than bureaucratic service structures. In Shared Lives, friendships are seen as key indicators of wellbeing, so Shared Lives Plus’ national outcomes measuring tool asks participants how many friends they have and whether Shared Lives support is helping them make and sustain those connections, or getting in the way.

At a community level, KHIs could include the extent to which local resources have been identified and mobilised, and the impact that services are having on enabling communities to overcome vulnerability and disadvantage. Birmingham University’s ICECAP-A measurement tool links wellbeing and economic development, measuring:

Attachment (an ability to have love, friendship and support)

Stability (an ability to feel settled and secure)

Achievement (an ability to achieve and progress in life)

Enjoyment (an ability to experience enjoyment and pleasure)

Autonomy (an ability to be independent)

What measures do you see as most important? In our final section, we will consider the behaviour changes we would expect to see in an Asset-Based Area, and again ask for your input, before we put all of these questions to the group of councils and innovative organisations with whom we are working in phase 2 of the Social Care Innovation Network.

In the last two sections, we revisited the Asset-Based Area (ABA) model which tried to distil down how an area can become asset-based in everything it does from strategy down to the grassroots into some groups of actions:

1. Coproduction, partnership and power sharing: building & valuing community capacity and community organisations, tackling inequalities.
2. A strategic approach: a clear story translated into shared outcomes, asset-based commissioning, grant-giving, and provider market development.
3. Diversifying workforces & building local enterprise: investing in volunteers & social entrepreneurs, valuing lived experience, growing mutuals & co-ops.

Three years after the original thinking, we are developing the ABA model in more detail through the Social Care Innovation network.

In this part, we want to think about the behaviour changes we would expect to see in an Asset-Based Area. What behaviours of leaders, front line workers and citizens themselves should we expect to see? We will be exploring asset-based behaviours with the areas and organisations who are part of the Asset-Based Area learning group within the Social Care Innovation Network. See the chart below for some first thoughts about the kinds of behaviours we might see at each level.

Sometimes areas talk about wanting to see culture changes at the frontline of public services, or about wanting to see citizens becoming more active, for instance, volunteering more. But it is rarer to hear how those behaviours changes will be facilitated by changes in leadership behaviour, and the systems within which frontline workers and citizens meet each other. What behaviours changes would you like to see in others in the system, and how would you like to be able to do things differently, if you were able to?

I support innovation, but not for innovation’s sake. What do I mean by that? Well, to start with, talk of innovation in social care is all around us. It’s become a buzz word. Why is that I wonder?

I think it reflects that all is not well in the house of social care. Personalisation has been our guide for the last ten years, and the Care Act since 2014. But despite the huge effort, good intentions and progress in some places, the ‘rhetoric-reality’ gap exists, and there are still too many people unable to exercise genuine choice and control.

So the focus has now changed and we have been heading in a new direction; it’s about developing innovations but what do we actually mean by innovation in the social care context?

I believe, at its core, an innovation must be about moving people closer to what they say they want, which is having a life and not a service – about thriving and not just surviving.

These are my four points that I believe the sector need to respond to if we are to see innovation make that kind of progress.

We are not in a social care laboratory

Since the central purpose of an innovation must be that more people benefit, include them in the design – always use co-production.

Reach all the parts

We live in an unequal society. We must be alert to the risk that innovation might benefit some more than others and risk widening existing inequalities.

Relationships matter

Social care is a people business. Besides promoting positive and respectful relationships, be willing to share your expertise & power.

Grounded research

As innovations takes off we need to develop a proper understanding of how it works. Research has an important role to play here and I am pleased that the Supporting Adult Social Care Innovation programme that is now starting will help with this. The research must be grounded in the lived experience of people.

To sum up, we are in the exciting process of reimagining social care. Innovations are part of this where we see people as citizens with strengths and assets and not as expensive social casualties.

The Social Care Innovation Network of which I am a member is offering the sector a great opportunity to generate more clarity around innovation, so that we scratch beneath the surface of a buzz word and apply a theory with big feet right from the start.