Six ways the government can shift the dial towards prevention 

A new report by The Future Governance Forum’s Social Insights Panel has called on the Government to make key changes in order to shift public services towards a preventative approach, after decades of successive governments acknowledging the shift is needed, but failing to achieve it. The Panel argues that only radical shifts in the mindset of public services can tackle some of the most complex social policy challenges, in particular   violence against women and girls, supporting young people’s transitions to adulthood, and building integrated and early support for struggling families.

The Social Insights Panel’s first report argues that prevention is dependent on the resilience of the support networks that exist in communities, which often don’t look like traditional public service delivery. The Social Insights Panel identified six mindset shifts the government must adopt to deliver meaningful prevention, which are:

1. Recognise that relationships are paramount – and that preventative work can only happen where they exist.
2. Create meaningful opportunities for belonging – to tackle loneliness and prioritise community support.
3. Focus on people’s needs rather than being triggered by risk –  all too often the risk to institutions themselves.
4. Hold public and social sector practitioners in far higher esteem – by ensuring the necessary resources, training and supervision are provided to enhance prevention.
5. Chase innovation in the right places – within existing community-based organisations and in spaces familiar to those seeking to access support to enhance preventative work.
6. Overhaul public and social sector commissioning culture and practice – at a local level to rebuild trust with community organisations and groups. 

The Social Insights Panel is chaired by Baroness Polly Neate and brings the collective expertise of civil society insights to bear on cross-cutting, complex issues that the government can’t tackle alone. 

Baroness Polly Neate, Chair of the Social Insights Panel, said, “The Government’s ambitions for public service reform must take a truly radical approach if some of the most intractable and complex issues are to be addressed, such as violence against women and girls, supporting young people’s transitions to adulthood, and building integrated and early support for struggling families. That means focusing far more on prevention, but for public services to be truly preventative, there must be six mindset shifts in how they are delivered. Those mindset shifts include: recognising relationships are paramount, creating meaningful opportunities for belonging to tackle loneliness, and focusing on people’s needs rather than being triggered by risk or artificial thresholds.  It’s time to put prevention at the heart of the work of our public services to tackle some of the most complex issues affecting millions of people. Successive governments and generations of reformers have been clear that a preventative approach is desperately needed. If the current focus on public service reform can’t make it happen, it will be a tragic missed opportunity.”