A new report by the Social Insights Panel, ‘Six ways to move the dial on prevention’, identifies six mindset shifts the government must adopt to achieve meaningful prevention. They are:
- Recognise that relationships are paramount – and that preventative work can only happen where they exist.
- Create meaningful opportunities for belonging – to tackle loneliness and prioritise community support.
- Focus on people’s needs rather than being triggered by risk – all too often the risk to institutions themselves
- Hold public and social sector practitioners in far higher esteem – by ensuring the necessary resources, training and supervision are provided to enhance prevention.
- 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.
- 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 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. These networks look like an informal shared meal where women feel safe to discuss the earliest signs of domestic violence, or a young person finding the confidence to find a job through the relationships they’ve built in a dance club. We visualise such networks as sitting at the outer edges of a ‘web of support’, that prevent people from needing formal intervention.