I have become quite used to prevention being framed as a way of making better use of financial resources. 

Whilst there is clearly some merit to thinking in that way in this challenging economic environment, it can be quite reductive. It can lead to a way of thinking where people’s lives become ‘cases’, and the support they access is only seen in terms of financial resources. Without care, we can get to a point where we centre our organisation’s needs over the people that we work with.

At our 2025 Leaders’ Forum, we wanted to foreground an equally (or more?) important rationale for prevention: helping people as early as possible can enable a strengths-based, person-centred approach that tackles the root cause of issues. Our starting point was to consider how someone who accessed services or support might conceive prevention, and what that way of working would require of system leaders.

We also wanted to examine what equitable prevention looks like, which Zoya Wallington has detailed in this blog. She examines how the drive to ‘prevent’ has become a force that Black and Global Majority people have had to fight or flee from. This has stayed with me as I consider my key takeaways from the event.

Rethinking the role of the public sector

The opening session was led by Adam Lent, Senior Consultant in Leadership and Organisational Development at The King’s Fund. We examined the role of the community in preventative approaches. Adam has also written a piece on reinventing public services in a time of crisis. It considers what moving away from a system that does things to individuals, families and communities might entail. A system shaped by ‘withism,’ where we work with people feels radically different and can sometimes be difficult to imagine when we are constrained by legacy thinking and processes. Both on the day itself and in the article, Adam issued a call for us to consider new ways of working in an era of volatility and uncertainty.

When Adam noted that the way that we conceive the public sector hasn't changed in 70 years, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own experiences. Having worked in and around public services for twenty years, it can sometimes be a challenge for me to reimagine how things could work. For colleagues working hard to deliver services to local people, imagining an alternative system can be very difficult.

A good childhood is prevention

Leaders’ Forum is a space for us to consider what is possible. Sometimes that means looking at what things could look like in the future. However, we also examined how Adults' and Children's Services interact in the current climate. 

Rachel Wardell, President of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, noted that the adults and children's sectors can label prevention work differently, but we grapple with the same challenges. If we can think holistically about people’s lives, then it is clear that people’s experiences as children shape who they become as adults. After all, all adults were children once. 

Jess McGregor, President of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, spoke about the power of relationships. Not just with people who access services or support, but with people across organisational siloes too. If we're going to effectively work across services, we need to think about the rhythms and routines of our roles and our work and the opportunities we have to work together.

Simon Thomas, Transformation Program Manager at Wiltshire Council, spoke about the local authority’s approach to Transitional Safeguarding. He emphasised the importance of nurturing passion and enabling good relationships when promoting boundary spanning leadership across Children's and Adults' Services. 

Making hope possible

As a Welshman, I feel somewhat embarrassed to say that until Leaders’ Forum, I had never read any of Raymond Williams’ work. 

During his session, Russell Todd, co-author of ‘Community Development, Social Action and Social Planning: A Practical Guide’ quoted Williams, saying:

To be truly radical is to make hope possible instead of despair convincing.

It was exactly what I needed to hear. 

Williams was an author, academic, cultural theorist, literary critic and public intellectual who saw culture as ‘ordinary’. It was something that was to be derived from our everyday lives. Delving into his work since Leaders’ Forum has re-iterated to me the importance of involving people with lived experience in the design and development of social care. By working alongside people and recognising the value of their knowledge and experience, we are able to better support them to live their best lives.

It is too easy to adopt a fatalist view of the world in the current political and social context. In her chairing, Dez Holmes, Director of Research in Practice, said that if leadership is setting the emotional climate, then we are a movement. It is clear that we have never needed a movement or activism more. It is our role as leaders to be part of that hopeful vision for a better future for the people in our organisations and our communities. 

Russell was eminently quotable throughout his contribution. He paraphrased Descartes by saying:

I am located, therefore I am.

After the event I was left thinking about why we must reframe our connections to our communities. Individualism has failed our organisations and communities. Research in Practice is a network, and it is my privilege as a member of staff to see its collective knowledge and expertise as part of my day-to-day work. It is clear to me that by working together, we can achieve so much more.