When I was setting out of this great creative adventure, there were a range of social issues that seemed to linger and linger despite repeated commitments by governments, councils and local managers to really tackle the problem.
Listing these at the outset gave me an agenda that I could puzzle over. Clearly these weren’t going to be fixed by me thinking, even over fifteen years. Maybe, though, I could help others think about them differently – through talking to others, through jottings, through addressing some of the issues via my books ….
This was my initial list and. sadly, it remains pretty much the same list fifteen years later:
- Groups of young people are proportionally underemployed and socially marginalised – with a sense that they might form a ‘lost generation’
- Some poor people are locked in mechanisms that ‘pump’ money away from them, towards the more rich and powerful: and they are then stigmatised for that
- Many good social intentions fade in their implementation
- Approaches to the provision of sufficient housing don’t appear to offer robust solutions
- Fundamentalist cultures can clash, intentionally or otherwise, to the detriment of those involved
- Some localities appear to be doomed forever not to flourish
- There are few ways of agreeing about ‘Value’ despite it being seen as important
- Children are growing up negatively affected by poverty – yet few real, immediate solutions seem to exist
- Future risks have been highlighted (re food, water, environment etc) – but there are few agreed ways forward for dealing with these
- Decision-makers are increasingly distanced from the situations about which they are being asked to decide
- Leaders and managers are expected to operate within contexts that are more flexible and contingent than the situations they have been prepared/trained for: so things don’t progress at the scale and pace possible
- Some ‘wicked’ problems are acknowledged as having complicated, inter-related causes, yet the complexity of solutions is underappreciated
- Learning models lag behind learning needs and learning potentials – with too many intermediary influences interfering with possible progress
- Services are conceptualised, organised and delivered on the basis of what has happened in the past rather than what is needed in the future
- Knowledge of the ‘right ways forward’ is likely to be ambiguous and uncertain – the most that can be hoped for is ‘best yet’ understandings within particular contexts
- Storytelling is a valid way of planning in response to predicaments
- Anti-social activities (eg child abuse/neglect) constantly find new forms; but those responsible for countering it are left using outmoded tools to do the job
- Many things come down to the ‘individualised’ level; but are conceptualised/formulated at the ‘group’ level – whilst solutions may be at the ‘structural’ level
- Notions of ‘public’ and ‘private’ are coalescing and becoming unreliable in their use