co responsibility and well-being explained

Co-responsibility and Well-being: the Thinking

Explained.

Presentation Jon Bloomfield

January 2011

Title of presentation I Tuesday 11 April 2023 I

The Changing Context

Last two decades have seen lots of experiments with devolution and de-centralisation.

Reworking relation of national, regional and local state

And relations of government, society and citizen.

Being done by parts of Left, Right and Green

Council of Europe thinking

Council of Europe offers a new model of citizen engagement: co-responsibility

Very wide-ranging approach

Designed to re-think the concept of progress; go beyond just measuring Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

Seeks to construct knowledge and well-being in a new way.

More reflecting the reality of people’s lives

Achieves this by systematic engagement with citizens


The Co-responsibility approach

Starts with the citizen.

It is an open-ended approach based on the use of focus groups

Asks about well-being and its opposite

Avoids danger of a problem-driven approach, which knows issues before you start

Council of Europe have piloted this method widely

It has thrown up 8 broad themes/dimensions and over 40 topics where indicators can be developed


Eight Dimensions

Arising from all the trials and pilots 8 key themes

Access to essential resources

Living environment

Social balances and sense of belonging

Personal balance

Relations between people

Relations with institutions

Feelings

Commitment/participation

A broader range of topics and issues than come from a problem-driven approach. This is more comprehensive.


Applying the method in TOGETHER

Council of Europe’s canvas is wide

It is a very ambitious project

TOGETHER seeks to draw on and apply its principles

But within the means available to each municipality

And adapted to our local circumstances

This application made more difficult by current financial circumstances


The Social Crisis within Europe

Serious collapse of financial system 2008-9

Major knock-on consequences for government spending.

Now seeing huge cuts in public spending

Big impact on local authorities – and worse is yet to come.

A tough background in which to introduce new thinking.


Initial Focus Group Work

8 municipalities. Different sizes and at varying levels of engagement and consultation with their citizens.

Mulhouse started in 2006/7;

Three others in 2010.

four others in 2011, including Botkyrka

In Braine l’Alleud 14 groups 2170 responses, all coded.

In Salaspils 25 groups.

Looking to complete by September.

An open-ended process

Qualitative – not a scientific sample

Aim: get some bottom-up perspectives and supplement other survey, questionnaire work


What are we learning?

The breadth of issues and concerns

The all-round nature of politics and policy.

Need to move beyond a traditional Welfare State approach

Approach can also be used with school children.

For councillors and politicians the initial stages of this method will:

Highlight key topics in their area Reach the issues that other approaches miss out Indicate possible priorities for action Show the need to work in new ways with local citizens


The New ‘Triangle’

Co-responsibility means an end to the idea of

‘the Council alone.’

Must always work in partnership

Either with civil society organisations, associations, the voluntary and community sector

Or with citizens e.g. users of services, parents, carers, school students, tenants, beneficiaries.

Co-responsible Pilot actions: putting this model of partnership into practice.


Co-responsibility is a new method of working

It involves a new relationship between public authorities and their users.

It is a much more participative method which treats users as equals rather than passive clients of the public authority.

This demands changes in the working style and professional practice of the staff of many public authorities.

Staff have to be convinced about these new methods of citizen engagement.

This is absolutely necessary, if the city is to be able to transfer the co-responsibility approach from the margins to the mainstream.


Engaging with staff

The approach works best where this is significant input from staff.

The pilot actions show that this is time-consuming and at times challenging.

This strongly reinforces the view that the move to a co-responsibility method is not a cheap option.

Its success requires the active and sustained involvement of public authorities and their staff, albeit often working in new ways.


Involving all stakeholders

The move from pilots to mainstreaming requires that all the major stakeholders within the conurbation need to be engaged with the co-responsibility initiative.

They must all be represented at a senior level on the ULSG.

The involvement of all stakeholders in the co-ordinating team is crucial, since it needs clear leadership from all the public agencies to drive these changes through.


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co responsibility and well-being explained

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