How to pay for the angels

All hail the actuary, the hero of tomorrow.

No, I'm being serious. If a politician who's never made the front rank can be entrusted with Europe's foreign policy, maybe now's a moment for a whole host of underestimated, modest people to step into the spotlight.

But actuaries? A step too far, surely. Aren't they the people who work for insurance companies and calculate how soon you're going to pop your clogs, and then decide how much extra you'll pay based on your drinking habits or your penchant for bungee-jumping?

Exactly. So bear with me. I was reading Rob Greenland's post for Social Enterprise Day, where he talks in glowing terms of the social value created by the Leeds-based firm Angels Housekeeping. But as he points out:

The issue for them ... is that no-one pays at the moment for all that extra stuff - the social impact. To anyone who knows them it's obvious that they make a difference to hundreds of people - and that they save the State thousands of pounds. But it's hard to convince the State that investing here could save money elsewhere.

I've been doing a fair bit of work lately on green infrastructure - the natural assets that underpin our quality of life and the quality of place - and again, the issue that wracks everyone's brains is how to value it. There have been brave attempts to work out the economic value of green infrastructure, and there's a lot of useful material on this on the Natural Economy Northwest website.

But there are two difficulties with assigning value. One is deciding how to measure the cash value of social or environmental benefit. Differences in house prices, for example, are a crude and often unconvincing way of measuring the value of a woodland view. And how do you put a price on a listening ear, a cup of tea and a conversation, which may or may not make a difference to how depressed and lonely an elderly person feels? The other difficulty is that even if you can find a universally acceptable way of calculating a cash value for social and environmental goods, all that does is make a case for investment which may be hard to argue at a time when investment from both the public and private sectors is drying up.

There have been all sorts of attempts to tackle this, most of them by people far cleverer than me. There are models for social return on investment that are gaining support, and the Young Foundation's very interesting idea of social impact bonds. I fear, though, that most will continue to be thought of as too arcane or untested to be adopted, or too distant from the current year's bottom line.

There is an approach, though, that I think could have legs. It's one that's an established feature of our everyday lives: insurance. I fork out every month on the offchance that my house might fall down or I might fall under a bus, and the deal is that if disaster strikes my family are protected from penury.

Instead of trying to calculate a cash value for every social good, which reduces each good to a financial transaction, we could use risk as the way of building the investment case. Risk doesn't measure social good, but it does calculate your exposure if the social good doesn't happen. So flood risks - which are easily calculable - can be used as a way of generating investment in the natural environment. Your liability is reduced if you've taken action to lessen the risk. The risk of an elderly person needing state-funded nursing care can be set against the social support offered by Angels Housekeeping and the like. The risk of depression (and consequent withdrawal from the labour market, medical care and stress for friends and family) can be set against financing community support initiatives. You get the drift.

What it needs is for those highly intelligent people in insurance to work out a means of calculating social and environmental damage (not too difficult) and a way of measuring liability that rewards action to reduce such damage, just as your car insurance company will give you a discount if you keep your vehicle off the street and have an alarm fitted.

Such insurance schemes could be run at different levels depending on where the risks lie, and could be run by an arm's-length public body or (more expensively) by private companies. The point is to factor a calculation about social and environmental risks into decision-making processes, because at the moment there's nothing to force local authorities or central government to do so - you just keep a contingency fund and keep your fingers crossed. There has to be a better way than that.

I've always thought of actuaries as one of the dullest ends of the dismal science of economics, but maybe I've underestimated their worth. Are there any sharp-witted actuaries out there who are passionate about social value and have done any work on this?

Fast forward

It was sleek, fast, graceful and luxurious. Concorde was the epitome of style and ambition. So some might be surprised that the Concorde hangar at Manchester Airport was chosen as the place to celebrate Wythenshawe and its people.

Wythenshawe is nothing if not down to earth. You can't get much earthier: the area has 300 allotments and twice as much tree cover as the average English town.

Perhaps Concorde was chosen to celebrate the heights of Wythenshawe's ambition. But the irony was that while Concorde is now seen as a historic icon, its heyday has been and gone - while the people of Wythenshawe have a future to look forward to.

Down to earth they may be, but Wythenshawe's 70,000 residents are determined to show their mettle. They did so not long ago when the publicity-seeking Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, descended to offer her own solutions to the caricature of 'broken Britain' offered by some sections of the media. She and her TV producers were left in no doubt that local people were proud of who they were and the estates where they lived.

The band Gorillaz had a better understanding of this, working with a choir from Newall Green High School for their Demon Days show at Manchester Opera House - helping to give the kids a sense of confidence in their own abilities and talent. That talent was on show again last night when they performed at the Concorde hangar to celebrate the anniversary of Real Lives Wythenshawe, a campaign to counter the negative press the area has received by showcasing the work of local communities and Manchester's plans to invest in the area.

And investment is the word. The city council isn't throwing money at Wythenshawe because it's a basket case and ticks all the deprivation 'ugly contest' boxes, although it certainly has suffered from unemployment, disadvantage and neglect in the past. When I spoke to Angela Harrington, regeneration manager for the south of Manchester, what she stressed was the potential for new jobs, the huge investment in rebuilt schools, the plans to remodel the town centre and the proposed Metrolink extension, connecting Manchester Airport with Wythenshawe and on to the city centre (you can hear the full interview via the link above).

If Wythenshawe was a basket case, you wouldn't see 65 employees of Manchester Airport volunteering as local school governors. As Mike Davies, chair of Manchester Airport Group, pointed out, 'spending one day in Wythenshawe transformed my view'.

Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, said the Real Lives campaign was about redressing the balance and 'mythbusting'. And so it was, but there's more to it than that.

Not just the big numbers - £600m invested over then years, another £152m on its way, a £20m refurbishment of the local hospital. The small actions, too, are what makes Wythenshawe what it is - the kind of help 18-year-old Jade's family found at a local community centre when they arrived in Wythenshawe fleeing domestic violence; the persistence of community centre manager Brenda Grixti, whose volunteering has run from fostering to organising trips to Manchester for children who were victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Brenda, typically, didn't know what to do when she was awarded an MBE. 'The first thing I felt was guilt and embarrassment - why me and not anyone else, as there are so many people involved in helping our community.'

Talk to Wythenshawe people and they'll accept it has its problems. But they'll also talk about their open spaces, the community spirit and their pride in the place they call home.

Is Wythenshawe unique? Not really. There are other areas where local people have come together to challenge negative images and to stand up for the things they value. Wythenshawe is fortunate in having a huge potential workforce on the doorstep of major employment opportunities; other estates aren't so lucky. And there are places where the pride has taken a battering and much more help and support is needed.

What the Real Lives campaign has grasped, though, is that you don't need to reinvent an area to change its image. It doesn't need to become the gateway to this or the heart of that. Rebranding is cosmetic; what matters is to recognise the resources of a community and through them generate a sense of pride.

Do you need leadership? Look inside.

Leadership is using the smallest possible crisis to create the biggest possible effect, former 10 Downing Street head of strategy Geoff Mulgan told the Chain Reaction conference today.

And the crisis we currently face is one of the biggest possible. Geoff Mulgan – now director of the Young Foundation - spoke of the world financial crisis, where, he argued, most of the help went into 'rewarding the people who got us into it'; and the crisis of trust in politics, which, he said, had created a space where people were willing to accept change. And that's without getting onto climate change.

Crises come in all shapes and sizes. This afternoon we heard about the global crisis, and how the We20 organisation was established to give ordinary people a voice at the G20 summit.

We heard about the economic crisis, which has created a rash of empty shops across the UK - and how the Empty Shops Network is bringing many of them back to life as a platform for local artists, performers, and community initiatives.

But there are also personal crises, and they too can be a catalyst for action. Helen Milner, who runs UK Online Centres, told the story of Lucas, aged 19, who spent his nights drinking and his days sleeping at the YMCA in Birkenhead. The encouragement of a UK Online tutor helped him turn his life round, to the extent that he ended up running the YMCA's cyber-café.

Now Lucas is studying IT at college, but he hasn't forgotten his experience: he still visits his old friends who drink in the local park to try to persuade them to change their own lives.

Such changes don't come easily. Some people don't listen; others don't want to change what they do; others can only see the problems.

A key theme running through the stories of change we heard this afternoon is that the difference starts with personal contact. Lucas had the help of a tutor. We20 started as an online initiative, but coordinator Paul Massey explained that you can't just rely on technology: 'The internet doesn't really make up for the real bonds of human connection you need to get people to work together - you really need to connect with people on a human level.'

The Empty Shops Network, similarly, isn't just about an idea. You have to be ready to work with people in ways that make sense to them - so Dan Thompson of Worthing's Revolutionary Arts Group has learned how to wear a suit and go to business networking meetings. Sometimes, he says, you have to 'talk to people you really can't stand' in order to find the person who'll help.

You can't get away from the legwork. But there are now 150 projects involving empty shops around the country, including a 4-seat cinema in Coventry Market, showing a musical history of the market; and emptyshopsradio.com, broadcasting three shows a day.

Leadership? It's all around you, if you know where to look. Perhaps most of all, though, social change is about recognising the leadership potential in yourself.

Chain reaction: every flipchart tells a story

Where change starts

What do I care passionately about in terms of community building or social change? That was the question Chris Grant posed at the Chain Reaction event this morning.

In the corporate temple of Canary Wharf's Eastwintergarden, around 400 people - a quarter of them under the age of 21 - gathered around tables to share what they are passionate about, what they really care about and what they want to change. Those conversations are taking place as I'm writing this post, and one of the most noticeable things is that everyone seems to be smiling. Compare that with the kind of discussions that go on in the big-ticket conferences, where smiles are the exception.

But as Geraldine Blake, chief executive of Community Links, put it, 'Everybody has the potential to do great things. Social change is about unlocking that potential.'

For some, like Simon Berry of Colalife, it's about coming up with a simple idea that could make a difference to infant mortality in Africa and using social media (especially Facebook) to get a foot in the door of one of the world's biggest corporations.

For others, like Major Phil Packer, seriously injured in a rocket attack in Basra, it's about understanding for the first time what it means to have a disability and deciding that rather than ending the life you love, it could transform it and be a force for good.

Chris Grant, who runs 14a Conversations, is making the point that we all know things and have skills to share. We could use them to make a difference to the communities where we live and work. We could come up with new ways of raising money, new ideas for delivering public services. And there are things we don't know, that we can start learning from others.

The point is that we can get on with it. We don't have to wait for a new government and then slag them off for defaulting on their promises. We don't have to wait for the right policy change. Policy changes and government action are often good and helpful, but the starting point is the people. Understanding that is the breakthrough.

Why I'm looking forward to Chain Reaction

Tomorrow I'll be at Chain Reaction 2009, an event that brings together many of the most exciting thinkers and doers involved in social action in the UK today.

One of the best things about it is that it's organised by Community Links, a project that has deep roots in London's east end and whose views have been shaped by the real-life experiences of people affected by poverty, poor life chances, and discrimination.

You can read a lot more here about who's speaking and attending. I'm looking forward to meeting people who are doing real good in real communities, as well as the politicians, academics and others who are charged with seeing the big picture and developing policies to fit.

One thing events like Chain Reaction show is how much enthusiasm and creativity there is within communities, even at a time when the economy remains mired in recession. It's an important counterpoint to the political narratives on offer, which revolve around an often unproductive debate about the role of the state.

Yesterday David Cameron, the Conservative leader, made an important speech about his view of 'big society' as opposed to big government. It was important because it modified, in tone if not hugely in substance, his party conference speech which was more of a swashbuckling libertarian attack on big government.

Yesterday's speech set out a role for the state in enabling local governance and individual responsibility, and aimed to position the Conservatives as the best party to tackle poverty. Perhaps because it was geared to a liberal audience rather than a conservative one, it accentuated the positive role of the state as well as the negative, and accepted a desire to tackle the causes of poverty as common ground.

'We all know, in our hearts, that as long as there is deep poverty living systematically side by side with great riches, we all remain the poorer for it,' David Cameron declared. (This may well be the case, though we should note that the better-off have been able to stomach an astonishing amount of this systemic poverty over the years).

He repeated his argument, however, that big government, by undermining personal and social responsibility 'ends up perpetuating poverty instead of solving it'.

This is a more nuanced version of the 'broken Britain' argument, which I've discussed previously.

Broken or not, Britain has spawned a huge amount of social action in recent years. Community Links is a fine example of that; so is the burgeoning movement to link social media with local action. The fact that 400 enthusiasts are descending on Canary Wharf tomorrow to talk about how to make Britain a fairer society shows there's no lack of interest; and the fact that many of them are involved in hands-on projects that are helping to make a better world shows that there's still plenty of individual and social responsibility where it matters.

Where Britain is at its most broken, you'll find a surprising number of people who have rolled their sleeves up and are doing their bit to help. Neither government, nor politicians, charities or social entrepreneurs have a moral monopoly here. The point is about finding ways to work together.



Related posts:

'Break down the hate and bring out the kindness'

Progressive Conservatism and the Pilkington fallacy

It's not fair!

Systems administrators: do we really need them?

Some people adore computers and everything to do with them. I love them when they make my life easier. So while I admire the idea of open-source software, you won't find me developing any.

When someone else finds a solution that's clean, simple and works, though, it seems foolish not to take advantage. So I recently installed an application called Dropbox, which allows me to back up my current projects, choose which files or folders to share with colleagues, and automatically synchronises files I and colleagues might be working on.

Except, of course, it isn't as easy as that once you're dealing with government agencies or big corporates. I tried sharing a folder with someone at an environmental quango last week and got this response: 'I'm afraid my government laptop is so locked down that I'm unable to install any software at all.'

Similarly, I tried sharing a folder with someone who works for a major civil engineering firm. The response: 'I have to let you know that I can't/won't download the dropbox application onto [our] heavily firewalled and controlled network.'

For Dropbox, read also Google docs, Slideshare, or a host of other nifty applications designed to help make collaboration and project management simpler. In the interests of imagined security, we're left dependent on the clunkiest, most accident-prone ways of working. Given the proportion of email that consists of people offering free degrees, penis extensions, imaginary lottery winnings or a combination of all three, what makes the guardians of corporate and government networks think it's such an ideal way of working?

It's the attitude that leads organisations to ban Twitter and Facebook, because obviously people will only abuse it. Paul Wilkinson has an entertaining and insightful post on that one.

A few weeks ago John Denham, secretary of state for communities and local government, waxed lyrical about the possibility of freeing up local government data to allow users and citizens to share in the development of public services. It's a great idea.

But as Warren Hatter pointed out in his blog at Local Government Chronicle, 'real devolution requires reputational risk in the short-term, the inevitability of some failure in some areas, and a refocusing of accountability'.

I wonder how many people in charge of corporate and government IT networks would share such attitudes - or even recognise the concepts?