York MCN Meeting
24th October 2019
Guest speaker: Alex Bebb, Gateshead Council
In his previous role as a council tax recovery officer he had to follow rigid steps – and dealt with the same people every year.
In 2012 he started listening in to calls and read the incoming correspondence, which started a process of improved communication.
In 2017, Alex repeated the same exercise – and discovered the same problems.
There are two definitions for ‘council tax recovery’:
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retrieval
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recovery.
Council tax payers were divided into four groups:
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perfect payers
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non-perfect payers
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not organised
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non payers
Our aim was to move 3 and 4 into the payers category.
Now they have changed their approach to something much more person centred.
Look out for subtle signals of hardship. One woman suffered a stroke and her partner had to take time off work to look after her. At the meeting she was given tea and biscuits and asked: ‘Can I take the biscuit home?’
After a home visit, the same woman now claims universal credit and her partner carer’s allowance. It adds up to £700 more a month – a 360º turnaround in six months.
‘You have to build up trust with people. You’re a human being, not just someone taking money off them.’
Guest speaker: Amanda Kilroy, CEO CoLab Exeter
A cultural evolution to support complex needs working.
Amanda joined the CVS. But it wasn’t working, and had to change.
They created a community of influence. There was a need to focus, and not try to do everything.
They focused on:
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better recovery
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social justice
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wellbeing – ie health/mental health/physical activity
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belonging – ie homelessness/socially isolated.
They sourced £450K of Public Health England capital funding for recovery centres.
They moved away from war metaphors (‘the war on drugs’) to centre on wellbeing.
‘We were not doing a collaboration but becoming a collaborative’
Did away with job titles. Everyone was a creative doer, from the commissioner of public health to the homeless person who was giving their input.
CoLab is a ‘social A&E’ – with its own triage workers.
It brings together 38 agencies, receives 1,200-1,400 visits a month and has been open three years.
Service users are ‘visitors’ – ‘we wanted to be hosts and offer hospitality’.
CoLab did encounter resistance because people had been let down so many times before.
Amanda recommended people read Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges by Otto Scharmer.
Feedback
What hit home?
The power of lived experience.
What one thing can we ask for / see from this network?
To coalesce around one prototype project or idea.