Place-based Systems Change Community of Practice

Is Place-based Systems Change getting harder?

At Renaisi’s most recent Place-based Systems Change Community of Practice we explored a question that has frequently come up in our work with places, people and partnerships: is place-based systems change getting harder?

This question helps us consider how the wider context for the place or system that we’re trying to change might be shifting and how these shifts in context impact our work, Without doing this, there’s a risk that our approach to place-based systems change becomes stagnant. Taking a dynamic approach to change requires us to recognise that the system around us might require us to adapt our thinking and do things differently.

Place-based systems change work is generally designed with a set of assumptions or hypotheses about how the external environment will respond to the work you are doing. So when there are significant changes in that external environment – it can mean we have to update the hypotheses we hold.

After sharing some of our observations about how the external context around PBSC has shifted and how this is influencing the way we approach change, we facilitated small group discussions with the Community of Practice to map out their experiences.

Four main themes emerged from the community members’ work mapping out their assumptions about how to ensure that a place-based systems change initiative will become sustainable:

Community ownership of the initiative. This requires centring the voices of those most effected by the initiative in its design and delivery, so they continue to have an active stake in maintaining it. If you are a national organisation engaging in a PBSC initiative your approach should be designed in a way that ensures it builds capacity locally and leaves the place with tools that they can adapt and use to sustain impact.
Changes in attitudes and mindsets. Getting “hearts and minds” convinced of the need for a PBSC approach is one of the most challenging parts of the work and critical for sustainability. This requires building trust across decision-makers (particularly those in the Local Authority), taking the time to develop alignment around shared goals, shifting perceptions around what to look for as evidence and success and building a culture of balancing long-term change over short-term wins.
Changes in infrastructure. This requires ensuring there is long term capacity to sustain a PBSC initiative. It could be through developing a ‘backbone organisation that can hold the work in the long-term or through ensuring that there are staff roles across a range of local organisations that will sustain the work.
Shifting how the initiative is resourced. The sustainability of a PBSC initiative is shaped by its funding. Ensuring that a lack of funding is not a barrier to sustainability can require getting a long-term funding commitment, or ensuring that there is a diversity of funding sources involved in the work.
Policy change. Campaigning and engaging with policy-makers to shift local and national policies that are holding issues in place can also enable a PBSC initiative to be more sustainable over time – as it no longer has to battle with a policy that is harmful or not fit for purpose.

We then moved onto mapping out the trends that community members were coming up against in their PBSC work, which could mean that they need to adapt their assumptions:

Members shared that demand for their services is increasing while resources remain stagnant or decreasing. They are seeing an increased reliance on voluntary sector to meet basic needs, coupled with rising running costs and commissioning processes that ask organisations to deliver more for less money.
Some see that these pressures are creating a fearful environment, which is driving a return to top-down leadership and monitoring from public and statutory funders. Members shared that this is also leading to a prioritisation of short-term survival over long-term change.
When jobs in the voluntary sector and in Local Authorities (many of whom are going through restructures) feel insecure we see high staff turnover. Members shared that this is making it harder to build the relationships needed to support PBSC work.
Some are experiencing community disengagement, where individuals are turning away from services due to over-consultation and “broken promises” as they face the same increasing financial pressures in their home that organisations are facing in their budgets.
Alongside all of these forces of resistance, some members felt that there is a sense that the overlapping crises we are facing could drive systems change. We are seeing central government recognise that the current system is not working, and begin exploring how to devolve power as a way to change it. The group was excited to see what opportunities this could bring, and this energy was leading many of them to continue attending network meetings and learning spaces like ours to build solidarity despite increasingly limited resource.

Want to get involved?

The community of practice is open to place-based practitioners, working at any scale, and funders of place-based work. We’ll be continuing the conversation at our next Community of Practice meeting, which is in-person in London on the 24^th June from 11am-3:30pm. Sign up on Eventbrite to join us.