Think before you campaign!

“Councils 'mothballing hundreds of playgrounds' after Government cuts”
“Councils planning for 40% adult care cuts, says Adass head”
“Council set to cut support for users with moderate needs”
“Council set to remove short breaks funding”

So these were some of the headlines garnered from Googling ‘cuts and services’, and they are going to continue to pile up on a daily basis.  The natural reaction for many will be to reach for the campaigning button.

Fertile ground perhaps for long in the tooth campaigners and community activists. However, before everyone reaches for the ‘No Cuts!’ banners it is worth stepping back to think about the implications of public sector cutbacks, changes to local structures and how to campaign in this environment.

Firstly, this is no surgical strike. Cuts and withdrawal of investment is going to happen across a wider range of services and probably more or less at the same time. “Save everything” is going to be an impossible campaigns ask, wearing thin with the public and with campaigners’ capacity.

Secondly, it’s not just the money that’s going, it’s the whole landscape of public accountability that’s shifting. There will be less formal process and more community involvement at the front line promised. The old levers are not going to be there in same way. 

Third, less central targets. Maybe good or maybe not depending on your perspective. But for many another lever will have been taken away from how to hold service providers to account on service standards. We don’t yet know if and how local mechanisms will evolve to take their place.

Therefore the old ways of doing things are not going to work. Furthermore, campaigns that can only define themselves against things and not for anything are not going to get very far in mobilising public support.

Defending each individual service may not be an option because in this environment it really will be a zero sum game of what I win you lose - but when I am the user of both services, as many will be, then in effect all that campaigning may achieve nothing useful. Campaigners are going to need a far more strategic approach than in the past, even if the campaign is very local, and many will be.

Campaigners and community activists need to think about what the opportunities are as well as the threats. Many services will be reconfigured or just disappear. Not everything in the garden was likely to have been perfect before and a radical overhaul of a service can create opportunities for more user involvement and better services. If localism is the order of the day then challenge everyone to really make it work.

This may finally be the catalyst that will force local authorities and health providers to join up services; cutting out frustrating multiple assessments are a prime candidate. You need to have a vision of an alternative to invest in rather than just saving what is there. Also spend to save arguments will be the best defence but you will need to prove them, not always easy on limited resources. If there is no alternative to ‘save our...[insert you favourite service here]’ then make sure you are networking with others in the same sector or across sectors, and also try to link service users with professionals. The more you can present your campaign as protecting the community interest, not discrete services, the more chance you have of keeping the public on board. The best campaigns have been doing this for years but many still have to catch up.

But when all that is done don’t underestimate the extent to which all Governments (and local authorities) are susceptible to political expediency trumping policy direction-anyone for more school milk?