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Leading by stepping back

A reflection piece exploring the spread of

Asset based thinking across housing, health

and adult social care

By William Lilley

(2014)

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Contents

Introduction

Fundamental reimagining of the welfare state

An NHS Approach

A Local Authority Approach

A Supported Housing Approach

Conclusion

References

Five discovery steps and recommended reading

Special Thanks to those that attended our NHF round table plenary

Cormac Russell, Nurture Development, Claire Henry (NHS Alliance), Jake Elliott, Jackie Perry, Plus

Dane, Moira Griffiths, Family Mosaic, Merron Simpson, NHS alliance, Tammy Murray, Housing And

support alliance, Andrew Van Doorn, HACT, Vic Rayner, sitra, Pat McCardle, Mayday Trust, Maf

Potts, Independent, Emma Hodges, St. Giles Hospice, Peter Molyneux, Common Cause Consulting,

Nick O’Shea Resolving Chaos, Andy Williams, St. Mungos, Peter Stafford, Places for People, Jake

Eliot, NHF, Lynne Livsey, NHF, Patrick Murray, NHF, John Wade, Bromford, Tony Bullock,

Staffordshire County Council, Paul Dodd, NHS

This paper was written as part of the Clore Social Fellowship, and represents the views and thoughts

of its author William Lilley (Clore Social Fellow 2013).

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Introduction

At a time of unprecedented change across housing, health and adult social care, many local

authorities, providers and communities are looking towards the adoption of ‘asset’ or

‘strength based’ approaches that turn the current ‘deficit’ or ‘needs’ based public service

culture upside down.

The terms ‘Assets’ and ‘Strengths’ appear with significant frequency in the Governments

new Care Act and approaches such as Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) are

being explored by a growing set of local commissioners and leaders across the respective

divides of adult social care and health.

This reflective learning piece seeks to further the understanding that supported housing

providers may or may not have of approaches such as ABCD and explore what positive

impact they could have in addressing some of the sectors key challenges at a critical time.

The paper seeks to understand the key motivations that are driving many commissioners

and providers towards the adoption of this thinking, but is not an exhaustive list of what has

been or is being developed.

In producing this paper, with support from the National Housing Federation, I organised a

discussion roundtable with the sectors leading asset based practitioners and housing

professionals, conducted a range of key informant interviews and undertook a desktop

literature review on best practice across the UK. We also had access to a number of local

authority and NHS commissioners who are seeking to introduce ABCD approaches at a local

commissioning level.

This is a modest look at asset based approaches across sectors, with a particular emphasis

on sharing my own personal insight in how housing providers could navigate through this

complex and radical new world.

Towards a fundamental re-imagining of the welfare state

In response to George Osborne’s recent pledge to increase the speed of public spending

cuts over the next five years if elected, the Institute of Fiscal Policy claimed the cuts would

change local government ‘beyond recognition’ and force a ‘fundamental re-imagining of the

state’ (Guardian 2014).

For many in public service this transformation has already begun in earnest with the scale of

the current cuts already deeply felt. The estimated 40% reduction to local government

budgets since 2010 has forced many to completely reinvent themselves in order to maintain

basic public services.

In 2009 the Labour government removed the ‘ring fence’ that protected one of the UK’s

largest investments into prevention based services, Supporting People. The programme has

suffered severe cuts to its scale and scope, with many local authorities cutting the

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programme as much as 80%, and in some areas completely decommissioning such services.

As local authorities respond to the ‘graph of doom’ (Game 2012) scenario that many are

now facing, the future of the programme remains in serious doubt.

In this backdrop of constrained public resources, there is a growing local and national policy

interest in approaches which have long championed the community alternatives that exist

outside the professional context. Ewan King, Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), has

written of the vast ‘potential’ of the Care Act to make a positive shift away from the

predominant deficit model, ‘if we adopt an asset-based or strength-based approach, we can

harness these resources to produce better outcomes’. (King 2014).

Ewan and SCIE, which have helped to produce the Act’s guidelines, highlights that the Act

requires all care providers to adopt a greater asset based approach in the design and

delivery of care and support, setting guidelines to ensure all care assessments are written

around the strengths and assets of individuals not just their needs and problems. The Act

encourages social care professionals to consider the wider relationships, networks and

resources people have in understanding their needs.

For many the emergence of asset based thinking is a yet a further iteration of the Coalitions

statecraft ‘Big Society’ and the further decentralisation of power from ‘Whitehall’ to the

‘town hall’. Some are re-framing the Welfare State as the ‘Relational State’, a new

relationship where citizens are in the driving seat of local services, dictating the agenda

giving way to ‘Real power for citizens over the public services they use. People, not providers

or bureaucrats, should be in charge of public services’ (Cooke 2012, p10)

With this evolving context as a backdrop, there is an established wealth of theory and

practice from around the UK and internationally that many commissioners and providers are

beginning to look towards in re-imagining the role that public services play in people’s lives

and in communities, and how asset based approaches could begin to shape them, shifting

away from what has been described as a ‘professional gift’ or ‘deficit based’ approach.

Understanding the Deficit Perspective

For many the welfare and economic system that governs public expenditure was broken

long before the 2008 crash and subsequent deficit reduction with some arguing that ‘we

have a 1940s’ system which is increasingly unfit for purpose in the early twenty-first

century’. (Glasby 2013).

MP Paul Burstow, and former Minister for Care, has gone further than many in helping to

bring asset based thinking to the mainstream, and has argued that “Social care is facing

tough times. Social workers are deployed principally as border patrol, policing access to

increasingly insufficient resources against a growing clamour of seemingly limitless need.

The only access point, a humiliating demonstration of vulnerability and dependency. It is a

deficit model that has dominated practice and policy for decades. (Paul Burstow, MP) (Fox,

2013, p.5).

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For many the ‘system’ or systems across health and adult social care have reduced

individuals and communities to ‘needs or deficits’, creating a dependency on services and

professionals whilst service professionals ride roughshod over the ‘assets’ that exist outside

the system. There is also a broad recognition that this has led many including people with

learning disabilities and older people to become invisible in systems, when agencies focus

on the needs they define and not the whole life that exists beyond eligibility criteria.

For some this has contributed to an ‘age of loneliness’, where over 800,000 UK residents are

‘chronically lonely’, with 46% of people aged 80 or over report feeling lonely some of the

time or often (BBC 2013).

The national Social Enterprise Shared Lives led by Alex Fox has long argued that adult social

care needs to fundamentally change, commenting that the ‘current legislative framework

creates two very separate worlds: the ‘ordinary’ world of family and community life and

what some have termed ‘service land (RSA 2013)’. Shared Lives and a Coalition of

organisations across the UK have worked closely with the Government in making sure ‘Asset

based’ and ‘strengths based’ approaches central in radically changing how local authorities

commission care and support to vulnerable individuals in the newly created Care Act.

The asset based view contrasts starkly with the primarily ‘needs based models’ of

programmes such as Supporting People, a programme that has underpinned much of the

support services delivered by most housing associations over the past decade.

SP is enshrined in the language of deficits and needs, carving up the ‘vulnerable’ population

in which commissioners separate individuals into defined care groups such as mental health,

single homeless, ex-offenders and commission providers to undertake ‘need based

assessments’ with set portions of one-to-one support provided by allocated ‘support

workers’ that operate across vast geographies.

Although SP helped to make a significant impact across the UK, some have criticised the

programme for focusing too narrowly on ‘eligibility’, ‘lengths of stay and move on’, and

ultimately not looking at the whole person beyond their housing support needs. (NHF 2013)

For many providers, the removal of the ring-fence has signified a new era of flexibility and

innovation, for others, in particular commissioners, using a wholly deficit based approach is

still the best way of delivering what remains of a fledgling programme. For some, asset

based approaches present a new way to deliver services in constrained times and an

approach that they have been prevented from delivering in a previous period of restricted

funding and commissioning regulations.

So how are providers and commissioners making this shift from deficits to assets?

Understanding an Asset Perspective

Asset or strengths based approaches are not new ideas. According to Trevor Hopkins,

Author of the seminal paper An Asset Based Approach to Community Wellbeing- Glass Half

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Full (Hopkins 2010) there is a broad church of ‘asset based’ approaches which reflect this

philosophy and includes techniques and frameworks as diverse as; Appreciative inquiry,

ABCD, Asset Mapping, Time Banking, and World Cafes. Many of these models, approaches

and concepts have decades of research and practice behind them. The following is a brief

overview of a range of approaches sited by Hopkins, with a small number further explore

throughout the report.

An Asset Based Tool Kit

- Asset Based Community Development- A framework developed in the US in the

1970’s, which encompasses a number of approaches such as time banking and world

cafes. It centres around specific geographic areas and identifies the natural

‘community connectors’ that can help to uncover the naturals assets and potential of

an area, and thus build upwards the capacity to nurture it further.

- Local Area Co-ordination: Originally developed in Western Australia in 1988, local

area co-ordination aimed to grow ‘individual, family and community self sufficiency

so that individuals with intellectual disability can choose to live with their families, or

in their local community without compromising their quality of life’. (Inclusive

Neighbourhoods) The Australian model has significantly influenced the Care Act,

through its UK counterpart Inclusive Neighbourhoods, which promotes the practice

of Local Area Co-ordination across the UK. The method combines a number of

different roles which includes community building, advocacy, brokerage and support

to access appropriate services.

- C2 Connecting Communities: A UK asset based framework akin to ABCD, C2 was

founded by a health visitor Hazel Stutely in the early 1990’s, whilst working with

residents of the Beacon estate in Falmouth. Hazels works has developed into a 7

Steps Towards Transformational Change framework that supports communities and

public agencies to work collaboratively in strengthening community capacity to self-

organise.

- Asset Mapping: A technique that is often used in isolation to frameworks such as

ABCD, and is a process where the community works in partnership with agencies to

identify the hidden assets of an area.

- Time Banking: According to TimeBanking UK, time banking ‘is a means of exchange

used to organise people and organisations around a purpose, where time is the

principal currency’ (www.timebanking.org). Some operate at a community level

organized by local people, others are coordinated by external organsiations.

- World Cafes: A structured conversational method to open up large dialogue across

communities, facilitating and enabling open intimate conversation

- Appreciative Inquiry: A working method that seeks to find the best in people and

communities, systematically identifying what works in communities and

organisations and co-producing strategies that maximise their potential for

application. It follows five key stages than enable constructive decision making to

help develop strategies for change.

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An ‘Asset perspective’, which in essence underpins many of these techniques and frameworks, concentrates on building on the existing capabilities and strengths of individuals and communities - recognising the talents and gifts of the ‘vulnerable and marginalised’ - and building on the wider capacity of communities alongside public services. A key asset based approach that many commissioners across adult social care and health are turning towards and one to which many owe a spiritual debt to, is Asset Based Community Development (ABCD). ABCD was pioneered and developed by Professor John McKnight and John Kretzmann of Northwestern University in Chicago, USA over three decades ago. Although not a prescriptive system of thought, McKnight developed a framework of thinking which has been applied all over the world. In the 1970’s after working in many ‘socially deprived’ communities, McKnight made the realisation that seeing communities as ‘broken’ would never help them move forward in achieving their aspirations. He concludes; “It offended me, that all the government agencies, all the helping groups, all the social services, all the health services, anyone who was concerned about neighbourhoods, about cities, especially lower income families, looked at them as broken places with broken people” John McKnight (SiG 2013) ABCD is based on the basic proposition that public agencies needs to focus on fostering and nurturing the local strengths and protective factors (known as assets), and not just addressing pre-determined problems or needs (the more traditional ‘deficits’ model). ABCD is a radical departure from how many public services in the UK are organised, and fundamentally rejects framing individuals and communities solely by their needs. In the words of the ABCD Institute founded by McKnight, ABCD “Builds on the skills of local residents, the power of local associations, and the supportive functions of local institutions, asset-based community development draws upon existing community strengths to build stronger, more sustainable communities for the future.” ABCD Institute While there are no pre-set or prescribed steps to Asset Based Community Development, there are a number of processes or ‘stepping stones’ which enable deeper engagement and greater levels of citizen led action, in areas often no bigger than a ward or street. Faculty member of the ABCD Institute and Director of ABCD Europe Cormac Russell is one of the UK’s leading developers of the ABCD framework and has devised a set of guiding stepping stones, known as the Six Stepping Stone method, which is currently being practiced in several areas across the UK. “The real radical nature of the conversation is not to get curious about how we can reform our systems, but how we can get really curious in how to nourish and flourish the community of alternatives that allow people to lead the lives of their own choosing, using the strengths they have within them and around them” Cormac Russell (NHF ABCD Roundtable 2014) The ABCD Six Stepping Stone Methodology as developed by Nurture Development Ltd

1) Find Connectors: The key first step outlined in the ABCD framework is identifying the local connectors and natural leaders that exist in your local community and

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neighbourhood- but are often not the usual suspects in resident associations and committees. These are often local residents or service users that exist outside of the professional networks. According to John McKnight they have the following key characteristics; “Always looking for other people’s gifts, see the positive, the “half full” in everyone; well connected themselves; trusted by others; know how to create new trusting relationships; believe in the people in their community and; get joy from connecting and inviting people to come together”. Finding these ‘connectors’ and co-producing with them from the outset is the first critical foundation in the ABCD framework.

2) Asset mapping: Perhaps the most famous of the steps in ABCD is Asset Mapping, which has become a tool often used outside the framework. Asset mapping as practiced in ABCD defines community assets as; • the skills, knowledge and connections of local residents • the collective power of local informal associations and clubs • the resources of public, private and non-profit institutions • the physical and economic resources of local places • the shared stories, culture and heritage of communities

Community Connectors work in partnership with Community Builders to conduct asset mapping in their own communities. The purpose of asset mapping is to understand what ‘primary’ resources and assets exist at a neighbourhood level, outside the secondary resources of agencies and institutions. This process then helps to reveal what support communities and individuals genuinely need, and what they can do for themselves.

3) Identify community building themes: A critical component of ABCD is not to pre-define the agenda with deficit language such as needs or services, but to embrace the themes that individuals and communities identify themselves as having. Key themes are identified around people’s strengths and gifts, and not on what they can’t do, or what they lack. A range of asset based approaches are used to help facilitate the building of themes which include appreciative inquiry and World café, techniques used to angle group discussion towards progressive action.

4) Building connections: The next step is to encourage people who have identified the themes and strengths to build and develop their own action groups and community initiatives, developing specific activities that can help improve their community.

5) Match grants: If community connectors can not locate the resources to initiate or sustain projects within their own communities, then Match grants could be made available to them in developing ideas. These range in value and are dependent on match from the connectors and other community resources that they can develop.

6) Celebration and planning: The last step in this process is the celebration of what successes and achievements residents and participants have made during the process. It also provides opportunity for communities to plan what strength based approaches could like across their neighbourhoods and how they could take forward further change.

Nurture Development’s application of ABCD principles can, but not always, involve the introduction of Community Builders, paid and voluntary individuals whose sole purpose is to identify and build the capacity of ‘natural community connectors’, people who exist at a hyper local neighbourhood level, often users of services or local residents.

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This approach recognises that areas traditionally seen as ‘deprived’ or ‘disadvantaged’ comprise of many individuals, associations and organisations that have a passion and the capacity to improve their communities. Enhancing this potential can build the strengths that can act as ‘protective factors’ against a range of health and social problems. ABCD is not seen by its practitioners as about replacing vital services or reducing the need for professionals, but to understand what communities and individuals can do for themselves and what support they need from outside agencies. In practice, the system involves Community Builders ‘mapping’ local assets in partnership with communities and professionals with ‘no pre-determined agendas’, building relationships/ connections between individuals/ associations/ public sector and then developing collective activities to enable residents to become self-organising and build upon existing interests and projects.

Case Study: You’re Welcome - Building hospitable communities across

Gloucestershire

One of the leading exponents of Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) in the UK and

Europe is the Dublin based consultancy Nurture Development led by the ABCD Institute

faculty member Cormac Russell.

ND is currently working with a range of local authorities, third sector organisations and

health commissioners across various different ‘learning sites’ in the UK. One of its earliest

adopters of ABCD and it Six Stepping Stones approach in the UK is the Gloucestershire based

Barnwood Trust, a “charitable foundation dedicated to creating the potential in

Gloucestershire for people with disabilities and mental health challenges to make the most

of their lives.”(www.barnwoodtrust.org/)

The trust was founded in 1806 and has been providing support for 150 years. In 2011 they

embarked on a 10 year journey called ‘You’re Welcome’, which aims to grow ‘welcoming

and hospitable communities’ across the county. At the core of the strategy are the principles

of Asset Based Community Development.

Cormac Russell of Nurture Development was engaged by the Trust to help implement ABCD

and the Six Steps method across the county. He writes “We started working intensively in

2010. Here we did a lot of work with the public and third sectors to help ‘warm things up’

and find where the energy was, and then started seeking partners to create learning sites

and getting closer to regular folks”(College of Medicine 2014).

What is striking about You’re Welcome, is the lack of an overriding agenda or specific area of

‘need’ that drives it. Central to Cormac’s approach to ABCD is ‘relocating authority’ back to

citizens, away from providers and commissioners. Therefore it is essential that

‘conversations’ and ‘connecting’ is led by the citizen, with their freedom to digress and

generate meaning greatly respected.

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For Cormac it is essential to start from the community and individual perspective, rather

than that of commissioners or providers. He states “I think starting the conversation off

from community alternatives to institutionalisation, might be more useful than having

conversations about reforming our systems and how ABCD can help us achieve that” (NHF

Roundtable 2014). For him its about ‘leading by stepping back’ and ‘handing power back’ ‘to

communities and individuals’, recognising that public services have so often taken authority

away from communities and with-it their sense of control and independence. He says’

“When people are given power and control to dictate what their good life looks like, actually

what they surround themselves with has very little to do with the services that we think they

have given right to”. (NHF Roundtable 2014)

What started as an initial pilot developed by a sole charity, has become a central plank in

delivering prevention based services across housing, adult social care and health.

An NHS Approach

“We stand on the cusp of a revolution in the role that patients- and also communities- will play in their own health and care. Harnessing this ‘Renewable Energy’ is potentially the difference between the NHS being sustainable or not” Simon Stevens, Chief Executive, (NHS England 2014) “Social networks have a larger impact on the risk of mortality than on the risk of developing disease, that is, it is not so much that social networks stop you from getting ill, but that they help you to recover when you do get ill” (Marmot, 2010, p.138).

Although the Coalition Government pledged in 2010 not to ‘cut NHS’ spend and ring fenced

the overall health budget including public health, the subsequent freeze on growth in

funding, the recent Care Act and the rising demand on services has led many NHS Trusts and

Clinical Commissioning Groups to search for different approaches that move away from

crisis management to community based prevention, recognising the potential role that

patients and their communities can play in the self-management of their own health and

wellbeing.

Recent approaches and policy trends such as Personalisation, recovery models in mental

health such as the ImROC Recovery College network and NESTA backed programmes such as

People Powered Health (Nesta 2012) have all served to galvanise a movement in health

commissioning towards promoting community alternatives to the medical and ‘professional

gift’ model. This steady growth in interest was recognised recently by the largest health

research charity, the Health Foundation, who have recently commissioned a national

evidence gathering exercise to better understand the impact of asset based approaches to

addressing health and wellbeing issues. Various NHS Trusts, Clinical Commission Groups

and to a larger extent, Public Health departments have or are exploring the implementation

of asset based approaches to addressing key issues such as health inequalities. Some are still

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approaching the subject with particular disease groups, others are using techniques such as

‘Asset Mapping’ alongside traditional Need’s assessments.

Case Study: University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust RIPPLE

Project

A specific example where an NHS health provider has referenced and attempted to apply

the principles of ABCD is the University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust’s led

RIPPLE project recently funded by the Health Foundation, working in partnership with a

range of local and national charities.

The Department of Health estimates that there are three million people living with Chronic

obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in the UK. COPD is the second most common cause

of NHS emergency admissions, and the condition contributes to one in every 20 deaths in

the UK. COPD is an extremely debilitating long term condition, characterised by severe

breathlessness which often physically limits a patient’s ability to leave their home. This has a

huge knock on effect on their quality of life, leading to anxiety, depression, low self-esteem,

which further impact on their physical health and wellbeing.

It was this severe combination of key issues affecting this patient group that inspired a

number of partners in Coventry led by University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire NHS

Trust, to establish an initiative that draws on the principles of ABCD. The primary objectives

of the RIPPLE project are to increase the social inclusion of respiratory patients in

Coventry/Rugby and South East Staffordshire, and to map and match patients to community

assets that may not be currently accessing. A range of local third sector organisations play a

critical role in assessing individual patient’s level of social inclusion and then matching them

to existing or newly developed community assets that they map in partnership with patients

and communities.

Local charity Grapevine matches patients to existing (or bespoke) community resources and

also will help patients to access these resources, for example through buddying or help with

transport. Since the project was launched in July 2014 over 50 participants have been

engaged and received a variety of interventions. According to the projects lead, the project

is working ‘with one of the most socially isolated patient groups due to the severe nature of

the COPD condition’ (A 2007BLF survey found that 90% of people with COPD were socially

isolated) and that just accessing this patient group is ‘extremely challenging’ due to the early

findings are that there is a high degree of unrecognised mental health issues (Especially

anxiety) that present upon engaging with people.

The principles of ABCD appealed to the Acute Trust as it took the hospital outside of the

clinical environment and into the community. This was a group that the local hospital

provider recognised would not access the traditional means of engagement and had little

access to community resources.

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Despite these challenges, the project is beginning to ‘make a real difference to peoples lives’

and the initial completed data sets are pointing towards an average global increase of up to

40% in individual wellbeing using the Warwickshire /Edinburgh wellbeing scale

(http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/med/research/platform/wemwbs/) and is contributing to

a broader step change in how organisations deliver support to this patient group. Although

not an exact application of ABCD it is a step towards recognising the potential of community

alternatives can play in improving health and wellbeing.

Case Study: C2 Connecting Communities

“It is my belief that many of us, as service providers, have lost sight of the role of our

communities to deliver sustainable change for themselves. All we have to do is to create the

the appropriate enabling conditions. The key to this is to listen and deliver on their

aspirations and priorities. The people do care and they will make it work” Hazel Stutely OBE

(www.healthcomplexity.net)

A further example of an asset based approach to health wellbeing is C2, short for

Connecting Communities. C2 is the local application of an ‘assets’, or ‘strengths’ based

approach developed in the UK over 20 years ago. C2 supports both local residents and

professionals to improve health, wellbeing and local conditions in disadvantaged

communities. It is also one of the few asset based programmes in the UK that has been

independently evaluated by the Department of Health funded Health Empowerment

Leverage Project.

C2 was originally developed from the work of two health visitors, Hazel Stuteley and Philip

Trenoweth, on the Beacon council estate in Falmouth in the early 1990s. As a response to

coping with an impossibly demanding case-load, and with no start up funding, they set up

the resident-led Beacon Community Regeneration Partnership (BCRP) which reversed the

decline of a heavily stigmatized estate and in 4 years reduced prevalence of health issues,

crime, reduced unemployment and improved educational attainment.

Although C2 does not apply the ABCD framework as conceived by John McKnight it starts

from a similar premise that there are many assets in a community that are not always visible

and looks to locate the energy for change by unearthing and connecting residents and

services. C2 builds on assets across communities and believes strongly that residents are the

solution to problems and not the problem.

The methodology was evaluated retrospectively by Exeter University and the C2 7 -step

model was developed around these findings. The equally challenging community of Redruth

adopted the use of the C2 7 Step Model supported by BCRP, with Camborne quickly

adopting the programme with significant success. Currently the C2 framework has now been

implemented in over 20 communities nationally including Solihull and Cannock.

A Local Authority Approach

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The LGA have recently stated that the latest Treasury settlement requiring Local Authorities

to find a combined £2.6 billion by 2015 ‘will be the toughest yet’ and will see ‘the biggest

cuts in living memory’ (LGA 2014). This colossal reshaping of local government is leading

many local authorities around the UK to completely review and re-design their local offer.

For some this means creating a ‘next generation’ of councils that completely remove the

dependency on central funding and scale back to a basic commissioning role. Alongside this

many are seeking to reshape their local offer around the assets and capacities of local

communities, stepping outside of the professional context, and empowering

neighbourhoods to take control.

In this vein the UK’s largest Local Authority Birmingham City Council’s Adult Social Care

Directorate recently commissioned University of Birmingham (Glasby 2013) to undertake a

national review of asset based approaches, highlighting the work of Shares Lives and the

Western Australian approach Local Area Coordination. A year prior to this the Council

commissioned the Social Enterprise and NHF member Turning Point to introduce its

Connected Care programme into the city, working with local communities to build the social

capital and independence of vulnerable adults. But Birmingham is not alone in this

endeavour, Staffordshire County Council is one of the first in the UK to publically

commission ABCD practitioners to work across the County.

Case Study: Staffordshire County Council

Over the past twelve months Staffordshire County Council and a range of local partners

have been exploring the potential of Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) across

the county. Led by the Public Health Directorate, the partnership aims to explore the impact

of adopting the principles of ABCD in a range of local communities.

The county recognised some of the limitations of traditional deficit base approaches to

commissioning and service design, the process of continually identifying ‘problems’ and

then commissioning or directly delivering projects operated by ‘specialist’ professionals.

They recognised critically that this would be neither sustainable nor cost effective in the

long term.

Alongside this they recognised that communities are comprised of many individuals and

voluntary associations that have the ability to make positive contributions to their

neighbourhoods and already play an unrecognised role in enhancing and complementing

traditional professional services.

The commissioners understood the experimental nature of ABCD and that outcomes may

take time to surface. Therefore they took the decision to collaborate with various different

local partners from outside the council and commission a range of approaches that could

cultivate an asset based perspective across the county. A specification was designed with a

broad set of outcomes which were neither prescriptive nor deficit based, recognising the

need to embody the principles of ABCD right from the beginning of the process.

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They decided to undertake a competitive commissioning process which invited

organisations from within and outside the sector to bid to undertake an Asset based

programme of activity that could galvanise a new approach to cultivating community

alternatives. Through a six month process they finally agreed to work with three ABCD and

asset based experts in three distinct localities across the county. These included Trevor

Hopkins of Asset Based Consulting and author of the Glass Half Full Policy paper working

exclusively in Tamworth, C2 Communities working in Cannock and Nurture Development

working primarily in Lichfield in partnership with Bromford.

This is a pioneering approach to introducing asset based thinking, inviting three of the UK’s

leading experts to work with local partners. Each partner brought a different set of Asset

based skills to each locality and would over two years work with a network of local

stakeholders to implement a cultural change programme that would start conversations in

local communities.

A Housing Approach There is a growing movement within Supported Housing that has already begun to embrace

asset and strengths based approaches. Organisations such as the Foyer Foundation and the

Mayday Trust have developed their own approaches which are based on a similar

perspective, described as Advantaged Thinking (Foyer 2014). An approach that has grown

out of 21 years of the Foyer movement, it aims to disrupt the conventional negative

language that frames young people by disadvantages and the perceived ‘problems’ it may

bring. Mirroring the principles of ABCD, Advantaged Thinking champions the skills and latent

talents that every young person has, whilst encouraging providers and commissioners to

rethink how they fundraise, campaign and deliver services using the negative images for so

long associated with young people. Jane Slowey, the CEO of the Foyer Foundation writes;

“We would do better, collectively, for all our young people if we replaced ‘disadvantaged thinking’ with the reality of who young people are and allowed space for their authentic voices to be heard so they can change the conversation.” The LIN network commissioned a report in 2012, co-authored by Cormac Russell, explicitly

exploring asset based approaches to older people in supported housing, siting many asset

based examples across the sector. Most recently SITRA have been commissioned to

undertake an evaluation of an ABCD social enterprise called Vintage Communities, that was

recently commissioned to undertake ABCD in Balham and Barking and Dagenham (Sitra

2014)

St Mungos, a London based leading homelessness charity has been a long time advocate of

strengths based approaches to tackling homelessness. Their approach includes the

adaptation of mental health recovery projects such as the Recovery College model and the

introduction of Time Banking.

Case Study: Bromford and the Deal

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Bromford is a social enterprise and housing association based in the West Midlands,

managing 27,000 homes and providing support to over 60,000 people. In 2010 they began a

journey in re-defining their role as a traditional landlord and began to question the way

customers were being supported. John Wade, Director of Innovation, Employment and

Support describes the transition away from a world of seeing customers as passive and

dependent, to one where they began to inspire their customers to fulfil their potential and

recognises the gifts and skills. A latent potential that all to often goes unnoticed in a system

dependent on needs and services. John Wade writes that the housing system for so long as

been built around what people can’t do, as opposed to what they can do;

“So the more needs you have, the more problems you have, the more things that you can’t

do; the higher up the list you go and the greater the chance you have of actually getting one

of these scarce resources. And we’ve collaborated in that, we have systems which are all

about trying to weed out the worst excesses of potential problem customers, who might

smash up our houses or cause anti-social behaviour”

The Bromford Deal (Bromford 2014) is central to this new shift in thinking and is beginning

to see a new two way relationship being formed between customers and Bromford which

recognises the gifts and talents that residents have in making real change to their lives and

communities. The Deal includes a new emphasis on asking individuals what they want to

achieve in life at pre-tenancy stage and what a good life for them looks like in their

community through the development of a new Start Well team and strengths and needs

based assessment at tenancy signup.

The shift in thinking has also switched Bromford towards developing new partnerships with

sectors and organisations it has typically not partnered with. The organisation is a key

partner in Staffordshire ABCD initiative and will be working with Nurture Development in

Lichfield, where it manages 80% of the social housing stock. The partnership hopes to work

in a range of areas that have been blighted with the stigma of deprivation and hopes to

explore the latent potential in these communities that is so often overlooked or undermined

using the Six Steps ABCD Method.

Key challenges and opportunities

ABCD and the asset based perspective is a radical and transformative way of seeing the

world, and can not be transposed onto a service or sit comfortably in a ‘needs’ driven

system. Nor can it seek to replace the welfare state and the need for vital support services

to vulnerable people who may need them. As many of the examples I have showcased

demonstrate, there are however varying different ways commissioners and providers are

interpreting and applying the principles.

It is also clear from speaking to many of the specialists and advocates of frameworks such as

ABCD, that such approaches do not work when driven through pre-determined agendas and

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commissioned in the traditional approach. You have to be prepared to look beyond how

systems are currently organised, and allow communities to set the agenda.

This paper and my research highlights the emergence of asset based practice across

housing, health and adult social care, and demonstrates the varying natures of the agendas

that continue to drive them. It also highlights key frameworks for successfully applying

approaches such as ABCD in a UK context, and the many different ways to approach this

subject.

In the many interviews I conducted with early and advanced adopters of asset based

thinking, key themes and issues emerged that presented challenges to successfully

embedding an asset based approach.

They also complimented the key issues raised at the roundtable we organised with leading

ABCD practitioners and commissioners to debate the opportunities and challenges across

health, housing and adult social care.

A need for culture change across a needs based culture: Many of the commissioners and

providers I have spoken to identified the challenge of ‘unlearning institutional behaviour’

developed over many years of commissioning and providing ‘deficit based services’. The

Care Act goes some way in placing a greater emphasis on assets, however it will take a

broader movement of organisations across the sector to undertake culture change within

their respective organisations and challenge local commissioners in recognising ‘assets’ on

an equal footing to ‘needs’ .

Changing how services are commissioned will be central to this as currently most

commissioned services are still framed and driven by the deficit model. But alongside

changes in commissioning culture, will be changes in the organisational culture of provider

organisations, a change that needs to take place from boardroom to the frontline. This is a

central requirement to successfully embedding an asset based perspective and to effectively

introducing models such as ABCD.

Change will be gradualist. Many Asset Based approaches are still in their infancy in the UK,

with evidence on their effectiveness still being gathered. Those I spoke to had concluded

from the outset that this approach required time and experimentation, with many

establishing relatively ‘low risk’ pilots. The need for multiple partners across service silos

also required collaboration on a significant scale, requiring resources and contributions at a

time of reduced budgets and commissioning capabilities. Change will therefore take time.

Exploring new sustainable investment models: Recognising that change will be gradual, many are beginning to look at new funding models which attract alternative investors to local authorities. Social Investment funds such as the Big Society Capital have backed community development approaches such as the national scheme DERic (Developing Empowering Resources in Communities) which help to empower local communities to develop their own social enterprises and projects that build social capital and resilience.

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Approaches such as the Neighbourhood Matching Fund pioneered by the US community organiser Jim Diers (www.neighborpower.org) could also provide a viable answer to sustainability. Working under the then Seattle Mayor , Jim Diers established an initiative that encouraged communities to match grants provided by the city with their own gifts of time or sources funded via other income streams. The programme helped to encourage many thousands of grassroots community associations and initiatives to transform neighbourhoods and communities, using the talents and gifts of local people.

From the bottom up: Key to securing the future sustainability of these models may lie in

ensuring that they have been built from the bottom up, rather than developed using models

or expertise developed outside of the locations where they are being tested. With

frameworks such as ABCD, this often means working at a street level, working with small

clusters of local communities rather than across entire wards, towns or cities. It also means

letting go of control, and allowing the agenda to be set by communities and individuals. This

is challenging and almost impossible in a service culture where typically commissioners start

from need such as ‘older people’, dementia or mental health.

Unmoored from communities: A key finding from my research and practice is just how

important ‘place’ is in asset based thinking. What appears central in approaches such as

ABCD and the Six Steps Method is the targeting of small neighbourhoods, often at a street

level, recruiting community connectors and builders that originate from these communities.

This is a stark contrast from programmes such as Supporting People, where support workers

would roam vast geographies where they would rarely frequent in a personal capacity. To a

certain extent housing associations have often grown to a size where they have little

connection with the original communities that grew them. Returning to these roots and

developing knowledge at a hyper local level seems to be a critical first step in successfully

implementing asset based approaches.

‘If it’s not measured, it doesn’t exist:’ One of the central challenges that many

commissioners and providers faced was effectively measuring and evidencing the impact of

asset based thinking and approaches such as ABCD. With change gradualist, achieving

outcomes can take time and can twist and change throughout a programmes life-time.

ABCD and Asset based approaches are in their infancy in the UK, with only a small number

having been independently assessed therefore growing the evidence base will be critical to

demonstrating the validity of these approaches into the future. Organisations such as

Nurture Development are pioneering their own approaches to measurement, arguing

traditional measures are geared towards a deficit/needs model and not a model that

assumes strengths as its starting point.

Recognising assets are not a veil for cuts: As one participant mused, “This is a challenging

concept to how services operate, unsettling for professionals whom already feel at risk due

to the financial climate”. There are some including participants I engaged during the

research that see the recent emergence of approaches such as ABCD to the UK as a veiled

justification for the removal of vital adult social care and NHS services. In my encounters

with commissioners the cuts and future reductions planed were high in the mind, with many

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seeing frameworks such as ABCD as way of reshaping a world with the reduced need for

professionals. But many I encountered have been attempting to introduce asset based

approaches for a long time and see the cuts as serving as an opportunity to drive this way of

thinking to the top of the agenda.

Final recommendations

Finally, my exploration of asset based thinking and the frameworks of ABCD across housing,

health and adult social care points to a vibrant movement of change in our perception of

communities and the individuals that we serve. It also highlights the urgent need for a

coming together of local agencies and commissioners that support vulnerable people across

the siloes, that can combine endeavours and resources in moving asset based approach’s

from the margins to the mainstream.

A critical convergence of approaches will increase the speed of change but also maintain a

coherence in the methods and thinking that underpins the practice. Many of the examples

that I have explored over the past year are based on varying interpretations of asset based

principles, particularly ABCD, and in some cases have little in common with how they were

originally conceived.

Organisations such as the ABCD Institute could be a useful go to agency in ensuring

approaches are consistent to the original principles.

Key Recommendations for the NHF to take forward from the report include;

- A further surveying of interest in asset based approaches across the membership is

required. It was not possible within the confines of this report to survey the broader

interest of members, but the key roundtable organised in 2014 suggested a growing

interest in the supported housing sector to take many of these new approaches

forward.

- Developing further guidance and signposting to resources in supporting the

implementation of asset based perspectives including training materials and

communities of practices. There is a rich network of information and resources

available, some of which I have included within this report. However a section on the

Federations website that could signpost members could be greatly appreciated by

those beginning to explore the space and its importance in the context of the new

Care Act.

- Site visits could be co-ordinated by the Federations local networks to support

interested supported housing associations and commissioners to visit the various

learning sites across the UK currently implementing frameworks such as ABCD and

C2 Communities.

- It is suggested that asset based working is made a central exploratory theme in the

new social enterprise and wellbeing group currently being established in the national

housing federation.

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- Join and support movements such as the End Loneliness Campaign and the Coalition

of Collaborative Care, broader social movements that are highlighting the

importance of asset and strengths based approaches

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References

BBC.co.uk (2013) Jeremy Hunt highlights plight of loneliness (18/10/2013- 17.41)

http://www.barnwoodtrust.org/youre_welcome/youre_welcome (Last accessed

01/01/2015)

Broad, R, Duffy, S (2012) Local Area Coordination (Inclusive Neighbourhoods) http://www.bromford.co.uk/ Bromford Deal (Last Accessed 01/01/2015) http://deric-cic.org.uk/ (Last Accessed 01/01/2015) Game, C (2012) INLOGOV Blog The Barnet Graph of Doom (http://inlogov.com/2012/05/23/barnet-graph-doom (Last Accessed 26/10/2014) Health Services Management Centre, University of Birmingham August (2013) Turning the Welfare State Upside Down: Developing a New Adult Social Care Offer (Birmingham: HSMC) King, E (2014) Social Care Blog: Our Greatest Asset is Ourselves

(https://socialcare.blog.gov.uk- Accessed on 16/12/2014)

Hopkins, T (2010) An Asset Based Approach to Community Wellbeing- Glass Half Full

(London: LGA)

Local Government Association (2010) Glass Half Full: How an Asset Based Approach can

improve community health and wellbeing (London: LGA)

Local Government Association (2014) Autumn Statement 2014 03/12/2014 (London: LGA)

NHS Alliance (2011) Empowering Communities For Health: Business Case and Practice Framework (Exeter: NHS Alliance) Russell, C (2014) Blog: Innovator Interviews (http://www.collegeofmedicine.org.uk- first

accessed 10/10/2014)

Royal Society of the Arts (RSA) (2013) The New Social Care: Strengths based approaches

(London: RSA)

Institute of Public Policy Research (2012) The Relational State: How recognising the

importance of human relationships could revolutionise the role of the state (London: IPPR)

Sigeneration.ca (2013) A focus on assets, not deficits leads to positive change

(http://www.sigeneration.ca- 19/08/2013)

SITRA (2014) Vintage Communities (London: Sitra)

Slowey, J (2014) A Movement for Change (http://foyer.net- Accessed 06/05/2014)

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Stevens, S (2014) NHS Confederation Annual Conference (NHS 2014)

Further reading

There is a rich wealth of literature available online that explains many of the approaches

and examples described in this report in greater detail. Here is a list of the reports and

guides mentioned in this report. Some of these links will provide a useful starting point to

those in the process of exploring asset based thinking and its application within their

organisations.

Strengths based Approaches to Aging Well: The Housing Dimension: An important first

step in framing strengths based approaches from a housing and older peoples perspective

written by Cormac Russell and Lawrence Millar (2010, Housing Lin Network).

http://www.housinglin.org.uk/_library/Resources/Housing/Support_materials/Viewpoints/Viewpoin

t30_Strength-Based_Approach.pdf

Community Connectors: Croydon Asset Based Community Development Pilot Project

Report: Croydon Council is one of the first adopters of the Nurture Development ABCD Six

Steps Methodology in the UK and has been instrumental in testing the effectiveness of the

method. This report highlights the impact of three ABCD pilots in three separate wards over

the past two years. (2014 April)

http://www.croydon.gov.uk/contents/departments/community/pdf/abcfull-report.pdf

Vintage Communities: an evaluation of two pilot projects in Balham and Barking and

Dagenham: In February 2014, Vintage Communities approached SITRA to evaluate the

impact of two pilot project sites in Balham and Barking and Dagenham and to identify key

strengths and weakness of the Vintage Communities’ Asset Based Community Development

(ABCD) approach in meeting their strategic objective ‘to create self sustaining initiatives to

fulfil the aspirations of the community’.

http://www.vintagecommunities.co.uk/pdf/Vintage%20Communities%20Final%20Report%2

0241113.pdf

Practitioners Guide to Asset Based Community Development (ABCD Europe, Cormac Russell 2012) A practical implementation guide for community organisations and individuals seeking to apply the principles of ABCD in their communities A Glass Half Full: how an asset approach can improve community health and wellbeing.

(Improvement and Development Agency, 2010) Authored by Trevor Hopkins and

commissioned by the Local Government Association in 2010, this was one of the most

seminal asset based reports which has greatly influenced many of the commissioners and

providers highlighted in my report.

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http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/aio/18410498

Development of a Method for Asset Based Working. NHS North West, 2011. An influential

example of how an NHS organisation has set about to introduce strengths and assets into

Joint Strategic Needs Assessments across the North West

http://www.nmhdu.org.uk/silo/files/development-of-a-method-for-asset-based-

working.pdf

Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a

Community’s Assets (Kretzmann, J.P. & McKnight, J, 1993. Asset Based Community

Development Institute. ACTA Publications) A Key introduction to those exploring the

framework of ABCD as pioneered in the US. Despite its US context the examples and

methods sighted have significant application in the UK.

http://www.abcdinstitute.org/publications/basicmanual/

Empowering Communities for Health: Business Case and Practice Framework Health and

Empowerment Leverage Project (Produced by the HELP team: Brian Fisher, Hazel Stuteley,

Gabriel Chanan, Susanne Hughes, Colin Miller, Steve Griffiths 2011). The central DOH

funded evaluation behind the Connecting Communities project as sighted by this paper,

which demonstrates the financial savings of a ABCD approach.

http://www.healthempowerment.co.uk/

The New Social Care: Strengths Based Approaches (Alex Fox, 2013, RSA Public Services

Unit) A key document capturing the strengths based approaches across adult social care.

The document was highly influential in influencing the former care Paul Burstow to push for

a greater emphasis of asset based approaches in the newly created Care Act.

http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/1521635/RSA_2020_Future-of-Social-

Care_Pamphlet.pdf

Turning the Welfare State Upside Down: Developing a new Adult Social Care Offer (2013, Jon Glasby, Robin Miller, Jennifer Lynch- University of Birmingham and Birmingham City Council) A key report commissioned by Birmingham City Council which highlights best practice in implementing strengths based approaches. http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-social-sciences/social-

policy/HSMC/publications/PolicyPapers/policy-paper-fifteen.pdf

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Asset Based thinking- Where to start?

If you are a housing association and are thinking of embracing an asset based perspective,

here is some helpful first steps base on my experience and that of my organisation

Bromford.

Step 1: Are you ready?

Asset based thinking is a deeply challenging perspective and a fundamental break from

‘business is usual’ deficit based models- it’s a change in culture in how teams deliver

services and perceive ‘service users’- this will take time and resources. At the core it is about

reducing the need for professionals when they are not called for and may not be the most

popular rallying call when many are facing redundancy. A quick test is surveying the

attitudes of colleagues, residents and all importantly board members to assuage where they

are with their thinking. Use the Half Glass Full analogy and find out how read they are for

change.

Step 2- Go visit an Asset based project- If you think you have the right culture but still need

to understand the methods and madness, then go visit a real life project with key members

of staff- decision makers. There is a whole movement across the UK practicing, some of

which I have covered, which are putting asset theory into practice. Pick up the phone and

make a visit.

Step 3- Look at the language you use- Deficit thinking is all around us and is the

predominate way most public services and our wider economy is framed, so you will find

pretty much all the language you use is in some way tainted by ‘deficit think’- spot how

frequently you use words like needs, vulnerable, services, homeless, safeguarding. Jon

Glasby in his text Turning the Welfare State Upside Down, simply looked at websites and

how organisations described their offer. Scan through yours, are you talking about problems

or needs, or are you using words life ‘gifts’ and ‘strengths’.

Step 4- Speak to commissioners across the divide- A critical challenge to this way of

working is the fact that we are often tied to deficit based contracts in deficit based siloes. Its

critical to connect with commissioners and find out how amenable they are to an asset way

of working. Chances are they may well be ahead of you, with the new Care Act and cuts

driving many to engage in this way of thinking. It is also essential to talk to organisations

around you that are not the usual suspects, such as the Police, GP’s or the Ambulance

Services. The chances are they too are arriving at similar conclusions and have resources to

share.

Step 5- Start small, think big- If there is one thing I have learned, is that ‘asset approaches’

take time. There is no easy quick win here, you will need to start small and expect change to

be gradual. Take small steps such as redesigning assessments to take great consideration of

the strengths individuals have, run a workshop with colleagues using techniques such as

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World Cafés or Asset Mapping which help to open up dialogue and getting people to map

the assets in partnerships with local communities.