Slides from Simon Duffy's talk at the Conference of the Social Care Ideas Factory - We Chose to Climb - Glasgow 2015. Exploring theory, research and knowledge in self-directed support.

1. there are
no straight lines
in life

2. East Sussex 1988
The Institution
Southwark 1992
Professional Gift
Denver 1994
Inclusion
Edinburgh 1995
Person-Centred Planning
Glasgow 1996
Individual Service
Funds
England 2003
Personal Budgets
& RAS
Sheffield 2009
Welfare Reform
Liverpool 2002
Keys to Citizenship
UK 2011
Fair Society
England 2014
Rights
North Lanarkshire 2000
Self-Directed Support
& Support Plans

3. • Theory - What is the mountain?
• Research - What does the mountain teach us?
• Knowledge - What is useful on the mountain?
Base Camp - getting ready to climb

4. theory
ideas about
the mountain

5. • Power - mountains and pyramids
• Ideology - our strange times
• Truth - some things to hang on to
1. Theory - ideas

6. Mountains are symbols of real
power and mystery. They are
sacred places of revelation.
Pyramids are symbols of human pride
and elitism. They were built by violence
and terror to house the dead.
What’s the difference between
pyramids and mountains?

8. We must reject the pyramid

9. We must accept the journey to the mountain
www.simonduffy.info

10. all power is sustained by ideas…

11. Ideas can control us, justifying the most dreadful things…
“No one ever blamed someone if he coordinated [got
in line with Nazi thinking] because he had to take care
of his wife or child. The worst thing was that some
[intellectuals] really believed in Nazism! For a short
time, many for a very short time. But that means that
they made up ideas about Hitler, in part terrifically
interesting things! Completely fantastic and interesting
and complicated things! Things far above the ordinary
level! I found that grotesque. Today I would say that
they were trapped by their own ideas.”
Hannah Arendt

12. “These rulers of our who claim
that the prime mover of history is
the economic basis have shown
by the whole of their own practice
that the real stuff of history is
ideas. It is ideas that shape the
minds of whole generations,
winning adherents, imposing
themselves on consciousness,
creating new forms of
government and society, rising
triumphantly - and then slowly
dying away and disappearing.”
Nadezhda Mandelstam

13. We are living at the end of an age of dead ideologies.
We don’t seem ready to wake up, to start thinking afresh
and living for real. Instead we borrow dead words and
pretend they have meaning.
Marxism
Liberalism
Neoliberalism
Socialism
Eugenicism Racism Fascism
NationalismUtilitarianism Imperialism

14. Thought is a living thing
an on-going effort to understand
what is true
what is the good
what is beautiful
not a system
not an ideology
it is imagination
in the service
of love

15. Don’t let Self-directed support become about
Market competition
Cost-cutting
Consumerism
Regulation
Commodification
Personalisation
These are the empty words of dead ideologies.

16. Instead self-directed support must serve
justice and human rights
citizenship and equality
real wealth and human flourishing

17. after all, that’s why these
ideas were developed…

19. so here are 3 thoughts,
that may be useful
why needs are not enough
why we citizenship matters
what really makes someone wealthy

27. research
facts about
the mountain

28. • Ignorance - the problems of research
• Evidence - clues to what’s possible
• Understanding - possible explanations
2. Research - information

29. “In theory
there is no difference
between
theory and practice;
in practice
there is.”
Yogi Berra
The Great Gulf“Theory
like mist on eye glass
obscures the facts.”
Charlie Chan

30. “I call it theory-induced
blindness: once you've
accepted a tool and used it
as a tool in your thinking, it's
extraordinarily difficult to
notice its flaws. If you come
upon an observation that
does not seem to fit the
model, you assume there
must be a perfectly good
explanation which you are
somehow missing.”
Daniel Kahneman

32. we are not always asking
the right questions
in the right way
about the right things

33. Here I want to focus on some
recent research about a very
Scottish innovation: Individual
Service Funds
- in terms of Self-Directed Support
Act - the middle option
the road less travelled

38. Research on Inclusion Glasgow
showed, over a period of 5 years,
support costs had reduced by 44%.
Research on Choice Support showed
savings of 30% over four years.

45. The most plausible hypothesis I’ve
seen, that explains these facts is
not ‘market efficiencies’
but that when people have more
control they use money better - by
building on their own real wealth.

47. This has important consequences
for policy on self-directed support.
It means its value lies in
transparency,
flexibility,
control and
creativity.

48. Recent research on ISFs in England
suggests that this not how the current
system thinks - e.g. providers are being
contracted to deliver ‘person-centred
support plans’!!
ie. flexibility, control and creativity are
being critically undermined - in the name
of personalisation itself!

49. experience
climbers tales of
the mountain

50. • Expertise - the real and the phoney
• Guidance - things to remember
• Challenge - what we must not forget
3. Knowledge - guidance

51. It’s not tools, but people
who climb the mountain.

52. In England the misuse of
person-centred planning
& support planning
has become toxic.
It is like pyramid-selling,
each new technique
promises to deliver
what the old one couldn’t
and all at a price.
People are forgetting
that real power comes
from within people.

54. We each must find our own purpose, our own
mountain to climb, in our own way.
To support others we must listen with our heart.

55. A good life is not planned
it is lived.

56. A good life need others,
relationships,
people you can ask for help.

57. Focus on the mountain you agree on
not the molehill you don’t.

59. It’s not budgets - it’s people that make the difference.
Always seek to build community.

60. Don’t lose sight of the real mountain.
When we just focus on the latest idea
we can stop paying attention
to what is really going on.

63. Don’t let your mountain become a pyramid:
just another part of the bureaucracy
just another system change
another empty target
something dead

64. It is justice we seek.

65. There is no rule of one man here: it is a free city.
The people are lord here, taking turns
In annual succession, not giving too much to the rich.
Even a poor man has an equal share.
When the laws are written down, then he who is weak
And he who is rich have equal justice:
The weaker ones may speak as ill of the fortunate
As they hear of themselves, and a lesser man
Can overcome a great one, if he has justice on his side
Euripides

66. www.simonduffy.info