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New IPPR report on relational state influence on public services

10 April 2014

Review by Judy Robinson

"Many to Many: how the relational state will transform public services is a new report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). It says that we need to reconfigure how public services work to tackle complex problems such as chronic ill health; and that the out-sourcing/silo provision on a 'payment by results' basis just doesn’t work: we can see this with the Work Programme.

What is needed is a relational state that connects up solutions to problems, creates relationships at the front line and decentralises budgets to local authorities. In brief, connect and deepen. It’s all the people centred, holistic stuff that VCS knows, inside out.

The report brings together this thinking in a persuasive argument.

I like all this and it chimes with what Involve finds, especially about health and social care. But I wish IPPR got the importance of civil society/VCS better, and how it has to be one of the keys to transforming public services."