‘Yeah, I know … they say they want to get better, want to treat us as equals but they don’t seem to change much. Too obsessed with their own stuff’ she pauses, watches the remnants of the earlier shower drip from the moss overflowing the gutter while the words come, ‘I doubt they intend it but they do come across as if they know best all the time. Kind of arrogant. You have to be quite resilient to take that on because it’s not a one-time thing, you have to deal with it every time you talk, in every interaction.’ There might be the suggestion of a sigh but it’s masked by the raising of her tea mug.
We’re talking about a relationship, it has the feel of a familiar conversation. There’s no sense of angst, more acceptance, of the way it is, of this being a continual work. The relationship in question – before anyone panics about imminent indiscretion – is the one between the members of a mixed group of statutory health & care managers and their (single) representative from the voluntary & charity sector.
It’s a story that I’ve heard before, this one about equality in a relationship. It won’t take long to spot it in most, if not all, written agreements between the statutory and the voluntary, community or social enterprise sectors (VCSE) . Here’s one from one of the early innovators in integration:
‘To realise the benefits of collaboration with these VCSE organisations, they need to be recognised as essential partners and providers within the commissioning process, as opposed to welcome optional extras.’
Greater Manchester Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) Commissioning Framework and Delivery Plan, Jan 2020
That was written in 2020 – the story will have been told many times over preceding years – and there’s truth in it.
There are seven basic plots, if you follow Christopher Booker’s propositions. It may feel like there are more, but Booker brings them all down to some variation of these core seven:
The Seven Basic Plots
| Overcoming the Monster | Rags to Riches |
| The Quest | Voyage and Return |
| Comedy | Tragedy |
| Rebirth |
The stories we tell when we get together in the VCSE sector (in its broadest, most dazzlingly complicated sense) may even be echoes of these seven plots. The setting and details may change but there are a collection of well-told tales including:
Becoming an equal: by far the most commonly told story I’ve heard, like a friend who wishes their partner of many years would pay them more attention, but is too nervous to address it (Overcoming the Monster? The Quest? Rebirth?)
Ending short termism: from one off grants to short contracts, they all mean providers are chasing the next source of income even as they set up the latest offering – Tragedy? Comedy? Overcoming the Monster?
Getting core costs funded: almost ad nauseam we wish funders would recognise and fund the core costs that always sit at the heart of any charity – The Quest? Rags to Riches?
Finding an alternative to competition: we dislike (on the whole) that any commissioning process seems to result in providers bidding against each other (The Quest?)
Acknowledging inflation as real – like ghosts, real inflationary uplifts embedded as routine in contracts can be hard to spot – sometimes you may never see them, but there’s always someone else who once did, probably on a cold, dark night (The Quest?)
Sometimes I’m not sure about these stories. They get told almost instinctively when we gather together. There is truth at their core – there are always truths within every story (even ones about hobbits). Like a good story that gets retold, though, they have become part of our culture, a source of reassurance – or a way of reassuring others … ‘I’m like you, I’m part of this’.
How do you tell a different story about equal partnership – and is ‘equal’ just the grail – the quest – not as fulfilling, if found, as the promise of it? Perhaps we should ditch the term ‘equal’ and recognise ‘difference’. We may need to more precisely define those moments where equality is the goal – a decision about priorities, funding, or the design of a service. There may be times we need acknowledge difference – size and scale of organisations can affect their ability to take part, take risks, innovate. Similarly, our sources of knowledge about what is needed may look very different – community-generated stories of experience set alongside population level data, for example. Both important and useful – we could worry less about whether one trumps the other and get better at listening and understanding the story they are telling.
It may all sound terribly woolly, liberal-minded – like any good relationship, it’s complicated. That is the nature of what we’ve set out to grapple. The old stories will continue to tell their truths. In building a collaboration between statutory and VCSE partners, one that aims to decide, design and commission services together, we may need to ignore these stories for a time – set them aside and create the next set of stories.
Or should that be CO-create …
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