Times are difficult and we need to talk to each other about what we ought to be doing. Yet, conversations seem to be no longer available in many settings. We need to learn to work differently and develop new knowledge, skills and the flexibility to respond in new ways to systemic and complex problems on the ground. This can be both scary and exciting.
In Scotland, the Christie Commission has suggested that changing the way we organise our public services is going to take much more than money and calls for a radical, new and collaborative culture. This is a challenge for Government as shown here: in the absence of ‘new money’ national government will need other ways of influencing to achieve the outcomes it seeks in public programmes and services.
This new publication is based on an action inquiry process which supported the evaluation of a publicly-funded health improvement programme. It only skims some of the issues but hopefully it’s a contribution to some important conversations we need to have about evidence generation and use and the role of action research. I hope to write more about this topic soon so please send any comments.