Preventative spending in England is being undermined by short-term cuts in public services. It is vital that managers try to encourage longer-term, holistic thinking
When public services are working effectively, staff at all levels would ideally take into account the medium- and long-term consequences of their actions – whether it’s assisting one client with multiple needs or making an investment of many millions of pounds. An impressive array of case studies shows that, done well, prevention can be vastly effective – from cigarette cessation to reduced obesity; from restorative justice to youth work with pupils bored by school.
Unfortunately, this more rounded, longer-term perspective is hard to achieve. An instinct to deal with what is urgent can often overpower the good intentions of tackling what’s important. Pressure has, however, built up in the UK for a more determined approach to dealing with problems before they worsen, with important reports from the National Audit Office, including Early action: landscape review, and the Early Action Taskforce.
The government’s response to these reports has been to emphasise the priority attached to agendas such as the pupil premium, adoption, public health and Sure Start. Yet publicity does not always reflect reality.
Just as the phrase ‘greenwash’ has been coined to highlight what some corporations have done on environmental activities, we might use ‘futurewash’ to depict preventative measures that look good, but in reality are heavily outweighed by detrimental short-term cuts elsewhere.
There are no official statistics, but I have undertaken a review of trends in local authority expenditure in England for the period 2009/10 to 2011/12. This examines spending on preventative activity (such as family support services and crime reduction teams) within the context of overall local authority spending.
The analysis suggests that preventative spend declined from £18.8bn in 2010/11 to £17.1bn in 2012 – a fall in cash terms of 9.2%.
Such trends highlight the importance – even in an economy that appears to be recovering – of a strong business case for maintaining levels of preventative spend. It is highly noteworthy that, in speaking to stakeholders, the NAO researchers found in the Treasury ‘interest in the principle of early action, but caution regarding the robustness of the cost-effectiveness evidence’.
David Robinson, the chair of the Early Action Taskforce, has taken comfort from a recent Treasury statement that it takes overall responsibility, alongside the Cabinet Office, for ensuring that an effective preventative approach is undertaken by UK public services.
But more important than what the Treasury says is what Treasury does. That’s why better evidence and better metrics are urgently needed on agendas that are more likely to be preventative by their very nature – from social innovation (innovation that makes use of connections within and between communities to achieve positive public outcomes) to soft skills development in children.
And the Treasury’s policy instruments tend also to be somewhat blunt instruments. That’s why it’s also vital for public sector managers to look deeper at what action on prevention is being undertaken by their ‘mainstream’ staff, and see what steps can be taken to encourage longer-term, holistic thinking that resolves problems sooner rather than later.
Too much is at stake for short-termism to take even more precedence as budget cuts hit.
Neil Reeder is director of Head and Heart Economics, a fellow of the Young Foundation and a researcher on social value at the London School of Economics. This blog draws on analysis presented in Neil Reeder’s recent Public Money & Management article
