Delivering Public Services That Work: v. 2 The Vanguard Method in the Public Sector: Case Studies

Behind the doom-laden headlines, a quiet revolution is taking place in the public sector. In the police...hospitals...local government...social welfare...costs have been significantly reduced, services have improved exponentially, and there is a real 'danger' of improving morale. There is now no politician or executive in any branch of local government or any area of the public sector who can say: "It won't work here". The evidence is clear: it does work here, and right across the board. It's four years since John Seddon's first assault on the regime of 'choice', targets, delivery, inspection, incentives, 'free market' reforms and back-office 'economies of scale' that was paralysing UK local authorities. In 2010, and in response to calls for evidence that Seddon's Vanguard Method really did offer the kind of dramatic improvements that he claimed for it, a first collection of Case Studies showed Vanguard's Systems Thinking approach at work in (mainly) housing and housing benefits departments. This latest collection spells out the kind of dramatic performance improvements that have been consistently achieved in the NHS, the emergency services and a wide range of local authority departments. Taken together, the briefings and case studies offer compelling evidence for anyone in the public sector (anywhere in the world) trying to transform service delivery on a falling budget.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 describes the application of the Vanguard Method to eight different systems: Police forces in the Midlands and Cheshire; the Fire and Rescue Service in Staffordshire; Development Control at Rugby Borough Council; Food Safety in Great Yarmouth; Legal and Social Welfare Problems (Advice UK); Health and Social Care (NHS Somerset); the care of Stroke patients at Plymouth Hospital. Part 2 has three topical briefings on the vexed question of 'demand' and why it is that increasing resources to meet increasing demand is so often the wrong answer: Richard Davis discusses hidden demand, the role of geography and the problem with treating people as 'customers'; John Seddon explains why mass production logic, where demand is treated as a transaction, standardised to become a commodity and then shared in an attempt to cut costs, is flawed; Charlotte Pell illustrates, through stories from people on the receiving end of the services described in this book, why it is cheaper to deliver public services that work.