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• Everybody needs good street soviets First, isn't there a real danger that neighbourhood policy is being made by middle class policy wonks who don't know what actually existing community looks like? There's a 'festival of community' happening in the next couple of weeks and its speaker list is dominated by people like Ferdinand Mount, Clare Fox and Frank Furedi. What gives?Second, while the ODPM is developing a policy for creating neighbourhood structures, it isn't developing a policy for creating good neighbours. If... from : simonparker 30th January 2006
• The Leadership Imperative Our report on leadership in children's serives is out today (download it here). After much scratching of heads we called it The Leadership Imperative; we argue that the greatest challenge facing children's services is to change professional cultures, and whilst central government can help support this, it certainly can't 'deliver' it.The report's received some coverage in the last week or so. Hannah has a peice on the Guardian online; there is a report in the TES this week looking at our... from : duncanoleary 7th December 2005
• It's all academic So i've been doing some reading for our project on Organisational litercy. Having been handed Our of Our Minds by Ken Robinson (i wasn't handed it by Ken Robinson, he wrote it) i started there. He makes an interesting point: that we often dismiss ideas as being 'purely academic' when we think they're out of touch with reality, but yet we have always placed such cudos on academic study in the way in which we educate people.It reminded me a bit of the point made by Charlie Leadbeater in Living... from : duncanoleary 5th December 2005
• 'Organisational Literacy' project - We?ll be looking beyond literacy and numeracy (though of course not dismissing them), to things like organisational savviness, communication, teamworking, problem-solving, creativity, and the ability to pick up new skills or new ideas quickly. - We?ll be having a look at Enterprise education in its first year in schools. - We?re looking for some case studies of organisations that help prepare people for the workplace, through things like working with schools, setting up training programmes... from : duncanoleary 30th November 2005
• Promoting Procreation... It seems that the Hungarians are looking west for policy innovation. The Hungarian PM Ferenc Gyurcsany has just announced the introduction of baby bonds to encourage Hungarians to have... bigger families. Sound familar? Gordon Brown introduced the same thing in the UK in 2003.For anyone interested in the latest policy debates in Hungary, check out Demos Hungary, our sister organisation based in Budapest. from : rachelbriggs 28th November 2005
• Leading change There was an article about our children's services project on Guardian Online last week. We said that rather than focusing on rearranging the structures of local authorities, the emphasis should be on changing the culture of the organisations delivering the Every Child Matters reforms. Leaders throughout local government and in the organisations working with it hold the key to initiating and sustaining this sort of transformation.You can read more about what we suggest here. from : hannahlownsbrough 24th October 2005
• A new focal point for public services: the interface spaces It feels like every event I go to at the moment about the future of public services is drawing the same conclusion: that the only means of personalising services and raising user satisfaction is through a focus on the 'interface spaces' - the points of interaction between public sector frontline staff and those trying to use the service. But how can these spaces and interactions be improved? Will Hutton makes a convinving case here for starting, not so much with the users themselves - whose... from : sophiaparker 17th October 2005
• Open Secrets - Scaling Up Innovation Last night we held the second in the Open Secrets series of discussions that we are running with the NCSL and the DfES Innovation Unit ?this time on Scaling Up InnovationExperiences from business, from education and from social and political activism made for an interesting and wide-ranging discussion. We made some progress towards uncovering some of the methods, the mentalities, the structures and the scenarios that make it possible to bring innovations to scale.But it was clear that this is... from : kirstenbound 11th October 2005
• NFER change for Children Site Just come across what looks a useful resource for anyone interested in Children's Services - The National Foundation for Educational Research has just launched it's Change for Children site. from : duncanoleary 11th October 2005
• I've been inspecting you Five steps to better inspectionWe expect a lot of our leaders. In education, we expect them to motivate, to innovate, to hold and be held to account, to combine competition collaboration and ? increasingly ? to align ?school standards? with the needs of the ?whole child?. Yet we often forget exactly who all the leaders in an education system really are. Headteachers have formal responsibility for their schools, and Chief Executives for their local areas, but there is another cadre of leaders... from : duncanoleary 7th October 2005

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