This presentation explores how we can co-create value for communities in public service delivery by capturing the unmeasurable aspects of the human experience. To feel, to relate, to connect is fundamentally human. To feel, to... [ view full abstract ]
This presentation explores how we can co-create value for communities in public service delivery by capturing the unmeasurable aspects of the human experience. To feel, to relate, to connect is fundamentally human. To feel, to relate, to connect is fundamentally linked to our health and wellbeing. But how to prove and audit this? How to evaluate and evidence that when people come together in community, their health and wellbeing improves?
Measuring Humanity is a co-produced methodological and evaluation framework to measure the impact of creative community engagement approaches on health and inequalities developed with NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, black minority ethnic communities and the third sector. Underpinned by ongoing participatory-action research since 2013 using traditional (ethnography, interviews, focus groups) and innovative methods (theatre, radio, music, singing, comedy), the framework proposes a change in the way health and inequalities in community settings is understood and measured among service providers and policymakers. It also aims to shift attitudes and perceptions among academics, policymakers and service providers about ‘what is evidence?’ when humanistic person-centred approaches and measures are advocated in policy and practice.
Findings will be presented as a non-fiction narrative with video footage from applications of the framework with marginalised communities, comedians and musicians engaged with the research, and engagements with national partners including NHS Health Scotland, the Scottish Community Development Centre and Audit Scotland.
For the latter – an independent public body responsible for auditing most of Scotland's public organisations including the Scottish Government, local councils and NHS Health Scotland – being involved in this applied research has connected its strategic aims and direction to practical and on the ground changes in how it looks at effective public services. In its duty to provide the Auditor General and Accounts Commission with services to check that public money is spent efficiently and effectively, community engagement has become an increasingly important part of the body’s audit work. With the Community Empowerment Act in place, there are new aspects to consider. These include investigating how far the community asset approach is helping transform services by engaging people in different ways, and harnessing individual and community ‘assets’ rather than focusing on problems or ‘deficits’.
But to audit community engagement fully, we face the challenge of both understanding it and developing ways of assessing where it is working well. Working together with the University of Edinburgh on this project has raised tough questions for the auditor about how we ‘measure humanity’ and co-create value in public services by accounting for community members’ lived experiences. Can you connect individual, community and structural levels to ‘measure’ changes in health, wellbeing and inequalities through creative community engagement? Can you prove that an individual has achieved better life chances through being involved in some community connecting activity? These questions will be addressed through the lens of Creative-Relational Inquiry by applying the Measuring Humanity framework thereby providing a unique contribution to public management debates on ‘value’.
New directions in research methods: creative-relational inquiry in public service manageme
