Human learning systems

New and different approaches to commissioning and funding relationships for charities.

Public services for the real world

Practical insights on how commissioners and charities can work together, using an approach called ‘human learning systems’, which recognises the need for service provision to be more ‘person centred’, to meet the multiple and complex needs of individuals and communities, and the value of adaptability and learning together. For commissioners looking to achieve this, charities are essential: they deliver vital services, trusted by the people who use their services, and have a deep understanding of local needs.

Human Learning systems approaches with charities

What processes are needed?

Getting started

  • Start from a different place right at the outset of the process, beginning with people using services in your area.
  • Initiate different and regular conversations/service design meetings about how to tackle an issue.
  • Come together around a problem that matters in your town or city. Reflect together on the collective issues in your local area and what can work well, recognising that each place looks different.
  • Reach out to your local communities and regularly communicate with those accessing support – they are experts.

Experimentation

  • Staff and people who access support should be given ‘permission’ to try something out.
  • Acknowledge it is okay if things do not go to plan.
  • Take risks with ‘experimenting and experiments’ with new people and different contexts/fields.
  • Learn, share, reflect, and respond to what has happened.

Learning

  • Find ways to capture and share learning, with all parts of the system, as you adapt and change your activities.
  • Include both breakthroughs and disappointments, and reflect and respond to learning in real time.
  • If something has worked, amplify and share it. Do not let go of successes and celebrate those from the viewpoint of the people using the services. This will bring people on the journey to see the benefits of this way of working.

What behaviours are needed?

Relationships and conversations

  • Consider ways to change the culture of competitive funding so that organisations become more equal partners.
  • Get to know each other better. Find opportunities to gather people together from all parts of the system in your area, to bring everyone along on the journey.
  • Be prepared to have challenging and uncomfortable conversations on difficult issues.
  • Have a forum where all partners can be honest with each other. Start a conversation and then be relentless by keeping it going regularly, perhaps even the same day every week.
  • Be open and listen to a diverse range of perspectives and encourage honest and challenging conversations to ensure it is not the ‘loudest’ voice that takes control over decision-making.

Language and bureaucracy

  • Develop and use language make sense to you all.
  • Strip away burdensome bureaucracy from funding and commissioning processes to enable charities to respond quickly and imaginatively to local need.

Be human

  • See being human, kind, honest and trusting as part of your job: ‘It is about being human, being kind to yourself, being kind to your peers and being kind to the people that you’re working with. If you adopt that principle you are going to get it right most of the time’.
  • Communicate shared values across and then beyond your team to develop shared goals.
  • Be brave and take risks to demonstrate that these values and principles are embedded in everyday practice within and across organisations.

Encouragement and support

  • Encourage leaders to show commitment, support and trust to staff and volunteers.
  • Ask for external support, whether this is for leaders or everyone in an organisation/system. It can be training or facilitated spaces for reflective practice. Find ways to learn something together; use every opportunity to make links and develop partnerships.
  • Allow time and space to acknowledge, reflect and respond to the emotional demands from this way of working.

In partnership with

Fellow travellers

Our fellow travellers exploring human learning systems include:

With thanks to Damien Rosser/Eden Project Communities and CaVCA for the photos used on this page.

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