Good council: Ealing’s story

The centrality of social connection has been hiding in plain sight. Running for over 80 years, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has long concluded that our connections with one another “keep us happier and healthier. Period.” More recently, psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad has demonstrated that social connection is the most important determinant of our overall health, finding that those with stronger social relationships are 50% less likely to die over a given period of time than those with fewer social relationships. 

The RSA’s recent elevation of social capital in the public debate has also been important and energising, as evidenced by the number of people and organisations who have taken social connection, relationships or tackling loneliness as a guiding purpose. The World Health Organization identified social connection as a global health priority and the US Surgeon General described social isolation as an epidemic. And, on a smaller scale, organisations in Britain such as the Relationships Project and Neighbourly Lab have been advocates and innovators in this area – as has Ealing Council.

“Social connection is the most important determinant of our overall health.”

Everyday connections

When I applied to join the council as chief executive, I argued that social connection should be at the heart of our purpose. This chimed with the vision and philosophy of a political administration determined to do something different with their time in office. But Ealing Council is not an academic institution or a research institute. Our residents expect us to act to make their places, spaces and lives better. So what does social connection mean for our council in practice?

The work the RSA has done with partners on Revealing Social Capital, funded by Nuffield Foundation, and recently launched at the Patron’s Lecture, shows that social capital is the most important factor in social mobility. Most excitingly, it provides the best evidence for where some of the most valuable social capital is built – across social and economic differences. It shows that the places that count are the informal spaces in civil society – the clubs, hobby groups and interest groups. For anyone who works in a council, this is something that we intuitively know and see, and this is where our organisations can have a big influence.

It’s not straightforward. There are a lot of hopeful but ineffective interventions, and lots of the go-to of community work has little evidence behind it. So, we’ve experimented and generated an abundance of initiatives to see where that connection can be nurtured. 

One key insight is that we don’t need to do a lot of new things – we already have thousands of touch points with our residents across the 80+ local services we run, from parks to leisure centres, social care to housing. What is most important is how we do things. Every one of these is an opportunity to build social connection. 

So what has worked, and what hasn’t?

Listening culture

Leisure, sports, advice and networks are hardly new activities for a council, but these interventions rely on a different culture of listening and engagement. One that starts with what’s already strong in a community and builds on it, not a deficit mindset of problems that need ‘fixing’ by public sector professionals. It requires humility and new types of subtle statecraft.

And it’s important to acknowledge that we sometimes get it wrong, even as we try to change.

We recently worked with our foster carers to redesign our foster care service. Thirty of them spent a week with us building relationships and revamping a service that had lost touch with some of their needs. But our feedback loop was too slow, and the continuity of the work and relationships was broken by staff turnover. After the foster carers’ effort with us, we didn’t keep our side of the bargain and we let the progress drift. Some months later, I had a dispiriting conversation with a foster carer who felt we had only done it to impress Ofsted. It was a clear reminder that sustaining a new culture in a financially pressured sector on the front line of many social crises requires more than just ideas.

Councils rarely make the headlines until things go wrong. Most recently the financial challenges have been cutting through to the national conversation with frequent reports of dozens of councils now on financial life support to even provide services at the legal minimum level.

But even if our councils were fully funded, would they be doing the right work, in the right way? Has the practice of councils and the policy expectations of central government kept up with the needs and aspirations of citizens today? I’d argue no – and our job as public servants is to be restless in the search for the responses that meet the challenges of the day. 

Our response at Ealing Council, in our patch of West London, is to put social capital and social connection at the heart of all we do.