Radical social change with Alex Fox OBE, Charity CEO
In this episode of the Charity Impact podcast, I talk to Alex Fox OBE, CEO of the Mayday Trust.
This episode has the following chapter markers:
(00:01:23) Finding alternatives to traditional social care and Shared Lives
(00:13:11) The VCSE review
(00:22:25) Alex’s book, ‘A new health and care system: Escaping the invisible asylum’
(00:25:00) Strengths and asset based approaches in health and social care
(00:36:00) Human Learning Systems
(00:41:29) Charities need to embody the change we are calling for
(00:47:40) Resource recommendations
(00:50:47) Power dynamics in the charity sector
(00:54:25) The potential for radical changes in the sector.
Alex shares his experience from working as a social care assistant to seeing things quite differently and challenging what he’d been taught to finding out about an alternative approach to support for people needing social care – the Shared Lives schemes.
Alex became CEO of Shared Lives Plus, the representative body for the local Shared Lives schemes, which led to him writing the book, ‘A new health and care system: Escaping the invisible asylum’ to explore how this successful approach could be hidden in the social care system and how its concepts could be applied to other parts of the system. Alex shares some examples of the impact of Shared Lives enabling outcomes that just couldn’t be achieved in a traditional social care service.
We reflect on the VCSE review, which was chaired by Alex and produced an action plan in 2018 and called for two system shifts in health and social care – the shift towards co-designing health and care systems with citizens and communities, through working with community-rooted organisations which can reach and engage citizens from all parts of local communities; and a core role for those VCSE services which demonstrate they can provide support which is whole-person, whole-family and whole-community.
We discuss strengths based and asset based approaches – Asset-based thinking shifts the approach from what’s wrong to what’s strong, focusing on the capacities, skills and assets of people and communities.
“What a good life looks like rather than what a good service looks like”
Alex is now CEO of the Mayday Trust and we hear about how this charity completely changed it’s service / business model following a listening exercise with its community, radically transforming their way of working, with huge success. We discuss work on influencing the system and drawing on the human learning systems principles – being a learning organisation.
As Alex says: “How we work is as important as what we do as charities.”
We end the conversation by discussing the issues of power dynamics in the sector and whether the charity governance model is the one we want for the charity of the future.
“We could be approaching some really radical changes in our sector, which we should be excited about.”
Scroll down for episode notes and links to resources.
Alex Fox OBE, CEO of Mayday Trust
Alex is CEO of Mayday Trust, which offers strengths-based coaching to people going through tough times like being homeless, and works with organisations and local areas to replace our broken support systems, through the New System Alliance.
Previously, Alex led Shared Lives Plus, the UK network for Shared Lives and Homeshare. Alex sits on the NHS Assembly and was Vice Chair of Think Local, Act Personal, developing the Asset Based Area model. He is a trustee of Alternative Futures Group, Honorary Senior Fellow, Birmingham University, a Human Learning Systems associate and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
He chaired the government’s review of health and care charities (2015-18), the Social Care Learning disability & Autism Advisory Group and co-founded the Social Care Innovation Network. Alex is author of A new health and care system: Escaping the invisible asylum, and Meeting as Equals on building asset-based charities. He was awarded an OBE in 2017.
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New - radical social change podcast with @alexfoxshared
— Charity Impact Podcast (@CharityImpactPd) April 11, 2023
- Escaping the invisible asylum
- Strengths and asset-based approaches to health social care E.g. @SharedLivesPlus @MaydayTrust
@SystemsHuman https://t.co/vk2rXDUUGH #charity #socialchange
You can find Alex on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Alex’s book, A new health and care system: Escaping the invisible asylum, argues for a complete transformation of the professional/client relationship which is at the heart of all of our long term support services. Learning from Shared Lives, Homeshare and other ‘asset-based’ models, our public services could instead be based on more reciprocal, long-term and effective relationships, which would reframe our whole health and care system around creating wellbeing and resilience for individuals, families and communities.
Reviews
This is a hard-hitting critique of our current care system – an account of why things are the way they are and how they could be different in future. Everyone who cares about health and social care should read it, and respond. –Jon Glasby, Head of the School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham
This is a profound and timely call for a different relationship between people and the services and institutions of the welfare state. It’s a radical and necessary call to arms for a more human, personal and connected society. –Simon Stevens, Chief Executive, NHS England
In this insightful book, Alex Fox gets to the heart of why attempts to reform our care and health services so often falter, and, drawing on his unique perspective, sets out a genuinely original alternative. –Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA
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If you are not securing the amount of grant income you think you should be, it is probably not due to a lack of capacity. It might be for a number of more complex reasons, such as organisational issues which require better collaboration with colleagues in other teams such as services, finance, policy and so on; or performance issues, such as ineffective practices within the trust fundraising programme. Or you may have a temporary reduction in capacity due to a trust fundraiser leaving or being on maternity or sick leave.
We have found that charities with small fundraising teams are often failing to maximise grant funding opportunities for one of three reasons:
We find that small charities usually have a history of raising most of their income from either grant funding or community fundraising.
If you lead a small, grant funded charity, you will probably be skilled in bid writing by necessity. You might be a great bid writer. However, we know that this is only one aspect of your role, alongside overseeing your services, managing the team and often everything else from accounting to fixing the printer! If you are stretched thinly, you will be missing out on funding opportunities that could help to grow your charity.
If you lead a small charity that relies on other forms of fundraising, you and your team may have very little experience of identifying and securing grant funding. You might not know where to start in terms of identifying the right funders to apply to, writing a compelling case for support or how to even make time for this amongst everything else.