We are curating a thought leadership series about opportunities for participatory and deliberative processes in a shifting political landscape following the 2024 general election.
This will inevitably be a time of change — and we want to take this chance to think about some of the key issues, tensions and arguments that surround deliberative and participatory democracy in the UK and beyond.
📖 Read our third blog, titled: ‘Could public participation be the key to a fair and effective benefit system?’ by Dr Louise MacAllister below.
We need a fair, trustworthy and effective benefit system; where people are supported to find work if they are able to do so, and can trust the system as a financial safety net if they cannot. High quality, deliberative public participation is an essential part of designing such a system and there are some critical elements that ensure success.
Involve has been working on two projects that demonstrate that deliberative public participation is well equipped to draw on lived experience to influence policy design to overcome financial inequality; designing solutions that meet complex challenges, and work for those they are designed to help.
This week, the recommendations of the Expert by Experience Panel Minimum Income Guarantee was published by the Scottish Government who commissioned Involve to deliver this panel. And a report published by the New Economics Foundation on how conditionality (the things people have to do in order to receive welfare benefits) can be re-thought to help more people into better work; drew extensively on two deliberative workshops Involve delivered as part of this work with participants who have currently or recently been subject to conditionality.
Taken together both of these pieces of work demonstrate that deliberative public participation is well equipped to influence policy design to overcome financial inequality; designing solutions that meet complex challenges, and work for those they are designed to help.
Why public participation is essential to design fair benefit systems
Welfare benefits have traditionally been designed and imposed with top down ideas driven from party political positions, without evidence about what is needed to live a dignified quality of life nor to effectively support people into work where possible. A top down model of service design without input from those who rely on welfare benefits has led to avoidable and unnecessary issues that do not consider the lived reality of living on a very low income.
For example Universal Credit was designed to have a 5 week wait before the first payment to ‘mirror the world of work’; failing to account for the variety of work based payment models and the reality that a 5 week wait, without income or savings, leads to extreme hardship including going without food. Further, conditionality has been presented as a necessary way to ensure compliance in the benefit system, yet a report by the New Economics Foundation in 2023 argued that relationships based on compliance undermine productive engagement with the system leading to poor outcomes for claimants.
These issues cause real hardship and reduce effectiveness of policy, and could be avoided through involving the people said policy is designed to help, in the design. However, in order to realise the full potential of this approach it is essential to avoid tokenistic participation. To engage tokenistically without taking seriously the recommendations of public participation would undermine trust and risk real harm to those who are sharing potentially traumatic experiences in good faith.
Through the Minimum Income Guarantee Lived Experience Panel and the New Economics Foundation workshops we have identified the key elements that enabled meaningful participation, contributing to the engagement of participants and validity of the process that are shared below.
Centring the needs, knowledges, and experiences of people that a system is designed to help, ensures that important elements are not overlooked, priorities are met, and everyday challenges are recognised and overcome through design and deliberation. When provided with Information on the structural constraints and challenges, and given time to discuss the issues in small groups, members of the public with lived experience are able to arrive at measured and useful recommendations. We know this creates policies that work better on the ground. In order to do this work well there are two key challenges to overcome through good practice; firstly to avoid tokenistic and extractive engagement, and secondly to address concerns from policy makers that people with lived experience produce biased recommendations.
Seven elements to ensure success and avoid tokenistic engagement
1. Participant safety is vital.
Asking people to reflect on potentially difficult experiences should not be undertaken lightly.The potential for harm needs to be taken seriously and addressed within the design of the process. We built in three practices to achieve this:
- Cocreated conversation guidelines. A set of guidelines for everybody to adhere to that are not just suggested to participants, but that participants create themselves based upon what they need in order for the space to be safe and productive.
- Professional support. Access to professional well-being support and advice on finance and benefits for any issues that may arise for participants.
- Respectful and tailored design of activities. Working in small groups with an impartial facilitator, activities should be designed to allow participants to share as much or as little of their experiences as they feel comfortable to do so, and relate it to what they have heard about the challenge and the discussions within their group.
2. Be transparent and honest about the difference that the work participants put in will make.
The principles of transparency and having a clear impact (making a difference) are integral parts of effective deliberative public engagement. However they take on additional layers of importance when participants are sharing potentially very difficult lived experience as part of the deliberative process. The commissioning organisation should be committed to using the recommendations, and should be upfront to participants about this from the start so that they are clear that their participation has purpose.
3. Breakdown hierarchies of knowledge and give value to lived experience.
Involving people with lived experience in the design of social policy is based on a recognition that professional experts cannot do this alone. Indeed when they have tried, systems have not worked well for the people they are designed to help. Financial precarity can lead people to feel disempowered, unheard, and subject to top-down imposition of ideas about what is right for them. Public participation in social policy design can undo this, fundamentally shifting the way we frame ‘expertise’ and need to value lived experience and professional expertise without hierarchy.
4. Participants should be kept informed about how their work has informed policy development.
Time should be given to communicating clearly with panel members about how they have had an impact on decisions. This was done throughout the Minimum Income Guarantee Experts by Experience Panel and summarised in their final meeting within a thank you video was provided to participants by the Cabinet Sec for Social Justice Shirley-Anne Somerville. In this video, the Cabinet Secretary emphasised the value and respect given to panel members, and spoke how their work would help. As in all pieces of work, impact after public participation should always be shared with participants.
Three elements of good design to arrive at implementable recommendations
The second key challenge to overcome in order to realise the full potential of public participation in social policy design, is to address concerns of decision-makers that involving publics with lived experience in design would provide unrealistic or biased recommendations. We recognise that this is a risk if public participation is not designed well, however when it is designed well we have found that members of the public are able to weigh up the challenges, synthesise information with diverse lived experiences, and arrive at measured, reasonable, and implementable recommendations.
Bringing people together to hear from each other bridges divides — even for those who aren’t in the room. We know that the wider public are more likely to think something is fair when it’s been shaped by the judgement of people like them.
The necessary elements of design that overcome this risk and provide high quality recommendations are as follows:
1. Bringing together the right people.
Lived experience of any issue is not singular and is experienced differently by different demographics and people living in different situations. It’s important not just to recruit people who want to have a say on the topic but to ensure that participants reflect demographic diversity and a range of different experiences. In both the Minimum Income Guarantee Experts by Experience Panel and the New Economics Foundation workshops, we recruited participants to ensure demographic diversity. With the Minimum Income Guarantee Panel we carried out additional conversations with participants to understand their household context and types of experience of financial insecurity.
It is also essential to acknowledge some people face additional barriers to participation. Paying gift of thanks to compensate people for their time as well as travel costs and childcare expenses, providing initial and ongoing support and a point of contact, and responding to any accessibility needs helps to ensure a diverse group of participants in the process to reflect the greatest range of viewpoints on the issue and enable high quality deliberation.
2. Being real about the challenge and working together.
Rather than consulting participants on a policy idea in the style of a focus group, deliberative public participation and co-design creates a sense of a shared problem that can be solved by working together. Our experience has shown that when participants are aware of the constraints and opportunities they can build recommendations that fit within these and can be implemented successfully. They are also able to use their diverse experiences to generate creative solutions.
3. Building on both above points, there must be plenty of time for facilitated deliberation to make clear the challenges, values, positions, and to weigh up ideas.
Having adequate time ensures that everyone is able to contribute to the discussion and all views considered. When participants have time to deliberate they move beyond ‘front of mind’ or ‘knee jerk’ responses and develop thoughtful recommendations.
Policies work better in practice when they are grounded in the lived reality of those they are designed to help. People who experience financial insecurity are often disempowered through traditional consultation. But bringing together policymakers with those such policies are designed to help, can both rebuild trust in decision makers and systems of support and develop grounded, realistic, and effective policies to overcome poverty and financial insecurity.
>> This is part of our 10 Opportunities for the first 100 Days series.