Total What?

Since starting this blog last August in a fit of bad tempered rage I have unwittingly created a rod for my own back by posting daily. The initial anger seems to have dissipated and sometimes I  suffer from a bit of writers block. Maybe I have run out of things to say, or worse am merely repeating what I've said before, but in a slightly different way. Just as irrational  thoughts of knocking it on the head creep up on me, something comes along like news of this recent meeting in London. I notice that probation chiefs were at a study day to hear Lord Bichard talk about 'Total Place'. I try and keep up, but this seemed to have passed me by, but handily there is an explanation on their website: 


"Total Place is not just another Whitehall initiative. It is about giving local providers the incentive to work together in new ways for the benefit of their clients and citizens - and the opportunity to tell Government how it could behave differently to make this kind of collaborative action more likely. As we enter a period when resources will inevitably be constrained, Total Place is also a chance for local agencies to ‘get ahead’ by examining how they can deliver better services at less cost. So the hope is that Total Place will provide good experience to share about service improvement, suggestions about cost savings and proposals for changes in Central Government. There is no time to lose!"


I know I'm cynical but that first line, 'not just another Whitehall initiative'  just makes me want to shout 'Oh Yes it is!'  Almost by way of emphasising the point he told the joint Probation Association and Probation Chiefs Association meeting that 'they have no options but to embrace the lessons of his Total Place Initiative'. He advised Trusts that they should consider the following reforms:

• Become less centralised and devolve more responsibility to staff
• Create management systems focused on outcomes rather than compliance
• Collaborate to build partnerships that deliver practical results for service users
• Become more focused on commissioning outcomes
• Redesign services, not outcomes
• Find new ways to incentivise prevention
• Encourage innovation and become less risk-averse
• Help people to help themselves - do not assume you need to provide everything
• Embrace and utilise new information technology  

I love the bit when Lord Bichard said he understood there were difficulties (like a crap IT system imposed on us) but now was the time to roll up our shirt sleeves and re-design services "Don't be downhearted - I really think the climate is changing."  I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Having been fully nationalised, centralised and micro-managed, we are now expected to devolve. Having had the ability, experience and permission to innovate knocked out of us over the last 15 years, suddenly the opposite is expected. 

At this point I fully intended to use an apochrophal quote attributed to Petronius AD 66:

"We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be re-organised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by re-organising, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation."

I've wanted to use this for some time and in fact for ages had it pinned up in my office, but it turns out that the sentiment is so strong that it really is too good to be true as outlined in an article by J P Sullivan and quoted on wikipedia

"Over the years I have had enquiries about this alleged fragment and, although I have repeatedly denied its authenticity, it seems clearly to have lived an underground existence nonetheless, surfacing indeed in the venerable TLS.  To lay this ghost to rest, let me give a tentative account, which I hope other readers can correct, of its provenance.  Some disgruntled soldier of a literary bent, whether commissioned or non-commissioned I do not know, pinned this "quotation" to a bulletin board in one of the camps of the armies occupying Germany sometime after 1945 (the style suggests a British occupying force).  Since the sentiment is impeccable, whether applied to military, governmental, or academic administration, it has enjoyed a cachet borrowed from Petronius ever since.  Perhaps it would prove suitable for a Latin Prose composition seminar, since the author, unlike Nodot or Marchena, did not see fit to present us with a Latin version of his forgery."

It's a shame really as the Petronius quote would have rounded this post off nicely. It just goes to show that some things in life really are too good to be true.