Memorandum from Time Banks UK
This submission is made on behalf of the 138
time banks that have worked in disadvantaged communities over
the past 10 years and successfully brought together local people,
(including "hard to reach" potential and actual users
of public services), to build new social networks that enable
them exercise their powers and responsibilities as citizens.
Time Banking is one of the few recent social
innovations capable of providing both community empowerment and
community engagement.
Our experience has clearly demonstrated that
improvement in public services will require a shift in the attitudes
and behaviour of local authority staff and the active involvement
of those they are trying to help.
"Helping professionals must learn how to
say: `I need what only you can do as badly as you need what I
can do—programmes will continue to fail if they cannot enlist
those being helped as co-producers of the outcome."
Dr Edgar Cahn, (Inventor of Time Banking)
Local well being, for example, cannot be delivered
using one way service delivery models, particularly models that
are shaped by the problems and deficiencies of individuals and
communities.
Public Services will need to tap into the knowledge,
skills and connections of local people and make available many
more opportunities and incentives for local people to feel useful
and valued.
THIS IS
A CO
-PRODUCTION APPROACH
In order to facilitate the growth of strong,
cohesive and diverse neighbourhoods with the capacity to work
in partnership with the public service providers, Public service
providers will need to be helped to:
— learn to trust local people and operate
in plain sight;
— seek out and value contributions
from a wider range of local people;
— help build new social networks that
they do not actually control;
— be prepared to embed an element of
reciprocity into their relationships with users, their families
and the wider community; and
— accept simple and straight forward
solutions like time banking.
Time banking is a new mechanism for community
engagement based on reciprocity and trust, incorporating all the
elements of successful co-production:
— Everyone's contribution is welcomed
and valued equally—one hour of engagement earns one time
credit.
— These time credits are banked and
people draw on them to buy in the skills of other participants
as and when they need them.
— A software programme holds a local
information system on the skills that local people have, when
they are available and any special needs they may have.
— Time banking acts as a letter of
introduction and reconnects people. (Give an hour or two a month
to your local community through the safe framework of the time
bank and your community will be there for you when you need it.)
— Once in circulation a "time
based currency" takes on a meaning of its own and becomes
every bit as real to people as the cash in their pockets.
— Participants soon come to understand
the power of reciprocity and that "give and take" is
the basic building block of positive relationships and local well
being.
If taken to scale and resourced adequately the
social networks that are created through time banking offer the
best chance of sustaining a local infrastructure for people to
pool their efforts and work together with their public services
on solving broader issues of mutual concern.
This is what we believe must be the intention
behind the Select Committee Inquiry and goes far beyond consultations
and surveys and learning customer care techniques from the business
world.
Background Evidence
The business world has long seen the advantages
of co-production and has introduced all manner of loyalty schemes
that work just like time banking.
— Cash point machines, computer games,
petrol stations, supermarkets, book reviews, parcel tracking,
flat pack furniture, reality TV and radio phone-ins are all examples
of co-productions.
A few examples of the co-production of public
services using time banking
In schools conflict resolution and companionship
is provided by the pupils themselves who earn "time credits"
for learning the necessary skills and watching over the "buddy
bench" in the playground.
In youth centres young people earn time credits
for the hours they spend helping in their local community and
use them to "buy" driving lessons, trips out and entrance
to concerts.
In the Health Service Doctors prescribe time
banking and lonely patients befriend other lonely patients leaving
the doctors free to attend to more medical matters.
Environmental clean ups and help with recycling
are being delivered by time bank participants in partnership with
council waste management services.
Community centres are changing to "time
centres" where people pay for events and classes with time
credits that they earn helping out with other activities.
Mental health services are provided by ex patients
through a network of time banks.
January 2007
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