Towards sustainable social care

I was listening to a lecture by Paul Collier about his book The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. He was talking about times when he felt that the developed countries were really serious about international development.

He suggested the last time was the US Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe after World War two.

He felt that the US was motivated primarily about fear of something worse happening if they did not engage through re-construction. Paul Collier identified 4 components to the Marshall plan:

• Aid
• Trade
• Security
• Governance

His argument goes on to suggest that we in the developed world need to engage with the vigor and focus that was required by the Marshall plan and for a similar reason that if we don’t something worse will happen.

I having been thinking about this especially in the context of the results of the European election results, and the growth of the BNP vote in Wales.

I feel that there are close connections between this argument and the work we need to commit to in re-building our communities as vibrant, diverse, safe, mutually supportive and ‘self controlled’.

The 4 components offer an interesting perspective on this work.

Aid – We need to build structures that meet people’s needs for care, support and inclusion

Trade – However these approaches must avoid dependency by helping people collaborate together in equal relationships of exchange, thus building a web of relationships, inter-dependence and competence.

Security – These cross cutting structures will help our communities to become safer and more stable in changing and challenging conditions.

Governance – We will only be successful in doing this if the processes of decision making are shared with members of the community that they are embedded within. We need to find ways of amplifying the voice of people who have the greatest social investment rather than the greatest resources.

We need to do this, it will be very hard work but if we don’t, just like the Marshall Plan, something much worse could happen.

Rick