Paces

So what's a Chief Executive worth in the voluntary sector?

As a member of the NCVO, we recently received our 'Member Edition' of "The UK Civil Society Almanac 2012". What a treasure trove of civil society data it is.

I'm tempted to quote some statistics ... "Did you know, for instance ..." but will resist the temptation. Except for one statistic. Pay and Chief Executives. So how much do you think the average Chief Executive gets paid? While you ponder that, bear in mind an often quoted statistic that a salary of £51,000 per annum would put you in the top 15% of UK salary/wage earners. (Average pay for drivers of petrol tankers, I read over the weekend, is £45,000 pa)

The NCVO produce the Annual Voluntary Sector Salary Survey in association with XpertHR. The survey covers over 150 charitable organisations and analysises salaries for a range of responsibilities within the voluntary sector.

And Chief Executives? What did you guess? Well, according to NCVO/XpertHR, the median total earnings of a Chief Executive in the voluntary sector in 2010/11 was .... £71,907.

"Median" means there are as many whose earnings are above this as below it, which is pause for thought itself. "Total earnings" though, I'm not sure of. Bonuses? Perish the thought! Share allotments? Unlikely. Pension payments? Quite possibly.

And just in case you are wondering, no, I don't get anything like the median. Nothing at all like it in fact!

Children do not have motor disorders only in school term-time

The other day, I was reflecting on the possibilities 'Flexi-schools' offer for year-round conductive education.

Today, I have been reading of the possibilities open to Free Schools. ( The Daily Telegraph reports a speech by Education Secretary Michael Gove to the Policy Exchange.)

The Free School Norwich for instance, plans to open six days a week for 51 weeks of the year, which will integrating high-quality education and child care all year-round. Freedom to set their own staff pay and conditions, means that they are able to change the school day to fit their requirements. This means working parents will be able to make full use of the affordable extended school provision, which will be available on the school premises for six days each week, 51 weeks of the year.''

The West London Free School expects pupils to stay in school, or at music and drama clubs until 5pm between Monday and Friday. Mossbourne Academy, which was opened under the last Labour Government, already operates a longer school day and opens at weekends.

Do I need to spell out the possibilities for conductive education in such models?

Concocting a recipe for a new approach to conductive upbringing and schooling from four ingredients

The 4 Ingredients:

• Cyber-CE
• Flexischooling
• Family-centred education
• Free schools.

I have long puzzled about how conductive upbringing, which is necessarily child-and-family centred 365 days a year, might creatively be integrated with conductive schooling with its institutional structures and limitations – whilst having some hope at least of a sustainable business model.  Three fortuitous bits of reading and a current obsession - the 4 ingredients - can perhaps be shaken or stirred together to make something wholly new. Crazy? No problem. Have a read and see what you think.  

Ingredient 1: Cyber CE

Thanks to Andrew Sutton on Facebook, I was alerted to “Cyber Experiment in Conductive Education” an online paper by László Szögeczki.

The paper reported an experiment in "response to an issue often raised by outsiders, interested clients and other professionals as to whether distance Conductive Education could be executed". In summary, "an international 'pilot' was successfully undertaken between a USA based conductor in New York and disabled children, professionals and assistants at a CE centre near Chorley, Lancashire in the UK".

László and his colleagues are not alone. Susie Mallett has for some time been advertising distance CE services on her blog. Earlier this year, prompted by reading that there are 35 Virtual Charter Schools, I myself mused whether a Virtual Conductive Education School might be possible.  Ben Foulger, for one, expressed some interest. But there it rested.

Ingredient 2: Flexischooling

Follow me somewhere else, quite different: have you ever heard of Flexischooling? No? Neither had I until I was introduced to “Ed Yourself”, the website of Fiona Nicholson’s Home Education Consultancy, which covers “key areas of elective home education practice and policy in England”.  You’ll find Flexischooling, fascinatingly enough, under the “Special Needs” tab.

“In a flexi-schooling arrangement children are registered as pupils at the school and attend part-time, but spend other parts of the week being educated off-site by their parents. This arrangement is a matter for the head teacher, rather than the local authority, to negotiate with parents. The child will be required to follow the National Curriculum whilst at school but not whilst he or she is being educated at home.

The school register can be marked Code B for approved educational activity which must be of an educational nature and must be supervised by a person authorised by the proprietor or head teacher. More information on flexischool can be found in the Government Guidance on Pupil Registration Regulations page 22  and in the Government's Home Education Guidelines 

Ingredient 3: Family-scale education

Now just one more step: like many people, I have reservations about ‘faith schools’, so when I ask you to take a look at the website of the proposed Sheffield Christian Free School  it is not their “distinctively biblical approach to knowledge and learning” that attracted my attention.  Firstly, it was the following statement, a “Core Value”:

“We have been developing family-scale education for almost 25 years. We found that as families join together and pool their enthusiasm, expertise and ideas they can produce a stimulating and versatile curriculum for their children. For this model to be effective the numbers of families needs to be limited. Every family needs to be involved and feel that their contribution is valued. The school needs to actively seek participation from parents and equip them as they take responsibility for their children’s education.”  

The second feature that drew my attention was how the school was to be organised – on multipe small sites, responding to parental demand:

“The Sheffield Christian Free School will have all the advantages of being a large institution but, with each site having less than 100 pupils from between 40 – 50 families, it will be able to  offer the highest standards of pastoral care and academic support.” 

 Ingredient 4: Free Schools

The fourth ingredient is the potential funding that setting up a Special Free School brings for innovation in pedagogy, curriculum and parent choice, about which I shall say no more here.

Now for a trial bake.

The result may not be immediately palatable perhaps but we can adjust the ingredients later. How does this appeal to you:

A school, a Special Free School; made up of 5, 10, 20 sites dispersed around a city, a region, or the whole of the UK, maybe; for groups of, say, 20, 30, 50 families and children; attending all year round, part-time on a flexischool basis;  and part-time at home with CE delivered at a distance by a conductor based elsewhere. The whole dish funded by the DfE as a Virtual Free School.

Well? Or rather, "Why not?"

Me? I'm just a bit busy right now. But after that?

And you?

Values and CE organisations

Do Values matter?

The question “How should Paces be, that parents will invite us into their lives?” has intrigued me before.  In essence, this is a question about our Values.

How we present ourselves, how we are perceived, of course, matters. Customer satisfaction is crucial. Similarly, there can surely be no need to argue that we should comply with our statutory responsibilities.  Likewise, that we should be well-run, aspiring to excellence in our services, needs no emphasis. 

In recent weeks, I have been pre-occupied researching, considering and drafting a Governance Framework. Governance is commonly defined in several ways, mostly deriving from notions of management control.

Is Good Governance enough? Or being well managed? Do Values matter?

And if so, what should these be in a conductive education organisation?

I'd welcome your thoughts as I try to set something out for Paces.

Creating an enterprising conductive community. Possible?

What does it mean to be "conductive"? Can an organisation be "conductive"? Should an organisation that practices conductive education reflect conductively upon its own self?

I have pondered this before. The SAHK model is instructive, for instance.  This morning I was reminded of this when I read a blog posting by MIke Chitty. I have mentioned Mike in this context before.

Asking what a 'real enterprise zone' would look like, Mike proposes that it would be a place where:

People would feel a sense of belonging because they were part of community that wanted them to succeed and likewise provided opportunities to help others succeed as well.

Mike again wrote something similar in a review for New Start magazine of "The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods" by John McKnight and Peter Block:

Just people, relationships, skills, interests, passions, associations and what it means to be a competent community.  A place where people learn to support each other and make good thing happen. Of their own volition.

Now it seems to me that Mike's words taken together sum up pretty well the environment we all try to create around conductive education. It seems to me to sum up, too, what Paces Campus is about, in providing a setting for a conductive education charity and school to operate - a haven, to put it that way, in a world otherwise uniformly indifferent, even, hostile to CE: a place where you can help others succeed and where people want you to succeed.

A pointer of things to come? But what do they know of Conductive Education?

On Twitter, @Wrestwood of St.Mary's School and College, Bexhill, asks: "Is this a pointer of things to come in a consolidating world?" and without further comment provides a link to a news story from GI Partners, a private equity company, about their acquisition of Advanced Childcare. 

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, March 18, 2011 – GI Partners (“GI”), a leading private equity firm focused on investments in asset-intensive businesses and real estate platforms, is pleased to announce the £28 million acquisition of Advanced Childcare (“ACL”).

We learn that:

Based in Stockport, Greater Manchester, and employing over 350 people, ACL is a leading provider of outsourced children’s care and education services in the U.K.

And that:

ACL is the latest addition to GI’s growing portfolio of specialist care and education companies. GI intends to use ACL as a platform to create a multi-regional, industry-leading childcare services business leveraging its significant experience in the healthcare industry to date. GI already owns The Cambian Group, which it has built up through proactive management and selective acquisitions to become the U.K.’s largest provider of specialist services in education, mental health rehabilitation and learning disabilities. 

And, as Alfred Foglio, Managing Director of GI Partners, says:

 “More often than not, local government authorities are choosing to close down older or inadequately-rated facilities and use a competitive tendering process to select proven providers who are willing to invest in new buildings and high-quality care models.

Some questions immediately spring to mind - "just asking":

What sort of public services delivery model is it that sees private equity companies taking over "specialist [children's] services in education, mental health rehabilitation and learning disabilities"?

What sort of public services delivery model is it that sees an increasingly reducing number of very large and ever growing companies, through acquisition and consolidation, dominating services - rather than, say, smaller, more local and, dare I say it, specialist third sector organisations (charities, social enterprises, co-operatives) which would, on the surface at least, appear more in line with the Government's 'localism' policy?

What specialist training does this public services delivery model generate? In the UK, our teacher training model provides little or no disability-specific training before trainees enter the classroom as qualified teachers. As a service-user, the same seems to me to be true of the domiciliary care services.

What will they know of conductive education and children with cerebral palsy?

These are honest questions. I do not start from a political position that holds that certain public services can and should only be provided (and assessed and funded) by the State, centrally or locally, with no role for other providers. Nevertheless, if it is difficult enough, as it is, to introduce innovation and change in the context of a local authority-dominated public services model, how will questions such as these even get a hearing, never mind an answer, if this story is a pointer of things to come? How then should those of us in conductive education respond?

As a small footnote to this, two instances - straws in what same wind? - the squeezing out over the past 10 years and more of small and local community sector providers of what used to be called adult and continuing learning, in favour of larger, mainly private sector providers; and the concern expressed on social networks that the new application process for bringing forward proposals for Free Schools could tend to disadvantage the very parent-led groups that the Free Schools policy is intended to encourage.

The role of specialist, local, and especially third sector providers - particularly those innovating new practices - needs specifically to be legislated for.

Malealea in April. Such prospects.

Spoke with a young teenage girl in Waitrose this morning, offering to pack bags for customers at check-out. She and her friends were collecting for a project which will take her to Malealea in Lesotho in April for 2.5 weeks. There, they will be decorating a new community building currently under construction - a school, I think she said.

It will also be the first time in her life that she has spent time away from her Mum and Dad.I assured her that she would have a wonderful time and would enjoy Africa, so different from anything she now knows.

I couldn't help feeling what a wonderful moment for her, on the very edge of her whole life, such prospects ahead, if she grasps them with the zest she shared this morning with me.

We, older, must guard against the dullness of wisdom, just waiting for the grants to roll in. 

Has The Time Come For Holistic Business Strategy in Conductive Education?

Some people I know (you don't need names) don't like "holistic" as a applied to conductive education. Indulge me a moment. SAHK have sought to apply conductive education to and embed it within their business model holistically, one might say, if by that we mean, the whole.

"The Time Has Come For Holistic Business Strategy" says Brian Solis - now what could that possibly mean? You'll have to check the link yourself, as I'm not quite sure. 

I quite like this though which certainly applies to Paces:

"What’s the biggest problem in business today? .... I contend the biggest problem is that each business has too few people looking after the whole of the business. .... What’s the solution? I believe ... it is time to for organizations large and small to adopt a holistic business strategy that empowers more employees to think about the whole of the business...."

We tried that a year or so ago. Without much success, it has to be said. There was too much opposition to setting up a Ning social network, which was the plan. Maybe the time will come again?  (Andrew Sutton felt similarly the that SAHK's Pre-Congress social network initiative was a disappointment. I was encouraged that it had happened at all. Brian Solis is more of Andrew's view, if I read the blog post right.)

Why stop at employees? Why not include all those people the charity exists to servce?  Starting with our parents.

Then poking around the links from Brian Solis's posting, I stumbled across this, which seems to take the holistic business beyond our beneficiaries:

Michael Porter’s publishing of this great article on “Creating Shared Value” has really inspired me to put my nose to the grindstone and invest in advancing this big idea – that we must think about not only the whole of the business, but also the whole of society and the impacts every member of the broader ecosystem has on the other players and the ecosystem itself. (My Focus on Holistic Business Strategy - Chris Heuer).

Well, that might be over-cooking it just a bit. Nevertheless, aiming for more employees and parents in thinking about and giving direction to the whole business rather than just their bit of it is quite a challenge.

Anyone for an orthofunctional organisation? Now for another glass of red wine.

Co-operation in the Age of Google #CondEd

As I write, I am in the middle of reading "Co-operation in the Age of Google" by Robin Murray, a review commissioned by Cooperatives UK: "a radical vision of the how the co-operative sector can expand in the 21^st Century."  Its underpinning contention is that "we are living at a time of profound transformation". I am reminded of a thread of recent postings on his blog by Andrew Sutton, such as "CE's New Wave - creative not beholden" which in part proposes "independent, small-scale action" centred on the individual a radical wat forward for CE.

Here is an extended quotation from this excellent read that challenges many of the assumptions about how we organise ourselves - and including conductive education.

"The US writers James Maxmin and Shoshana Zuboff see the assembly of packages or service modules around the needs of the individual consumers as a radical break from the twentieth century model of standardised services (or commodities) delivered by a specialist producer. It allows the pro-sumer to bypass large service organisations with rigid and costly structures, and stimulate a new trust based support services. Trust is the key, for the user has to have confidence that those providing the support are acting in the user’s interest not that of a supplier. They refer to this as the new Support Economy."

"In summary:

• Users are themselves increasingly involved, individually or jointly, in some element of design and production, changing from passive consumers to ‘prosumers’.
• Prosumption is most advanced in the economy of information. But in the material economy, goods and services are themselves being reconfigured around the user. Modern production has changed from pushing out products to pulling them through according to the demand of the user.
• Users have become a key source of innovation (second only to employees according to the EU’s Community Innovation Survey)
• New types of support services are required – from health coaches to computer help lines
• Users are developing their own mutual forms of support
• The service or commodity point of contact has be rethought around these support needs (whether the doctor’s surgery, the supermarket, or the school).

Strategic thinking in Conductive Education #CondEd

Thanks to Andrew Sutton for posting the link to the Address by Andria Spindel (President & CEO March of Dimes, Canada) to the ACENA Conference in August this year.

And what a most interesting address it is to read. With local variation, it is all very familiar. I found myself repeatedly thinking, Yes. Yes. I admire and agree with Andria's strongly positive concluding remarks.

Only in one area do I firmly want to present an alternative case. Andria says "Parents of children with severe physical or mental challenges are often too busy or worn out to take on the tasks required to support and develop either a non profit charity framework or a private company to offer CE."  I believe at Paces we have shown how parents can develop an effective model. Interestingly, we seem to have followed a parallel with March of Dimes, locating CE in a setting larger than itself: in March of Dimes case, alongside a therapy provision; in the Paces' model, a local community setting. Paces, as I often enough have said, is a "Campus Model". There is no doubt in my mind that this is delivering a business model that is viable and potentiually sustainable long term. Likewise, in goverance and management terms, it offers opportunities and a supportive structure within which we "too busy" and "worn-out" parents(I smile, Andria) can take effective roles. Indeed, the challenge is to build a model that does not marginalise parents at all levels. There is more to be said on this, I am sure.

In reflecting on Andria's address, Andrew proposes a typically radical different future:

• Look outwards, away from the precariously established CE programs and CE centers
• Step back, not just from the therapies but also from education, even from pedagogy, ignore for the moment rehabilitation
• Stop the ears to the Sirens of plasticity
• Forget Hungary.

Instead, like many conductors, adults, parents and carers are beginning to do, start thinking around the service implications of conductive upbringing and conductive lifestyle in an advanced Western democracy -– about 'family Conductive Education'.

One obvious response is to ask where the funding will come from. But that is perhaps an unimaginative response to a challenge for new thinking in an area which is neglected. I have myself wondered whether 'family conductive education' rather than an institutionalised form merely extending 'conductive schooling' might be an altogether better model for an adult service. There is much more that might be said here too.

Another easy response to Andrew is not "either ... or" but "both ... and". Of course that still means pursuing both Andria's 'four objectives' and Andrew's 'family conductive education' - as well as the business models to achieve both.

As for training, I am very greatly looking forward to learning more about the SAHK model at the World Congress.

So much still to be said. So much still to be done. We are just at the beginning. I find that thought very encouraging.

Sarah's carers will be here in a moment - at 6.45am. She is agitated that they are not here yet. She's been awake since 4.45am. This evening she's going out for a meal with friends. She so wants to get on with her life. I blame conductive education!

Have a good day wherever you are.

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FYI

#CondEd is a twitter hashtag, the subject line of this blog post being automatically copied to twitter