I have been thinking about my favourite public services. I want to try to draw out the way in which public services are changing – and will need to change in the future – and this seems like the simplest way to do it.
This week, I want to mention Crisis Skylight, a set of education and training centres for homeless people. I haven’t been to Skylight London for a long time, but I think of it often because it sums up something really important to the future of public services. Skylight provides little of what homeless people need, but a lot of what they want. Rather than providing food and shelter to homeless people, it attends to their spirits, through anything from music to bike maintenance.
That is counter-intuitive because it turns Maslow’s hierarchy on its head. But it works, because when you help people to get their confidence and zest back, often they can solve other problems for themselves. I don’t mean homeless people don’t face huge material challenges – on the contrary, and that is why Skylight is so inspiring.
This idea that we need to serve mind, body and spirit is increasingly important in mainstream public services. Leaders acknowledge that social care can bring people together without making them any less lonely. Schools can foster highly-educated young people who aren’t sure they have anything to live for. The NHS can prolong the lives of the chronically ill, without helping them come to terms with pain or mortality.
It is fashionable to say that public services should be measured by how happy they make people, but that risks sounding hollow. Today more than ever, the best public services help people to find lasting inspiration and self-understanding.
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