Total Place under fire

Total Place could dramatically change the way frontline staff work – but has anyone asked them their thoughts on the initiative? The answer, according to unions, is not really. Simon Watson, from the public sector union Unison, says Total Place has been dominated by "a top-down, technocratic approach, not using the skills of the workforce". Few of the 13 Total Place pilot reports show evidence of deep thinking about workforce issues. The report from Durham council does not mention 'staff' or 'workforce' once in its 24 pages. Birmingham's does, but is more concerned with "staff alignment" – that is, getting 100 key middle managers on board. Many of the Total Place councils are thinking about creating teams focused on a particular issue – say, drug and alcohol addiction – that will bring together workers from different agencies. But staff from different bodies, such as the NHS, local councils, the probation service and Jobcentre Plus, will all have different terms and conditions. That could lead to people doing the same job – occupational therapists from councils and from the NHS, for instance – working on the same team but being paid different amounts. "We want people to work well together," says Watson, "but if you take different people and say, 'You are working side by side but being paid quite differently for doing the same job,' that's not going to work." Closer collaboration To make this closer collaboration possible, local bodies will also have to reconcile the often very different performance, audit and inspection regimes that are applied to, say, council staff and the police. They will have to tackle cultural issues as well: the fact that, for instance, NHS staff may take a medical approach to a problem that council workers will see as a social issue hinging on an individual's wider circumstances. It's not just the unions raising these concerns. John Tizard, the director of Worcestershire's pilot, says Total Place will be "weaker" if it doesn't get staff on board. There must be "a cultural and behavioural change, not only at leadership level but throughout the organisation, particularly in respect of frontline staff". So how is this going to happen? Tizard says "significant" funds will have to be spent on training and supporting staff to work in new ways alongside unfamiliar colleagues. Resolving pay differences Watson says the "negotiation" process could be lengthy, especially when it comes to resolving pay differences. The key, he says, is to talk to staff and involve them in the Total Place discussions. "They are the people with the best knowledge of how services operate. And that [involvement] hasn't happened." Unsurprisingly, he also laments the widespread exclusion of the unions from the Total Place debate. "Trade unions haven't been involved in the process very much. We have tried to but we have been kept at arm's length." Unison is setting out its concerns in a report to the Treasury to be submitted in the next few weeks. But resolving the workforce issues is not impossible, Watson says. "I don't think it's something that can't be done, but it needs people, frontline workers, to talk to each other, to discuss issues, rather than it just being something imposed from the top down."