Understanding social capital within community/ government policy networks.

• Author: Walker, Ann

Abstract

There is an increasing need for joined-up government and joint working between agencies and across sectors in order to address "wicked" social problems and improve policy outcomes. Consequently, it has become imperative to understand the nature of policy network settings, and also the endogenous and exogenous factors that positively and negatively impact on interagency and intra-agency collaboration. From senior managers to front-line workers needing to work collaboratively to achieve outcomes, knowing the types of relationships people have with other agencies may assist in identifying where greater time could be spent improving existing relationships or making new ones. While it is easy to assume that more coordination and cooperation will automatically lead to better and more efficient policy outcomes, collaboration can often be resource intensive, slow the whole process down and actually inhibit the achievement of policy outcomes. Therefore, if agencies are going to invest time and money in collaborative efforts, they need some assurance that such investment will pay dividends. The policy implications for using network analysis within a social capital framework to study policy networks and partnerships are discussed in this article. This paper concludes by describing how a policy network/social capital framework approach could be used to examine the Strengthening Families interagency case management process used in New Zealand.

INTRODUCTION

Governments around the world are realising that approaches they have typically employed to address difficult or essentially "wicked" (2) social problems have been too narrow and compartmentalised. Wicked problems present challenges that cannot be handled by dividing them up into simple pieces in near isolation from one another. In addition, there is now more recognition by governments of the linkages between social, human, environmental, cultural and economic capital in terms of outcomes. Consequently, there is now greater understanding that effective policy responses to many social problems such as inequality, unemployment and social exclusion require a cross-sectoral approach, with the government working with the third sector (3) and the community. In other words, what is needed is a "joined-up" or "whole-of-government" approach.

Networks are often the only governance form that is able to deal with today's complex problems that are not mirrored in the established formal (hierarchic) structure of state bureaucracies and geographical boundaries (Milward and Raab 2002:6). Indeed, an interagency, cross-sectoral case-management approach is often the most effective and efficient way to respond to those families faced with multiple, interrelated problems. As Colin James (1998:7) puts it, "a minister of strengthening families does not so much need a Social Welfare Department as selections of analysts and implementers from the courts and police across to the education and health portfolios, beside 'welfare' specialists".

Neo-Liberal Administrative Reforms in New Zealand

New Zealand has its fair share of wicked and complex problems, and what is needed here is more of a joined-up or cross-sectoral approach to policy. However, a legacy of the neo-liberal state sector reforms of the 1980s and 1990s is a public management system that seems ill-equipped to adopt whole-of-government methods of policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. The problems resulting from the neoliberal public management reforms in New Zealand have been well documented in various state sector reviews and publications by academics (Kelsey 1997, Boston 1999, Boston 2000, Cheyne et al. 2000, Brown 2000, Gregory 2003b, Ministry of Social Development 2003).

The State Services Commission's 2001 publication Review of the Centre identifies the issues of fragmentation, the proliferation of agencies and ministerial portfolios, and the consequential loss of focus on the big picture as major problems for coordinated service delivery. As pointed out in this publication, fragmentation means "ministers need to build relationships with multiple agencies, and at times reconcile conflicting agency positions at an excessively detailed level" (State Services Commission 2001:4). In addition to interdepartmental issues, there are, as identified in the recent work of the Community and Voluntary Working Party (2001:9), issues that need to be addressed to improve relationships between government departments and third sector agencies delivering contracted social services.

Nowhere have these ongoing problems of coordination and cooperation been more salient than in the area of social services, often with tragic consequences. The review carried out by the Office of the Commissioner for Children into the death of five-year-old James Whakaruru in 1999 from physical assaults perpetrated by his mother's partner is a case in point. The Commissioner's investigation found that:

Poor interagency communication characterised the professional work with James and his family. Agencies worked without reference to each other, and ended their involvement assuming that other parts of the system would protect James. (Office of the Commissioner for Children 2000:1) Another investigation carried out by the Office of the Commissioner for Children a few years later into the deaths of sisters Saliel and Olympia Aplin (aged 12 and 11 years respectively) in 2001 at the hands of their stepfather also found that lack of interagency collaboration contributed to the tragic outcome. The Commissioner's investigation identified:

Poor practice similar to that found in the June 2000 investigation ... Policies and procedures were in place to protect these children but poor practice within and between agencies contributed to increased risks to the girls' safety. Many opportunities for appropriate interventions were lost because no single agency had the whole picture or a complete understanding of the risks present in their lives ... Agencies did not meet to discuss their concerns and only dealt with the issues confronting their own agency at the time. (Office of the Commissioner for Children 2003:1) In both the Whakaruru and Aplin cases, neither a Strengthening Families meeting nor a Family Group Conference had been called. Had such an interagency meeting taken place with wider whanau members, then all the information held by the respective agencies and whanau members could have been shared and acted upon in a planned and collaborative way.

A solution proposed by the State Services Commission (2001:5) to the problems of fragmentation in its seminal Review of the Centre is to establish "networks of related agencies" and "gradual structural consolidation" of existing agencies. In Review of the Centre, there is considerable emphasis on a whole-of-government approach, coordinated responses involving multiple agencies, and "circuit breaker teams" to develop solutions to particular, seemingly intractable, problems.

Social service agencies in New Zealand, both government and non-government, are, however, working under increasing pressure with stretched resources. Right across the public sector, many officials face heavy workloads that leave little time to devote to collaborative processes. While these may well be more effective in the long term, collaborative responses require an upfront investment of time and resources. The State Services Commission has already identified signs of "coordination-meeting fatigue" and warns that a general push for more collaboration and coordination may further dissipate resources through ill-defined and unfocused activities. (4)

Networking or relationship building between agencies can be critical to their work, and yet is rarely singled out as a separate output or accorded the significance it deserves. In addition, the intrinsic benefits of networking may be difficult to quantify or not obvious in the short term. This brings us back to the question of whether dedicating resources for collaboration and coordination is really worth it. This is a critical issue, particularly for networks and partnerships in the third and public sectors, where funders, policy makers and front-line workers may all have a strong interest in knowing whether the resources invested will pay dividends (Milward and Provan 1998:389).

A Growing Need for Administrative Analysis

If the reason that policies do not achieve their intended outcomes lies in systemic failure, then refining policy instruments may not be the solution, and we need to turn our attention more towards administrative systems. As Milward and Proven (1998:388) point out, "the reason network analysis is so important to public management lies in the observation that we seem to have an overdeveloped capacity for policy analysis and an underdeveloped capacity for administrative analysis". This rings true for the situation in New Zealand, where we have seen a proliferation of fads and trends in policy-analysis techniques that have so often failed to deliver significant improvements in policy outcomes (Gregory 2003a).

Policies often fail due to systemic failure and/or failure on the part of people within those systems to undertake their roles effectively. A typical and widely used response on the part of governments to systemic failure is to re-organise or restructure those systems deemed to be at fault, thus disestablishing existing departments, creating new ones, or merging one or more existing departments. Indeed, in the quest for improved effectiveness and efficiency, we have seen a constant restructuring of government departments in New Zealand since the mid-1980s, seemingly without a pause for reflection of any resultant gains and/or losses, or any comprehensive review of the administrative structures themselves. The constant restructuring of the public sector has in many cases only exacerbated the problems associated with fragmentation. If we accept that fragmentation across...