After Devolution: the next steps for public services

Devolution must not be used to reproduce Whitehall in miniature around the UK. Rick Muir of IPPR considers how we can do things differently for public services.

Is our politics ready for relational welfare?

The concept of relational welfare, pioneered by the innovative work of Participle, has been gathering political support in recent weeks. The Labour leader Ed Miliband said in his Hugo Young lecture that ‘the challenges facing public services are just too complex to deliver in an old-fashioned, top down way without the active engagement of the patient, the pupil or the parent’.