Tuesday, 09 October 2007
The October Newsletter
Finding out what people think - It's a doddle chez Millar
According to a recent OFSTED survey, 19 schools out of a sample of 27 which introduced new "Jamie style" dinners last year have found that take-up of school dinners is declining. "The reasons for the decline were complex but included a lack of consultation with parents and pupils about the new arrangements for healthy school meals, poor marketing of new menus and a lack of choice in what was offered." What has happened here is that by failing to consult the users throughout this whole hurried process, the policy-makers have completely missed the point. There has been a constant emphasis throughout the whole Jamiefication of school meals on the content of the meals when in fact for most children what they actually eat is virtually the last thing they think about.
The Millar Consultation
Conducting my own survey into this, I found that the reasons given by my four daughters for wanting their dreary packed lunches were as follows: you don’t have to spend 30 minutes of a 45 minute lunch break queuing; you have more time for lunchtime clubs; the dining halls smell; I don’t get to sit with my friends if I eat school dinners; you can eat a packed lunch outside and I like my princess lunchbox.
So there we have it - an excellent consultation tightly focussed on the target group with an issue which is relevant to them; very open-ended questions with clear answers. With a small sample, there may be a need to replicate the exercise with more people but for the moment, the views seem credible and persuasive. But of course it fails the acid consultation test - it did not last for 12 weeks.
Elections = the Consultation with Consequences
Elections are of course just another consultation but it seems the election is off for the time being which at least gives the government a chance to do some policy-making when they finally get back to work this week. We may not be getting our chance to go out to the local primary school on a wet Thursday evening to vote but it looks like there are going to be lots of other ways for us to make our voices heard in the brave new world of citizen engagement that Mr Brown has promised us.
True to the zeitgeist of the moment, each of our recent blogs looks at how best to engage with users and the public.
First out of the blocks was another report from the LINks Safari which Andrew Craig posted in September logging the latest sighting and next actions. Later that same month, the government launched its programme of "Citizens'Juries" the much vaunted new approach to finding out what real people really think. Google's first offer is a nice link to the Cabinet Office but oddly the page is "not found". So try Colin Adamson's Jury's out for citizen's juries on our public involvement blog for an insight into what they can achieve, what works and what doesn't.
Consulting on Consulting
Meanwhile the government is consulting on how it consults. I came away from the seminar on its consultation run by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulation with a strong sense that when the government says it is consulting, it still means asking the same old people the same old questions in the same old ways. Read our post Effective Consultation – would they know it if they saw it? or take a look at our formal response to the consultation. Maybe someone will listen one day!
Yours in hope
Caroline Millar