Will there be a PIEs 3?
Will there be - could there and even should there be – a PIEs 3 at some point?
Quite possibly. There are good arguments (HERE) both for and against introducing even the possibility of a PIEs 3, at this stage.
Here, therefore, we will focus on what might be different, and/or expanded, if there were to be either a PIEs 3, or alternatively a new and customised version of the current Pizazz Handbook - 'Useful Questions' - that asks questions for commissioners, system planners and policy makers at both local and national level..
The Spaces of Opportunity
PIEs 3 would need firstly to expand and un-pack in particular the ‘pathways’ and systems element in the spaces of opportunity. This is where, on the ground, the fragmentation of service delivery is most acutely felt.
This is also where the feedback from services staff and users can be gathered, using the Pizazz (and the PIE Abacus) as the systemic source of data, can give their comments on the evidence, specifying what helps and hinders, and their suggestions for actions to remedy weaknesses and pinch points.
Learning and Enquiry
Staff and users will also have comments to feed in at locality in the 'sector engagement' element in the Learning and Enquiry. At locality level, staff and service users can get together in real time and space to compare notes and experiences on the opportunities locally for dialogue with those commissioners who are listening. For those less keen to participate in live events, the Pizazz, on paper or in software, allows their voice still to be heard.
Nevertheless, there are now many services, with their users, that are able to contribute their views to national policy makers; and this we can see as the sector engagement of the national policy makers. Here, with the sheer scale, in the number of voices to be heard, and the logistics of geographical dispersal, the software becomes more useful.
Psychological Awareness
For psychological awareness, the notion of a 'psychological model' as the more theoretical understanding no longer applies - certainly in the sense of models from clinical psychology. Here it is insights from sociology and anthropology and business studies on the mis-shaping of systems are more relevant to understanding - although organisational psychology may also be helpful in pinpointing the dynamics of distortion.
Here, some of the more recent work on Human Learning Systems, Enabling Help, Re-imagining Help, are likely to be the sources of re-thinking.
Staff training and support
Following on from this, the staff training and support element would need to look not just at the role of commissioners in encouraging training and support for staff in services. It would need to be aware of the training and support needs of commissioners and policy makers themselves, in attempting to find new and more responsive ways to manage services; and their own sector engagement.
The Three Rs
But in PIEs 2, responsiveness, of course, belongs in the Three Rs; and there it is intimately linked with the rules and roles.
More radically still, the rules and roles in a more ‘psychologically’ (sic) informed policy environment would have to facilitate the kind of joined up services that the current policy environment fragments.
