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  6. Category F, Creating the conditions
Creating the conditions

Discipline 13. Relational practitioners in public services

A heavy-set woman in her fifties with a lanyard sitting on a low wall, holding out one of two mugs of tea.

Maturity of support

  • 3Codification
  • 3Institutions
  • 3Training
  • 4Communities
  • 3Academia
  • 3.2Overall, mean of the five

This discipline covers practitioners, most often based in public institutions, who work in a person-centred and highly relational way. This means starting from what matters to the person rather than from what the service offers, and focusing on the quality of human relationship as one of the primary ways of effecting change.

Examples

Assessing the supporting architecture

This discipline has historic origins but has been subject to increased attention for around the last two decades. It is now gaining support quickly. There are multiple enabling institutions, including the Relationships Project, which has a goal of ‘making relational practice common practice’. There is also the Camden Centre for Relational Practice, established by Camden Council in November 2024, which offers training and peer support to other authorities through the Department for Education’s sector-led improvement programme for children’s services.

Codification is maturing: there are council-level relational practice frameworks, the Be Wigan behaviours developed through the Wigan Deal, the Three Conversations approach used across adult social care innovation sites, and Mayday Trust’s PTS Response in homelessness, which has a Coventry University-accredited qualification attached. Practitioner communities are the strongest dimension, with a growing network of councils sharing good practice in relational approaches. There are also complementary learning communities, for example for Human Learning Systems. New Local’s annual conference, Stronger Things, is another example of a meetup to explore work in a relational spirit.

What is missing in terms of support are partly the more formal underpinnings, such as academic journals, or an established and securely funded support institution, and nationally recognised qualifications. This means relational practitioners can gain many years of experience, and develop exemplary skills on the job, but then struggle to prove their credentials.

The theoretical lineage of relational practice is strong, running back over 100 years to the work of community leaders like Mary Parker Follett. In more recent decades a strong literature has emerged in think tanks and universities, partly inspired by Hilary Cottam’s influential book advocating for relational approaches, Radical Help. There is also a growing awareness in relational approaches at the care system regulator, the Care Quality Commission, which is a further sign that the field is maturing.