Transforming Services: Women and Local Power

By Nia Clark, Senior Research and Engagement Officer

The Government’s promise to ‘level up’ the country has led to a wave of devolution negotiations and deals, part of a commitment to address geographical asymmetries by improving both the physical and social infrastructure of disadvantaged regions. However, the capacity of local and regional powers to transform the lives of the most at-risk women and girls has been underexplored.

If policymakers are serious about confronting these deep-rooted disparities, they must urgently embed an understanding of gender within the levelling up framework. Ultimately, spatial imbalances, socioeconomic disparities, and gender inequality are interconnected and mutually reinforcing - this can no longer go ignored and must be addressed.

Within their flagship Levelling Up the United Kingdom (2022) White Paper, Government calls for improvements to be made to public health and public services as part of addressing stark inequalities. Central to this mission is the decentralisation and devolution of power: it is anticipated that allowing local leaders greater control over policy and budgets will “create the conditions for sustainable growth, better public services, and a stronger society.” It is paramount that this recalibration of local power and commitment to reform public services is seized upon as an opportunity to improve outcomes for the most disadvantaged women and girls across the country. 

Focusing on the North East (Northumberland and Tyne and Wear), our Transforming Services for Women’s Futures project, explores the current realities of service provision for women at the sharpest edge of inequality. Women with multiple unmet needs face intersecting disadvantages, including experiences of poverty, homelessness, substance misuse, contact with the criminal justice system, domestic abuse, and poor mental health. Our project - in partnership with Changing Lives and funded by the Smallwood Trust - asks the timely question: how can public services be reformed to better meet the needs of the most at-risk women?

We have been conducting interviews and focus groups with regional leaders, local practitioners, and women with lived experience. One resounding message has been the need to invest in service redesign to incentivise local bodies to better collaborate in order to dismantle siloed working and improve the public service landscape to meet women and girls’ needs in the long-term. Devolution provides a real opportunity for combined authorities to assume a ‘helicopter view' of public services and ensure all strategies and action plans meet the needs of the most at-risk population cohorts, including women facing multiple disadvantage.

The White Paper advocates for wholesale changes to the information, incentives, and institutions that underpin regional decision-making. Our research demonstrates the need for gender-informed systems change to bring together local authority, health, criminal justice, and voluntary sector partners to improve outcomes for women experiencing multiple unmet needs. As part of this, the voices of women with lived experience should be embedded across all levels of decision-making to help design and commission services more effectively. These actions would embed holistic, preventative, and relational working, ultimately improving the social scaffolding of communities.

Devolution has the potential to provide regional policymakers with the necessary levers to address systemic disadvantages affecting women with multiple unmet needs. The North East devolution deal (2022), for example, offers real opportunities for change, including an ambitious commitment to public service reform and addressing health inequalities. In particular, plans to develop a regionwide approach to social care collaboration and create new models of prevention to tackle health disparities could improve outcomes for women at-risk. Specifically, the formation of a Radical Prevention Fund could be truly transformative if it is distributed in a targeted way that supports those with multiple unmet needs and considers the gendered needs of women experiencing disadvantage.

Our final report will be published in Summer 2023 and will include national policy recommendations that set out how public services can be redesigned and optimised to improve the lives of women and girls. We hope to start a conversation on the potential of the levelling up agenda to address gender inequality.

If you are interested in learning more about this research, attending our upcoming launch event, or receiving a copy of our final report, please email nia@agendaalliance.org.