Our latest online debate asked how global government can be transparent and accountable

Sophia Oliver, director, Open Government Partnership, and Transparency, Cabinet Office

Share and adapt data: we have a responsibility to put the data out so that others can use it, adapt it, combine it with other information and share it and, hopefully, provide feedback on it. Part of the transparency agenda has to be about asking: are we holding the right data? Are we publishing the right data? If we don't hold it, should we collect it and publish it?

The Independent Reporting Mechanism isn't exactly voluntary: countries don't have a choice about being reviewed by the mechanism. And the mechanism will draw on views across government, civil society and independent researchers to develop assessments. So we certainly intend for the IRM to have teeth.

Government does not necessarily have the best understanding: of how to make an effective app, or develop a useful visualisation of the data and others might be better at that. CSOs, businesses or other organisations may have a better understanding of who needs or wants to access what data and how to help them use it – and can develop products and services to meet those requirements. We definitely have a responsibility to put the data out so that others can use it, adapt it, combine it with other information, share it – and hopefully provide feedback on it. But we still need to think more about where government role lies in enhancing participation – sometimes it will be best done by government but sometimes it won't be – and in those cases we don't want to crowd out others that can do it better.

Marija Novkovic, project manager, United Nations Development Programme, Montenegro

Raw data must be relevant data: as citizens are now being given access to raw data sets on many facets of public sector performance. But do citizens care about [spread]sheets? Probably not. Do they wish to know which hospital has the biggest survival rate in complex surgical procedures, [or] which bus routes are more reliable than others? Probably yes. Data should be used to tell stories; ideally it would be interpreted by "infomediaries" so that the citizens can relate to it. [But] does open data empower the already empowered? Do marginalised, vulnerable groups have access to the internet? Are they aware of open data portals? Will they help them access healthcare, join the labour -market, access social welfare?

The basic premise of the OGP is empowering the citizens: and that was the intent behind the design of the consultation process. Citizens understand the problems in their communities best, but they need to be given an avenue to voice their concerns, and governments should listen. As the McKinsey centre on government recently pointed out, "the strongest governments will be those that serve the people." Citizens are best placed to identify the problems, but also to come up with solutions. Co-production of services would be the next big thing, the new form of outsourcing. Governments should not miss out on the opportunity to tap into the wisdom of the crowd.

Heather Savory, chair, Open Data User Group (ODUG)

Community engagement: the ODUG has been set up to represent the views of the open data community to government. The way ODUG is engaging is to open the door wide for members of the community to come forward with their thoughts on how we can best serve their data needs. [It] already has about 50 new requests. These are open for anyone to view and comment on at data.gov.uk. We have so far identified eight key themes for datasets – land and property, environment, social organisations and companies, education, transport health and financial.

• To respond to this, or any other article on the Public Leaders Network, email public.leaders@guardian.co.uk. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication". You must be a member of the Public Leaders Network to submit articles for publication.

• For the latest public leadership updates, follow us on Twitter

This article is published by Guardian Professional. Join the Guardian Public Leaders Network free to receive regular emails on the issues at the top of the professional agenda.

The success of New York's High Line park has reinvigorated our imagination in the way we use existing landscapes and architecture in our cities

Looking back on the story of New York's High Line in 20 years time, I wonder if we'll see it as having been the catalyst for a new era of design for our cities.

Having fallen in love with the structure of the old freight railway from the street, it was what High Line founder Robert Hammond saw when he got up on to the railway itself, that convinced him to try to save it. Here, running through the middle of Manhattan, was a mile and a half of wild flowers.

That was in 1999. Now, 12 years on, New York's park in the sky attracted more than 3.7 million visitors last year, has generated $2bn-worth of private investment (£1.3bn) surrounding the park and is predicted to exceed $900m (£562m) in new tax revenues for the city over the next 20 years.

Such figures are not to be sniffed at. For what started out as a rescue attempt by two neighbourhood residents (Hammond and Joshua David) with no design background, no plan and no money, has created the city's second most popular tourist attraction after the Museum of Modern Art. It is decisive evidence that it is increasingly the quality of our parks and public spaces, not the towering ambition of our skyline, that make our towns and cities stand out.

But it is what the High Line – and to a great extent London's Olympic Park – will make possible, that will define its legacy. By making a virtue of an industrial relic, the High Line offers a new, 21st-century experience of the city – not a sanctuary from it. In fact, the High Line offers views of the city that you'd get nowhere else. So, suddenly, in the middle of Manhattan, is a piece of infrastructure that is not only a green lung, but looks and smells beautiful; is a place that offers a new route to work, space for recreation and contemplation, and is regenerating an area. Once we have a park in the sky, the city is ours to re-imagine. Indeed, it must be re-imagined if we are to face the challenges we seem destined to face.

Which is why it so refreshing to see mainstream media, not long ago in thrall to Renzo Piano's Shard, filling pages with ideas for green cycleways in the sky, a new "Lido Line" offering a swimmable commuter route along Regent's Canal and an urban garden in the old Mail Rail tunnels (The Post Office Railway) beneath Oxford Street. All were the result of A High Line for London, a recent green infrastructure ideas competition that called for proposals that transcended the traditional idea of an urban park.

The winning idea, called "Pop Down" by Fletcher Priest Architects, proposed reinventing the disused tunnels of the Mail Rail that run for 10.5m as a public experience and urban mushroom farm. London with its history of hidden tunnels and lost rivers provided the inspiration for the idea, while the team tried to capitalise on the same sense of drama that the High Line creates by being in between the fabric of the city. In New York, there have also been plans to build a subterranean public space and in London a High Line in Tower Hamlets has also been proposed.

But unlocking the potential of forgotten spaces is often more easily achievable than reclaiming the architecture or infrastructure that creates them, as the saga of Battersea power station can attest. HTA Landscape Design's highly-commended idea "Bridge-it" proposed opening up inaccessible railway cuttings and sidings, and linking them together into green linear parks that connect existing London transport hubs and open spaces.

A much-celebrated project in East London is already showing what can be achieved by mapping the abandoned space in a neighbourhood and working with the local community to re-imagine it. Between 2009-10, J&L Gibbons and Muf architects delivered 10 projects as part of Making Space in Dalston. The Eastern Curve, once a overgrown and abandoned piece of railway land, was one of them. It is now a popular pubic space with trees to offer shade, warm weather cooling and improve air quality, and vegetable and herb growing areas for local people.

That a competition that would typically been considered niche has made it into the mainstream is extremely encouraging. It is in indicative of a groundswell of support for rethinking the conventional approach to designing public space and engaging with the sustainability agenda. That groundswell includes the Mayor of London's commitment to developing pocket parks; the US Embassy, which is behind a major green infrastructure development in Nine Elms; and private landowners such as Grosvenor, who was inspired by Cabe Space's Paved with Gold report to invest in the public realm.

In the wake of the Olympic Park's success, it's easy to forget how ambitious a project it was to transform 50 hectares of post-industrial wasteland in East London. More than 2m tonnes of soil was decontaminated and the largest wildflower meadow the UK has ever seen was planted.

While we are unlikely to see investment in public space on this scale again for a generation, as with community-led projects such as the High Line, if green infrastructure is designed and managed to a high quality, it can give credibility to wider regeneration issues. In straitened times, the creative reuse of our existing landscapes and their architecture, might be our only option.

Sue Illman is president of the Landscape Institute, which ran the High Line for London competition alongside the Garden Museum and the Mayor's Office. She is also founder of landscape architecture practice Illman Young Landscape Design

A survey of network members found more than a third had seen their terms of employment changed in the last year, including cuts to pay or pensions

More than a third of social care professionals have seen their terms and conditions of employment changed in the last year, a Guardian survey reveals.

A survey of social care network members found 39% had seen changes imposed – including cuts to pay or pensions, alterations to sick pay and reductions in holiday entitlement.

Others reported their car allowance had been withdrawn or expenses payments for mileage and car parking had been cut.

A number of members reported that their terms and conditions were changing at the same time as workloads increased, and they were being asked to do "more for less".

The survey also asked about the biggest challenge facing the social care sector. More than half of the 300 care professionals who took part in the survey said funding cuts were the most significant issue.

One respondent said: "We have been decimated by funding cuts. Support services to families are being withdrawn and our thresholds are increasing. Caseloads are also too high and we're seeing an increased turnover of both social workers and admin support staff."

Another replied: "Care services are being asked to provide an improved or equivalent level of care/support. Even though they have less resources and have been forced to reduce essential staff due to government imposed savings. As a result service users will suffer."

Staff shortages, morale, and the level of skills and training in the sector were also cited as major challenges, and many members said these issues were directly linked to funding cuts.

One member commented: "We're at the end of a three-year pay freeze, which in itself has caused staff to leave and work for agencies and other authorities. Staff that have left have been replaced by locum social workers who are being paid at least £8 per hour (after tax), more than existing permanent staff. This has led to the decline of morale of permanent staff who are left feeling devalued."

Members were also asked about integration, building partnerships and innovation in their organisations.

Why not join our community? Becoming a member of the Guardian social care network means you get sent weekly email updates on policy and best practice in the sector, as well as exclusive offers. You can sign up – for free – online here.

A breakdown of what members said about their terms and conditions, the challenges facing the sector, and building partnerships

Our latest research asked members about the highs and lows of their working lives and the challenges facing the sector

What is the biggest challenge facing social care?

"Cuts which lead to even lower staffing levels, worsening low morale, increase in thresholds with no time to do the social work that would prevent escalation of needs."

"Staff morale – I often hear from staff in social care that they are finding it increasingly difficult to build constructive working relationships with service users and feel they are working under the most trying of circumstances. This, I feel, can lead to conflicts within those relationships and of course once in a conflict within a professional relationship those professional boundaries can easily become blurred."

"People are the key component of good social care. Staff are increasingly affected by negative messages in the media plus funding cuts, staff shortages and the major changes happening. It is difficult to maintain motivation and optimism."

"It is more than staff morale, staff are losing the belief that their unique insight and skills are being taken seriously."

"The constant reorganisation within our department, leads to unrest, having to adapt to new procedures regularly, changes in teams (merges, people being moved to other teams) – all this on top of a heavy workload."

"Social workers are required to be ever more creative when supporting families, particularly in the current economic climate. It is evident that staffing has a great impact upon morale."

What are the greatest barriers to innovation in your organisation?

"My organisation says it encourages innovation and has a flat hierarchy whilst becoming increasingly authoritarian, directive, risk averse, anti-creative practice and neglectful of service users."

"There is no lack of ideas, more a lack of capacity and expectation to deliver the same with less rather than different creative approaches."

"Working with vulnerable customers and a perception of being a 'public body' discourages innovation and risk taking."

"Micro management which does not delegate, and is overreactive to incidents rather than responsive to staff's initial concerns."

"As an independent organisation working with social care recipients we are happy to come up with innovative ideas, however these are then turned down by the LA when support plans are signed off."

"Changes from government which have to be implemented no matter the deterioration of services this will produce."

What do you enjoy most about your job?

"Ensuring user and carer experiences are captured and conveyed to commissioners and providers."

"Working with people to change lives. It is fascinating how the human can still make things better despite adversity."

"Providing and improving the level of care offered to people within residential care. Feeling that we do make a difference to the day-to-day lives of service users. Also providing advice, information and direction to social care staff to improve their knowledge and, at times, confidence in the care and support they provide."

"The challenge of supporting people to deal with the complexities of their lives is invigorating – taxing my brain and my endurance. It is without doubt, a huge privilege to enter into others' lives and support them to take difficult and at times, deeply personal, decisions."

"The team I manage are very experienced and passionate about their roles, despite changes. I enjoy trying to improve outcomes for young people leaving care through innovative approaches to education, training and employment, and improving access to suitable accommodation options."

"Creatively finding ways to support service users. Good team spirit despite ghastly circumstances. Taking responsibility and having scope to make independent decisions."

What do you enjoy least about your job?

"Lack of time, I could easily work double the hours and still not get through everything. At the same time we are being told everyone is under the same pressure!"

"Lack of opportunity to be a true social worker, assess holistically, provide quality emotional as well as practical support and undertake preventative work. It's all about what is the current issue and how can that current issue be addressed as expediently as possible. The lack of time actually spent with service users/carers/families."

"Having to explain to my clients that they can't have the package of care they feel they need as the council does not provide sufficient funding/assumes that relatives will take on the role!"

"The bureaucracy, ever-changing expectations from management, the feeling that you're lucky to have a job, the constant pressure to deliver cuts/save money whilst allegedly promoting independence."

"Growing meaningless administrative demands. Decreasing confidence in (senior) management and their interests and priorities. Increasing demands with decreasing resources."

"The masses of paperwork."

"Misplaced negativity around the role."

Why not join our community? Becoming a member of the Guardian social care network means you get sent weekly email updates on policy and best practice in the sector, as well as exclusive offers. You can sign up – for free – online here.

Join us from 1-3pm to discuss the benefits of flexible working for non-profit organisations and employees

This week national parents charity, Family Lives, released a report into flexible working, which suggested that flexible working is still beyond the reach of most workers.

The report also recommended that flexible working become normalised in the workplace and suggested that organisations explore new technologies which promote mobile and remote working.

Clare Walker is director of policy at Family Lives and also a working mum. She said: "Many parents, especially women, are forced to leave the workplace, taking vital skills and experience with them. Now is the time for workplaces to consider change that benefits everyone."

Last year Richard Madden wrote that charities lead the way when it comes to flexible working. However a TPP Not for Profit survey conducted this year found that charities are not actively promoting flexible working, most employees don't realise all the options that exist and that the flexible working options that charities do offer do not match the range of options desired by employees.

With that in mind, our Q&A will look at:

• Benefits of offering flexible working

• Potential pitfalls for employers and professionals

• Low cost technologies that can help

To join our experts on the panel, email Abby Young-Powell. You can leave your questions in the comments section below, or come back to join the discussion live from 1pm to 3pm on Tuesday 30 October.

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To join the voluntary sector network, click here.

As both candidates struggle to offer more meaning and voters turn to more traditional communications, can social media widen the gap for Obama?

Following the most recent presidential and vice presidential debates, global communications network Havas Media have released further data on the US Presidential candidates' 'meaningfulness' scores.

You can see the first set of results from this series here.

The scores track how voters feel the candidates will help them as they strive to live more meaningful and more fulfilled lives. 'Meaningfulness' is defined by measuring 39 softer factors that measure whether the candidates are seen to be not just be making political promises – but to be actively, tangibly making a difference to people, the community, the planet and society. The analysis also tracks how voters are using different media platforms and how voters are using different media platforms. Here are some of the key findings.

Most voters do not think that either candidate will offer them a better quality of life

Scores are on the rise for Obama, although they are still low – only a third of voters think that either will have a positive impact on their personal wellbeing and the wellbeing of the communities they care about. Romney saw gains in factors associated with money and security.

Paul Ryan's impact during the vice presidential debate also had a positive effect on Romney's meaningfulness scores

Although his scores are still significantly lower than Obama's, Romney did see an increase following the VP and second presidential debates, specifically in the areas feeling safe and less vulnerable.

Text and face to face discussion increased significantly during the debates, while chatter on Facebook and Twitter decreased

• Viewing figures increased as the number of voters watching via online video, tablet, mobile phone, desktop or laptop computer increased

• Still only 20% of voters follow or actively write on Facebook about the debate/election

• 40% of voters preferred to speak to friends and family in person (compared to 28% three weeks ago)

• Voters are twice as likely to get information about Obama via micro blogs (eg Twitter) than about Romney

Fast facts on this week's meaningful scores:

1. Following the second presidential debate, Romney is perceived as the stronger candidate in terms of listening to and caring about citizens

2. While Obama still leads in perception of support of charities and good causes, Romney is quickly gaining on him

3. Obama saw a significant increase in inspiring voters to make the world a better place, in comparison to a modest increase by Romney

4. Obama's scores for fostering community development increased, while Romney's increased only marginally

5. On the question of who is a 'true leader', while Obama's scores are still significantly higher than Romney's, scores for Romney increased as Obama's scores decreased

6. Both candidates' scores increased when voters were asked about their commitment to solving environmental issues – Obama scored significantly higher overall, however

7. In general, Romney continues to lag behind Obama, underscoring his challenge to connect with voters in a meaningful way.

This post was originally posted on the Havas Media website

To get more articles like this sent direct to your inbox, sign up for free membership of the Guardian Media Network. This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional.

News, comment, blogposts and tweets across the sector – including coverage of the FTN conference in Liverpool

From microloans to social impact bonds, charities are thinking more about the consequences of their investments

Charities have always been investing their money. But traditionally trustees' focus has been on maximising the potential financial return rather than considering the positive social impact of their investments. Charity commission guidelines to trustees until recently have emphasised the importance of getting the best financial return so more money can go into grants and services.

But in recent years, things have started to change with growing recognition that good causes often need loans, as well as grant funding. This has been exemplified by the popularity of the microloan organisation Kiva and the emergence of the social impact bond (SIB) product.

Charities are now starting to think more carefully about investing in ways that also produce a social impact. The SIB that was launched to reduce reoffending amongst ex-inmates at Peterborough prison now has 17 foundations and trusts investing in it.

In the past two years, the government has thrown its weight behind social investment setting out a strategic vision in June 2012 and launching Big Society Capital (BSC) earlier this year. BSC will use an estimated £400m from dormant bank accounts to help develop a market for social investment.

The Charity Commission has prepared for any increased interest in social investment with guidance explaining to trustees what is legally permissible. It sets out the broad principles that trustees must follow, as opposed to a strict set of rules, and aims to give them the flexibility to pursue the most appropriate approach for their charity.

Jane Tully, the head of policy at Charity Finance Group, says the climate in the charitable sector is becoming more favourable towards social investment and making more creative use of finance.

"Now instead of only making grants, charities will make investment with an element of interest," says Tully. "That enables them to make further investments in the future with that money, stretching it further."

John Kingston, a director at the organisation Social Finance, explains charities' investment options as a spectrum ranging from grant giving on one side, where no return is expected, to mainstream investment where a high return is expected, with social investment and ethical investment in between.

"What I have observed is that people are increasingly looking to see if charities need money as an investment," notes Kingston, who is also a director of Big Society Capital. "Charities do need loans to buy a van or for property or to invest in a new service."

The Charity Commission's guidance CC14 sets out two motives for investment – one is financial, in other words achieving a maximum return, while the other is programme-related, where an investment can make a positive contribution to a charity's mission.

"Trustees need to be really clever about what they are doing," explains Jane Tully. "Yes, they can do both but they need to be clear in the legal framework that they are acting in the best interests of the charity."

The guidance also sets out mixed motive investment as what Tully describes as "a third way of investing" that covers both objectives. She welcomes the fact that this has been set out, noting that it could help where an investment does not fit neatly under the category of maximum return or furthering a charity's mission.

Charitable organisations are now beginning to adjust their investment strategies. At the forefront of this shift are the trusts and foundations, who historically have been active in grant making.

Mark O'Kelly, the head of finance and administration at the Barrow Cadbury Trust, says his organisation has committed up to 5% of its investment budget to social investment. While the trust has always invested in ethical funds, O'Kelly adds that trustees have agreed that it should be involved in testing out the emerging social investment market.

He acknowledges that there are risks involved. "There's a lot of market development to do but these products will become less risky as more people get involved. We feel that we need to test it out and that's why we are putting in up to 5%, or £3.3m."

O'Kelly says that the trust is looking at two areas, one is criminal justice and the second is funds that would help to develop the social investment market. It has recently made a loan to Bristol Together, an organisation which buys derelict buildings and trains ex-offenders and homeless people in construction skills so the properties can be restored and sold, with profits reinvested in the fund and participants.

He believes that because the investment involves purchasing assets, this loan is lower risk than other vehicles. "Some social impact bonds are more risky than others," he explains. "If this one performs badly we will still have the assets," he explains.

Another trust dipping into the social investment market is the City Bridge Trust. Its principal grants officer, Tim Wilson, says it is an area that his organisation is very excited about. "We see our investment as a way of putting money into the sector and helping to grow what has the potential to be a very successful asset class." Wilson says that in a emerging area like social investment, products lack a track record so it is difficult to make a call on what to invest in. He explains that his organisation is choosing to invest in programmes run by charities that demonstrate a strong performance in that area, for example providing loans for an organisation to open charity shops where it has a track record in retail.

"Scope is offering a bond that is raising money to allows it to open retail premises in high end areas," he explains. "Generally charity shops in those areas get good stock and sales. These shops are established and become profitable and generate money in the future. This would pay for work with families that have members who are severely disabled and would hopefully provide investors steady income."

For Wilson other considerations when investing would include leadership and business plans. He says where his organisation was less confident of a return, it would consider a grant instead. "At the very least we would want to get a bit of capital back and maybe a little interest on top of that. "We'd want one that delivered a positive social benefit within the term of the investment itself," he adds. "Because it is new to us, we would like to avoid open ended stuff."

Both Wilson and O'Kelly say that their trusts will continue to invest in mainstream funds and offer grants to organisations. O'Kelly has sensed a lot of interest from charities in the area of social investment and believes that once recipients prove their track record, private investors and other funds will enter the market. But Wilson says he expects that most social investors will initially be trusts and big charities with large endowments which do not require an immediate return.

John Kingston says that there is a trade-off that needs to be made between social impact, risk and return and charities need to weigh up what they are comfortable with. But he adds that they will be doing what private investors have always been doing.

"I invested in a venture capital fund 15 years ago – I still haven't got my money back," he reveals. "Even with a commercial investment you would not always get your money back. The things charities need to consider are impact, liquidity and risks."

Rosie Niven is a freelance journalist.

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To join the voluntary sector network, click here.

If the government wants more responsive public services, it needs to take on board the expertise of the voluntary sector

During his speech at the Conservative party conference, the prime minister reiterated his commitment to reforming public services, saying that unreformed public services are a key hallmark of countries "on the slide".

The government's programme for reform intends to make public services more creative and innovative. As the voluntary sector has decades of experience in identifying, addressing and preventing inequalities, I see voluntary organisations as well-placed to improve both the design and delivery of many public services. And this involvement is vital for the voluntary sector. In many cases, it is the best way for organisations to achieve their mission, as it means they can provide direct support to beneficiaries.

To enable this, I believe that lessons should be learned from real experiences. Take the Baca project in Leicestershire, which designs and delivers servicestargeting the needs of 15 to 19-year-olds trafficked in the UK or seeking asylum. They have found it difficult fully to capture the benefits of their unique services in the box of a contract tender document. Or West Mercia Probation Trustwhich is successfully working in partnership with youth charity YSS to jointly explore new potential services to help reduce reoffending.

Yet to enable charities to provide these innovative services, there are a number of steps that could be taken by central government. Firstly, by continuing to offer grant funding could support pilots of experimental ideas and enable new entrants into the public service market. Secondly, data on service users' needs, motivations and choices should be made widely available, in accessible formats, to allow providers to propose services that are responsive to people's needs.

At a local level, commissioners should engage at an early stage with prospective service providers, as well as with social investors. Commissioners should also be proactive in developing partnerships and subcontracting relationships among providers to enable new collaborations and innovation. It is important for potential providers, including social investors, to have adequate time to prepare for contract bids.

Of course, charities also have a role to play in enabling the successful innovation of services. They should proactively make contact with commissioners at an early stage, so as to avoid risk-averse and cautious procurement practice, which too often hampers innovation. They should also be prepared to invest time and staff resources into preparing for public service delivery, such as ensuring that governance structures have the operational and strategic skills to manage contracts and deliver services.

Here at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), we have co-ordinated a collaborative report to share the experiences and expertise of the voluntary sector. The report has been created in partnership by 14 organisations, specialising in areas including health and social care, criminal justice and social investment.

The government's open public services agenda could transform services to be more responsive to the needs of users and local communities. Our report shares some possible barriers to innovation and experts discuss the need to manage risks for providers, the potential of social investment and the need for central government to ensure minimum standards are upheld.

Government needs to listen to and learn from the experience and expertise of charities so that the voluntary sector's potential for providing innovative solutions to improve our public services can be fulfilled.

James Allen is head of public services and partnerships at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations

• To respond to this, or any other article on the Public Leaders Network, email public.leaders@guardian.co.uk. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication". You must be a member of the Public Leaders Network to submit articles for publication.

• For the latest public leadership updates, follow us on Twitter

This article is published by Guardian Professional. Join the Guardian Public Leaders Network free to receive regular emails on the issues at the top of the professional agenda.

Without any intention of using proper workforce planning, there is no way of telling the impact of cuts across the country

Despite the unprecented scale, pace and focus of the government's public service cuts, a lack of overall workforce planning means it is almost impossible to predict the longer-term implications of the cuts for the wider labour market, for particular groups being affected and for regional employment.

The government has embarked on a major programme of public service cuts on an unprecedented scale and pace. Many of the cuts will fall in areas such as health, education, social services and the police, areas which the Margaret Thatcher and John Major governments largely spared. Yet we know remarkably little about the implicationson the country's workforce.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has made some global predictions of total losses between now and 2017. But this is essentially an educated guess. The OBR has also given up trying to give a more accurate profile of when and where the cuts might fall, because the government has made it clear that it has no intention of introducing workforce planning for public services as a whole.

Past experience tells us that the UK labour market can cope with large-scale reductions in the public sector workforce, and to date the cuts have beenbalanced by strong private sector hires.But if private sector job growth falters, public sector job cuts will feed through into higher unemployment and higher levels of economic inactivity.

What we know about the impact of the workforce cuts thus far can be summarised as follows:

•  Nearly one million who said they were employed in the public sector at the end of 2010 had left by the end of 2011 – far more than can be accounted for by public sector job cuts. It is a significant concern that many of those leaving the sector are moving out of the workplace altogether, rather than into new jobs. This could have long-term consequences for growth.

•  Although female workers make up the majority of job losses from the public sector, male public sector employment has fallen faster in percentage terms than female public sector employment to date. Some commentators have blamed the cuts for the relatively weak growth in women's employment. But this is at best only a partial explanation. Jobs held by women account for most of the jobs being cut, but male employment across the sector has been falling faster in percentage terms. More importantly, many of the new jobs in less well-paid areas such as administrative, personal, and retail services, which have been traditionally dominated by women, have been going to men. In the two years to April-June 2012, employment across these occupations went up twice as fast for men as for women.

• Claims that cutting public sector pay in the regions would help encourage private sector employment are not convincing given high levels of unemployment and lack of demand. There are also particular blind spots around the long-term implications for the regions – if we find it hard to make predictions at the national level, it is all but impossible at the regional level. No clear pattern has yet emerged. There is however, no convincing evidence that cuts in public sector wages in lower wage regions will "crowd in" private sector jobs at current levels of unemployment.

What is consistently striking about this picture is just how little the government knows about the wider implications of these cutbacks.

We believe the Cabinet Office and the Office for Manpower Economics could do a lot more to provide policymakers and public service managers with an overview of how the cuts are reshaping the public sector labour market and the wider impact on particular groups. This would also help the OBR get a grip on the scale and profile of the cuts in the public sector workforce and therefore the wider implications for the economy. Without such an overview, the government is essentially flying blind.

Ian Brinkley is director of The Work Foundation and is the author of Public Loss, Private Gain?

• To respond to this, or any other article on the Public Leaders Network, email public.leaders@guardian.co.uk. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication". You must be a member of the Public Leaders Network to submit articles for publication.

• For the latest public leadership updates, follow us on Twitter

This article is published by Guardian Professional. Join the Guardian Public Leaders Network free to receive regular emails on the issues at the top of the professional agenda.

Demand for services for older people means the social care sector is growing, but how will it cope with the challenges of recruitment, funding and regulation? David Brindle reports

Social care is booming. This may seem strange, given its well-publicised funding crisis, but demand for care and support of the growing numbers of older people is driving growth in the sector at a rate that most of the rest of the UK's recessionary economy would dearly love to share.

New figures from Skills for Care, the sector skills agency, suggest that an estimated record 1.63 million people were employed in adult social care in England last year. They worked in 1.85m "job roles", a figure up 4.5% on 2010 with the increase attributed largely to a 15% rise in personal assistants recruited by people taking personal budgets in the form of direct payments.

The number of organisations providing social care services is put by Skills for Care at 22,100, an increase of 1% on 2010, despite commercial problems exemplified by the collapse through financial mismanagement of Southern Cross, which was the biggest care home chain. Investors have proved undeterred by the headlines, focusing instead on the underlying demand growth and snapping up the Southern Cross homes and any others that have come on the market.

All is not rosy

The National Children and Adult Services conference, the annual summit of the social care sector, opens today and is being co-sponsored by HC-One, the largest company to rise from the ashes of Southern Cross. Its presence at the sector's policy high table this week is a timely reminder of just how deftly the collapse was dealt with, largely by the sector itself, little more than 12 months ago. All but a handful of homes were transferred smoothly and no resident was rendered homeless.

But not all is rosy in the social care garden: far from it. Growth is itself a source of difficulty in that it is running in line with Skills for Care's previous forecast that, short of any unexpected game-changers, the sector may need to employ as many as 3.1 million people by 2025 – a staggering and seemingly impossible-to-achieve number.

To get anywhere near that figure the sector will need to radically change its recruitment practices. At present, 82% of employees are women and only one in five is under 30. More than 50% are aged between 40 and 60, with the average age being 43. This is surely far too narrow a profile, especially with employee turnover rates running at a typical 19% a year, but the job suffers from an image problem that deters young and male candidates.

Funding continues to be a huge issue. Although the coalition government has now apparently endorsed the idea of a cap on individual liability for care costs (but not for costs of board and lodging in care homes), there seems to be deadlock with the Treasury on how such a cap should be funded, whether it should be universal or voluntary, and whether it should be set at the level of £35,000 as recommended by the Dilnot commission.

In an interview for this supplement, Lib Dem care services minister Norman Lamb digs in on the principle of universality and, while saying he retains an open mind, pours cold water on the idea of funding or part-funding from existing NHS or social care budgets. Such a prospect, he says, is "difficult to imagine". He may, however, need to call in independent testimony to convince the Treasury.

While the deadlock persists, care fees continue to rise and people in parts of southern England are being quoted as much as £2,000 a week for a bed in a nursing home. According to market analysts Laing & Buisson, 41% of people in care homes are now fully responsible for their own fees, and 55% are paying all or part of the fees as the state's funding role diminishes.

A third persisting challenge is regulation, highlighted by both the Southern Cross affair and the scandal at Winterbourne View, the former long-stay private hospital near Bristol for people with learning disabilities – 11 former staff this week face sentencing for their roles in a shockingly abusive regime.

The prospect of a repeat of either episode terrifies ministers, so we can expect to hear soon of moves to toughen economic regulation of the sector, improving early warning of the kind of financial problems Southern Cross ran into, and cracking down on Winterbourne View-type units in the independent sector. Common to both agendas may be efforts to hold the owners of care companies, as well as senior management, to account for negligence.

Lamb talks in his interview of setting down a "very firm line" in the government's final report, due shortly, on the policy implications of the Winterbourne View scandal. That line is expected to be significantly tougher than anything said previously. Whether it extends to ordering NHS and council care commissioners to stop using private long-stay units will be a fascinating test of the coalition's commitment to localism.

Moving to a new 'home' away from friends can be difficult for young people

You would expect that when a local authority takes children into its care, it automatically accepts the responsibility of protecting and nurturing their young lives. Currently, however, almost half the young people in residential care are living outside the boundaries of the authority that looks after them – sometimes far outside.

The Department for Education leaves us in the dark on the reasons for this and we are left to speculate: perhaps it's a simple case of too few residential homes in one area and a surplus in another, or maybe there's a financial factor behind it.

There are, of course, cases where placing a young person away from their own area is in their best interests, for their safety. There may even be instances where the young people are thankful, for good reasons, to be living "away from home". In many more cases, however, I wonder how appropriate it is for children and young people to be removed from a familiar environment and taken to some far-away town or city.

An important consideration when moving a young person out of their area is how it affects their relationships with others. Relationships, especially significant ones, take time to build and grow – like the close friend they can trust and talk to about their hopes and dreams for the future, or the aunt, uncle or other adult they have come to respect and who supports and advises them when they need it. These relationships are very precious things and offer comforts and securities for looked-after children that cannot be obtained any other way; the implications of severing them are significant.

And remember that when the young person arrives at a "home", they are the outsider. They may find it hard to trust others and strike up new friendships. It is at this point that they need to be able to call on those important relationships that they have built up.

Transparency may be the key. Wherever possible we need to keep these young people close to their "home turf'". To minimise the danger and/or damage they may face, we must first know why a looked-after child or young person is being moved to a residential home outside their local authority area. If the reasons given are unconvincing, then it simply should not be happening.

Maxine Wrigley is co-ordinator of A National Voice, an organisation run for and by young people who are or have been in care

Continual budget reductions are dealing a heavy blow to local government staff facing the 'graph of doom'

For those of us working in local government it is that time of year when the media is full of stories about how many jobs could go at every council. In my authority as many as 300 jobs could be lost this time around, and after two years of very heavy cuts already we are through the staff who were prepared to go via the voluntary process and could well be facing compulsory redundancy.

We are midway through a four-year process that will see council budgets reduce by more than a third, which in our case means tens of millions in cuts every year. Even if we could ignore inflation that is impossible to deal with without reductions in public services. The image that we employ people and provide services is misleading; we employ people to provide services. When one goes, the other follows.

The plain fact is that we have no fewer roads to mend, no fewer bins to empty, no fewer vulnerable adults to care for and no fewer children to safeguard. We have important responsibilities that the public have come to rely on the council for.

It is also apparent that this is only the beginning and that council finances are never going to return to the levels that they once were. Councils are faced with planning their own demise. If that sounds like an overblown bit of hyperbole, you should that it is not.

According to the current forecasts, drawn from the government's own figures, within the next 10 years local authority budgets will have been reduced to a point where councils as we know them are no longer viable. According to the "Barnet graph of doom", most councils face spending their entire remaining budget on the costs of adult social care alone. On this diagram the rising line showing the cost of adult social care and the falling line representing council budgets meet in 2019. From that point on councils will be doing nothing else. There will no longer be a local authority.

While it is hard to imagine even this government allowing things to get that far without changing course, the coalition is still quite adamant that there will be no change to the funding policy they are pursuing.

The "graph of doom" is taken from a piece of work that local government presented to national government as the start of what we expected to be a dialogue to address this forthcoming disaster. Its response was to confirm those spending plans for 2015 and beyond.

Long before that projected end, many of the things people have become accustomed to will have been cut already. Residents in my ward are already noticing the longer grass, community facilities closing down and service disappearing, bins emptied less often, litter picked less frequently, local charges increasing.

While we've all done our bit to lessen the impact and try to maintain things as they were, we have may have done a disservice to the public by protecting them from the impact for so long. It was the right thing to do, but it will make the shock worse when the end finally comes.

That time for most authorities, when the wheels must begin to stop, is now. We can't just do less, cut back and part perform. We are stopping doing things altogether. Councils are simply having to cease providing the services they offer that are neither statutory nor mandatory, and there is not much we can do to soften that blow.

I always wanted, as their representative, to make sure residents were awake to the sheer scale of cuts before it was too late. The truth is however, they may only wake up in time to find that councils are already gone.

Tim Cheetham is Labour councillor in Barnsley and blogs at http://cllrtim.blogspot.com/

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Join the local government nerwork for more comment, analysis and best practice – and the latest jobs in your area

Most social landlords know very little about their tenants, but collecting the right data can improve housing services

Tesco has more than 12 million Clubcard customers. These shoppers unwittingly provide Tesco with around 5bn items of data every week, which Tesco sells on to commercial companies for more than £50m a year. Tesco knows exactly who you are, where you live, what you like – and what you don't like. When it promotes a new product, the supermarket chain can target it to the precise postcodes where they know it is likely to do well.

In contrast, housing providers know very little about their tenants. The recent consultation over whether tenants should "pay to stay" revealed that housing associations don't know, and don't appear to want to know, what their tenants earn. Some providers don't even know who is living in some of their properties.

I'm not suggesting we follow the Tesco approach, but as a sector we could do better. With the dramatic changes now facing us, not least welfare reform, it is crucial that we have a better understanding of our tenants' needs and aspirations. If nothing else, a failure to understand and address the personal circumstances of our tenants could lead to a huge increase in rent arrears once universal credit and the bedroom tax kick in.

One landlord that is planning ahead is Cross Keys Homes in Peterborough. Its "resident census" has amassed an impressive database of information about 96% of tenant households. Neighbourhood managers visit each tenant and conduct a face-to-face interview that lasts around 90 minutes, using touchscreen tablet computers to collect data. The information collated includes household size, income, any disabilities, internet access, bank accounts, willingness to be involved in resident panels and training schemes, and the household's economic aspirations. The visit also includes a detailed property inspection to check for repairs, sub-letting or overcrowding.

The driving force behind the project at Cross Keys is director of operations, Claire Higgins. By collecting a full profile of who is living in their homes, the housing association has been able to change the way frontline staff work with tenants.

She told me: "This is helping to drive the organisation forward and make detailed plans on issues like welfare reform. That is a fantastic use of their time and it means that we are really well placed to respond to government agendas on localism and citizenship. For example, we can identify those young people eligible for the national citizenship scheme as well as those community stalwarts willing to become community organisers. The census also allows us to deal with problems before they get out of hand and to map where we need to take action on those issues that are important to our residents, such as anti-social behaviour."

All the information gathered by staff is then downloaded to Cross Keys' housing management database, which helps staff to target services and information to precisely the right people. The team now knows exactly who is affected by the bedroom tax and can offer bespoke advice about the forthcoming reductions in housing benefit. They can also provide targeted support to help tenants gain entry to a training course and into employment.

Higgins describes the survey as a tool that has allowed the organisation to "dig more deeply" into the causes of problems on estates. Her conclusion? "I would recommend this process to any other landlord who is interested in planning for a viable future."

Colin Wiles is a housing consultant. Those who want to learn more about the "tenant census" can email claire.higgins@crosskeyshomes.co.uk

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Join the housing network for comment, analysis and the latest jobs direct to you

A scheme being piloted in Leeds could transform the way older people are supported – and save money – by encouraging investment in the community. Ian Wylie visits the city to find out more about the project

Jean Saunders is glad to be back in her bungalow in the former mining community of Swillington, near Leeds, sat safely in her favourite chair after the latest in a series of falls led to another hospital stay. But the 69-year-old, who has Parkinson's disease and has been taking antidepressants since her husband died earlier this year, says it is neither medical care nor bereavement counselling that she needs most – but company.

"I've been lonely, just stuck here by myself, and don't see many people," says Saunders, who worked for 27 years as a sheltered housing warden. "My daughter, who lives on the other side of Leeds, comes twice a week to see to my shopping, and I get on all right with the neighbours. But some days the only person I see is my carer at breakfast time. It can feel that nobody is caring, that I'm being left out."

Then she adds: "But since Trevor came on the scene, things have been a lot better."

Trevor is Trevor Stephenson, a Leeds council social worker, who has been finding ways that volunteers from a local "neighbourhood network" group, Garforth Neighbourhood Elders Team (Net), might introduce a little more companionship into Saunders's life.

"It's surprising where you find social isolation," says Stephenson, who has been in social work since 1982. "You can be talking to someone who, on paper, has a good support network, yet in terms of meaningful contact, they don't have a lot. I've come across so many resilient older people who have just accepted that old age means loneliness. They might live in a community, yet they are isolated from it."

Quality of life

His work with Saunders is part of a pilot scheme exploring an innovative concept that goes by the name of Combining Personalisation with Community Engagement (CPCE). If successful, it could assist councils to reduce their social care spending, help the NHS to cut hospital costs and bring investment into local communities. Most significantly, though, the scheme aims to give older people a better quality of life, enabling them to live longer independently in their own homes.

And here's how it would work: older people who are eligible for care under the Facs (fair access to care services) system, and who wish to take a personal budget, would choose to supplement or replace the council-provided elements of their support packages with more tailored services, provided by local social enterprises and their volunteers. The money saved through using volunteers would be split between the council and the social enterprise, which would invest its share in the community.

For Saunders, it's working like this. After completing a "lifeplan" – a side-and-a-half A4 summary of her needs and aspirations – Stephenson has agreed for her support package to include transport by volunteers to Garforth Net's weekly coffee morning and luncheon club. A volunteer will also be helping her regain confidence on her mobility scooter, while another will take her out for walks in her wheelchair. Lifeplans for other people have included weekly fishing trips, pub lunches and church visits. Saunders will also still receive personal care from a professional care worker.

The idea belongs to the Stamford Forum, a social policy ideas network. "This could change the shape of social care over next 10 years," claims Ritchard Brazil, one of the forum's founding members. "The savings could allow local authorities to use their funds much more effectively and, more importantly, make it possible for individuals to receive better services that improve their lives.

"It would also free social workers to get back to doing what they are trained to do, rather than being care managers or glorified accountants."

In addition to the work in Garforth, pilots are running in other parts of the UK. "CPCE is an exciting opportunity to shift more resources to communities," says Mick Ward, Leeds council's head of commissioning. "It's a chance for older people to change from being passive recipients to being in control of those resources. But it also shifts control of resources to communities which can decide how CPCE savings can be reinvested, whether that's to set up a community laundry or increase community policing."

Leeds council has made cutbacks of almost £150m over the past two years and the adult social care directorate predicts a 15% reduction in spending power over the next four years. Directorate deputy director Dennis Holmes says he is expecting CPCE to deliver personal budget savings of about 5%, but believes the "ultimate prize" with initiatives like CPCE is "whole system savings" – fewer hospital and residential care admissions.

"Nursing and residential care is my biggest single item of expenditure – £72m a year," says Holmes. "If people stay in residential care for shorter periods of their life, that will generate great savings to us."

The financial climate has "sharpened our desire to find new ways of doing things," says Sandie Keene, Leeds's director of adult social care. But she concedes there will be challenges in extending CPCE across the city.

"None of us assumes this is going to be easy," Keene says. "We have to build capacity in our communities and there's culture change within the local authority to overcome as well. Social workers are used to doing things a certain way. However, some might remember when social workers used to be more community-based. We need to marry up that history with the present."

Brazil admits that not all local authorities are ready for CPCE – few councils, for example, have community infrastructure as mature as in Leeds. Even in Leeds, it has yet to be proven whether the well of volunteers from the 37 neighbourhood networks, which include Garforth Net, is deep enough to support CPCE in significant numbers – although Brazil maintains it will attract volunteers who see it as a skills ladder for entering the social care sector.

Stephenson acknowledges that some of his social worker colleagues may struggle to embrace the new model. "Some might fear for their jobs," he says, "but social work has become more about assessing people's needs, and figuring out what support they need, instead of outcomes.

"I can remember working in a system that wasn't as bureaucratic and prescriptive, where you could work more flexibly. I think CPCE would allow us to be social workers again. It feels more like what we ought to be doing."

Live coverage of the FTN annual conference in Liverpool, including coverage of David Behan's plenary speech

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb has wasted no time getting down to work in his new role as care services minister. He talks to David Brindle about integration of health and social care, personalisation and funding reform

As someone who once remortgaged his home to fund the career of a rap singer, Norman Lamb is not averse to taking a gamble. So it should be no surprise that he's willing to bet he can deliver the progress on the integration of health and social care in England that has eluded so many of his predecessors.

Within seven days of his appointment last month as care services minister, Lamb was promising the "political oomph" necessary to take the concept of integration from the pages of academic journals and isolated examples of good practice, and apply it across the health and social care system. There was, he said, pretty much a consensus that it was the right way to go and no more time to lose.

By hitting the ground running, Lamb has provided a contrast to the low-profile start of his boss, new Tory health secretary Jeremy Hunt, who was also appointed in the government reshuffle. But whereas Hunt has a lot of reading to do to get up to speed, Lamb is an old hand at health, having been Lib Dem spokesman from 2006 to 2010 and played a pivotal role in the frenzied but ultimately fruitless attempts to broker a cross-party deal on social care funding reform just before the general election.

That his Lib Dem colleague Paul Burstow was then made care services minister in the coalition administration, while Lamb became parliamentary private secretary to deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, prompted raised eyebrows. Observers surmised those cross-party talks had left ill-feeling between Lamb and Andrew Lansley, the coalition's first health secretary. Now Lansley has moved on, so the story goes, Lamb is able to have the job he wanted two years ago.

He is determined to make up for lost time, fizzing with enthusiasm for integrated care models he has seen, from Torbay (which he cites repeatedly) to Oakland, California. He has already convened a roundtable of UK experts on integration, and is preaching a message that this age of funding constraint in public services is precisely the right climate to make an irreversible shift in the way health and social care are delivered.

Prevention

"We can just take a very depressed view about the world in a time of austerity, with services cut back and dire warnings about the state of the system," Lamb says. "Or  we can say: 'Right, we've got tough circumstances: how do we maximise use of the money we've got available; how we do shift the focus on to prevention; how do we ensure we're using the money optimally rather than making the perverse judgments that sometimes happen when you have this divide between health and social care?'"

Lamb argues that breaking down the divide is not only right for the individual, so that services are arranged flexibly around them, but is the only way the NHS will be able to meet the demands of an ageing population. "We have got to get it right in order to ensure we have a sustainable health service. If we don't get it right, we will bankrupt the system."

He believes new structures taking effect next spring, particularly local health and wellbeing boards hosted by councils with social care responsibilities, will bring the two worlds much closer together. The other two ingredients of change he identifies are political leadership, which he vows to give, and financial incentives. The Department of Health is experimenting with paying for a "year of care" for people with long-term conditions, rather than payment per episode of treatment, and he is deeply impressed by the way integrated care is driven by funding arrangements within the Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente health insurance scheme.

"For people with chronic conditions the idea of payment for an episode of care is ridiculous. It incentivises the wrong behaviour within the system: acute hospitals just benefit from doing more and more and yet we want to stop that patient with chronic conditions from going in constantly to that hospital."

There has been speculation the care and support bill will require the new NHS clinical commissioning groups, part of next spring's shakeup, to pool part of their budgets with councils.

Lamb says: "There is not a worked-out plan. I have not got to that point yet. There may be people thinking about it, for all I know, but I have not been part of that discussion."

While integration may be the key to changing the health and social care system, reform of social care funding remains top priority with the public and media. The government continues to duck a decision on implementation of the proposals of last year's Dilnot commission, which recommended a £35,000 cap on individual liability for care costs, although it says it supports the idea of a cap in principle. On returning to the backbenches, Burstow lost no time in publicly blaming the deadlock on Treasury resistance to the costs of £1.7bn a year and rising.

Speaking at the Conservative party conference a fortnight ago, Hunt described the costs as unaffordable and indicated the health department would need to make savings from "the huge amount of inefficiency in the system" to foot the bill at least in part. Lamb appears to disagree.

"I have got an open mind, but I find it difficult to imagine how we could fund Dilnot at a time when we are trying to get unprecedented efficiencies out of the system," he says. He is sceptical, too, about the idea of shaving the cost by making the cap an opt-in scheme rather than something that applied to all. "My problem with an opt-in is the evidence from around the world about whether voluntary insurance systems, which is what in effect it would be, ever deliver the scale of participation to make it really worthwhile.

"Again I have got an open mind if someone can produce evidence to me that contradicts this or [demonstrates] a new way of doing things that deliver the scale. But what I have seen indicates it would be likely to be a marginal activity which then wouldn't deliver the protection for the mass of people of modest means who would continue to lose everything until falling into the means-tested system."

Given his bruising experience of the talks held ahead of the election, it would be unsurprising if Lamb was wary of trying again to broker a cross-party deal on reform. But he insists that remains his preferred option. "I repeat my view that this transcends narrow party politics," he says. "If we can do it on a cross-party basis, a consensual basis, I am strongly in favour of that. But the bottom line is that we have to resolve this."

Another issue on which Burstow has spoken out since leaving government is the legacy of the scandal at Winterbourne View, the former private hospital near Bristol for people with learning disabilities, where a regime of abuse was exposed last year. Eleven workers at the unit have been convicted of offences and are being sentenced this week.

Burstow has said the health department needs to take a tougher line than hitherto in its final report on the case, due imminently, and initiate the closure of similar long-stay units by ordering local care commissioners to stop using them. Lamb is clearly sympathetic to this, but reluctant to comment in detail in advance of the report. "There needs to be a very firm line and a clear ambition to protect people in often very vulnerable situations from this risk of abuse," he says. "But also we need to be more ambitious not just to stop the abuse happening, but actually to dramatically improve their health and wellbeing."

He, like Burstow, is an advocate of personalisation of care and support to improve people's wellbeing. And he will be warning social care leaders at their conference in Eastbourne this week that he will be keeping a sharp eye out for "window-dressing" as the deadline of next April approaches for local councils to have offered personal budgets to all eligible users of social care services.

"I don't want to see any evidence of [care] plans being signed off by the service-user and described then as a personal budget if they haven't had any real involvement in it," he says. "I don't want a target achieved that turns out to be meaningless. I want real empowerment for people."

Progress on personal budgets is notoriously variable and the odds are long on all councils, or even most, meeting the deadline. But Lamb has shown he can pick a winner: that emerging rap singer, for whom he remortgaged, was a young man co-managed by Lamb's son, Archie, by the name of Tinchy Stryder. He's gone on to do rather well.

Peggy Lui is determined that China does not fall into mass consumption and the way to do it is to create a 'sexier' alternative

Peggy Lui, the co-founder of Juccce is living the dream. Not the American dream mind you, Lui is living her own creation – the Chinese dream.

We meet at her luxurious high rise apartment in a swanky mid-town neighbourhood of Shanghai. Down on the street below gleaming shop windows display eye-wateringly expensive luxury goods to China's rapidly expanding middle class. Fragments of the old China still exist – visitors stumble upon the occasional historic site – but for the most part China is systematically bull-dozing the old and building the new. And that's why Lui is here.

Born in America to Chinese parents, Lui grew up in the States. She graduated from MIT with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and computer science. After a few years in Silicon Valley followed by a short stint at McKinsey & Co as a management consultant, she relocated to China, because she believes it's where she can make the most difference.

Lui sees herself as a bridge between China and US. Speaking both languages and understanding both cultures puts her in an ideal position, she says, to facilitate collaboration – hence Juccce, the Joint US-China Collaboration on Clean Energy – but "the place to practice sustainable living is China," she insists. "China is half way through a 40-year urbanisation project, 350 million people will move from the countryside to the city … we're becoming richer and China's consumption is rising."

Lui is determined that China will not follow the American path of mass consumption. She recognises that if every Chinese person begins to consume like an American its game over for the planet, but if newly wealthy Chinese families want to buy bigger houses in the suburbs, a car and a refrigerator, how will she stop them?

Experts predict that China's 300 million-strong consuming class is going to rise to 800 million by 2025 – that's two and half times the total population of the US.

Lui's idea – which she says is win-win for businesses and the planet – is to sell them a different dream. Lui is working with the advertising moguls Saatchi & Saatchi and branding experts Ogilvy to create the China Dream concept. Rather then telling people – 'don't consume,' they will be told 'consume this instead': "You make something else sexy rather than telling them what they can't have."

Instead of the big house in the suburbs with his and hers SUVs, the Chinese dream will promote high rise urban dwellings with well-integrated public transport.

Of course having made urban living sexy it also has to be made possible, so another part of Juccce's work is teaching government officials about environmentally friendly city design. Chinese state officials are trained in specialist academies and Juccce is one of a very few outside organisations that is allowed to teach courses in these academies.

To date Juccce has trained 322 mayors and government officials about green finance, lower energy buildings, and integrated public transport, Lui says, but "that's still slow if you have 20,000 large cities to go through," so they are now in the midst of developing an e-learning course for public officials so they can spread the word a bit quicker.

Key to this is finding best practice from around the world and translating it into Chinese. Juccce's contacts book is nothing short of stellar and Lui is an inveterate name dropper. Richard Branson is an honorary member of Juccce's committee, as is James E Rogers, the chief executive of America's largest electricity company Duke Energy, and there are photos of Lui with Bill Clinton which can be accessed via their website.

Juccce is "the perfect channel for foreign companies and experts who want to access [China's decision-makers]. We want to work with them too – it's just win-win. Juccce is good at creating those win-win situations. It's good for China, it's good for foreign companies, it's good for the citizens," Lui says.

When Lui co-founded Juccce in 2007 she identified four major drivers affecting energy use in China: the grid, industry, urbanisation and consumption.

Taken in that order the number of people you need to influence to make change happen increases, she told me. In general, because of its top-down governance, influencing the implementers is much easier in China.

Juccce's first major project was to promote the uptake of the smart grid. Lui was savvy enough to recognise that to make that enormous change she only needed to convince a tiny number of people. Because there are fewer decision-makers, it's easier to identify them and coral them whereas in the US to do the same thing you would have to identify the chief executives of 3,000 energy companies, as well as the legislature. "In China there are about four people you need to speak to about utilities," she said.

The same is more or less true of Chinese industry: "In industry there's a very small handful of top state owned enterprises and they all report up to the same ministry entities so they are very easy to identify."

Lui set Juccce up as a 10-year project in 2007. Five years in she has already made significant inroads into influencing the four tipping points – grid, industry, urbanisation, consumption – that she identified as her targets. As she says herself, the first part of the road was relatively easy since she started with the easiest wins.

Will she fend of the encroachment of the American dream into China and succeed in supplanting it with Juccce's own Chinese dream? Only time will tell. But Lui has successfully rallied a lot of the key decision-makers behind her, and that's good start.

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox

Living close to home can offer 'looked-after' children much‑needed stability, so why do so many councils struggle to make local placements?

"There's no excuse for taking children out of [their local] area except for safeguarding purposes. Local authorities should be investing in local provision," says Phil Frampton, who was born and grew up in care, and later founded the Care Leavers' Association. There's a big gap, however, between "should be" and "are".

It has long been accepted that – safeguarding factors aside – it's better for "looked-after" children, who are cared for by the state, to live close to home. But last year, then children's minister Tim Loughton felt it necessary to send a letter reminding councils of the need to reduce the number of out-of-area placements being made. And following the recent Rochdale sex abuse scandal, in which one victim was found to have been living in residential care outside her local area, the government underlined its concern at the vulnerability of children living far from home by asking for an urgent report on tougher regulations and checks before any decision was taken to place a child out-of-borough.

Another expert group has been established by ministers to report by December on "the location of homes and models of ownership and commissioning practice" as part of driving up the overall quality of placements.

A report last year by the Department for Education showed that almost 23,000 looked-after children in England were placed out of area, of 65,520 in total. And nearly half of those in residential care, as opposed to foster care, were not living in their local area.

Residential places

So why are councils continuing to send so many young people to live away from the networks that might help them retain a degree of stability in their very uncertain world?

There is a complex web of reasons, but what it boils down to is there simply being not enough places. In some areas, the number of residential places is going backwards: last year Essex county council decided to close all its children's homes. There are 10 local authorities with no residential provision at all. One of these, Thurrock in Essex – which does better than most councils by placing 83% of children in foster care compared with 74% nationally – points out that "restoring local authority capacity would require significant capital and revenue investment".

Richard Green, child protection manager at Cafcass, the agency which represents the interests of children involved in family court proceedings, says that councils may be reluctant to spend on local residential provision because they can't achieve what they consider to be reasonable efficiencies of scale.

"Because the majority of money goes towards foster care, local authorities have been very reluctant to invest in residential homes, when a smaller number will go there, and those children will not all have the same needs," Green explains. However, what you get as a result, he adds, are private companies seizing the opportunity to offer that specialist provision. The independent sector now runs about three-quarters of residential homes and, "because the market dictates where they are, they're in the north of England, where property prices are cheaper".

Debbie Jones, president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services, admits there are pressures in the system, but says that does not necessarily mean the wrong type of placement will be made. Young people who are placed in residential care tend to have specialist needs and may require expert support, she argues.

The answer to current concerns is not to rush off blindly and start developing new homes, Jones says. "Rebuilding children's homes in your area isn't necessarily going to be cost-effective, particularly if you closed them initially because they did not meet [young people's] needs," she says. "And shoving children into homes because you happen to have them there is not the right thing to do."

Jones thinks it is time to look at new models of care. "The concept of a children's home in a certain place is about bricks and mortar," she says. "But what we are about is creating flexible models of care that suit young people, and the sector is looking at that now, creatively, rather than defensively."

Looking outside the UK might be instructive, suggests Frampton. The Kinderhaus model in Germany, he says, has managed to deliver places at £700 per child per week (compared with as much as £3,000 in a UK children's home) in what he describes as "cluster homes in blocks of flats". The overheads, he suggests, are "much less" and there is an element of stability for children "because you can stay in the same place even if one 'home' [within the block] doesn't work out".

Teams of specialist professionals are employed to work across all the homes within the Kinderhaus, and are always available on site. The model combines the benefits of keeping children local, having staff who are competent to meet a range of needs and keeping places affordable. There is, says Frampton, "nothing like that here at all".

If local residential provision cannot, or indeed should not, be expanded quickly, "there has to be a really huge emphasis on quality rather than cost", argues Jill Sheldrake, director of social care at Together Trust, a charity that runs residential homes in the north-west. "There are decisions and some procurement processes – few and far between I'm glad to say – that are 60%-70% based on cost," she says.

Tom Rahilly, head of strategy for looked-after children at the NSPCC, says councils should ensure the decision-making process behind every placement is open to scrutiny. "We have a problem in that we don't have enough information on how local authorities place children," he points out. "There needs to be greater transparency around how out-of-area placements are being used."

A more rigorous and transparent process would encourage social services to take greater care to justify where a child was placed, agrees Sheldrake. "There have to be very clear reasons why a child is placed cross-boundary," she says. If those reasons were made explicit, "you would then know it's about the outcomes".

It remains the case, however, that the number of looked-after children is increasing at the same time as council budgets are being slashed. Given those pressures, is it likely that the picture will improve any time soon?

"I think it's positive that we have such a focus on the care system at the moment," says Rahilly, measuring his words carefully. "But a lot of that focus is on adoption. We do need further steps taken to broaden out that work."