Face to face

I caught the end of a programme last night about the rising incidents of violent street crime. The last words was from a member of the public was along the lines of, “we need to see police on the streets; without that they can never serve and protect.”

I remember walking along a main road in a New Forest town as a young uniformed sergeant when a lady stopped me and said, “Its so nice to see a police officer walking the beat.” I thanked her for her kind comment but the reality was that I had, as had my colleagues, walked along that same street several times every day. But she has never seen us. Now the purest would argue that foot patrol for 8 hours with no potential tangible outcome is a complete waste of resource. Far better to provide a vehicle and drive from incident to incident; and this was very much the case for most of my career; beat policing was a poor second to getting the job done. The most important thing about walking the beat was and still is, you meet people face to face. Being an effective police officer, like most jobs, is about connecting and understanding people.

This week I was asked to speak to the Police and Crime Commissioner Consultation Group on the work of Citizens Advice and how we are shaping services to meet the needs of today's society. The group consisted of several senior police officers and PCC staff. I found myself extolling the virtues of digital channels such as webchat, phone, email and potentially Face time/Skype to show we are more accessible to all.

I concluded with challenges; the first one being the demographic time bomb I wrote about recently in Feeling your age? I said, “and 50% of girls born today will live to be 100.” There was an intake of breath; I felt like a soothsayer delivering unwelcome news. Our ever increasing ageing population does not just throw up challenges to the health and social sector. Policing will need to adapt to a greater understanding how to stop criminals preying on older people through a plethora of scams and fraud. Sadly, some large charities blatantly advertise heart wrenching TV adverts seeking will legacies like this (this is just an example of many) targeting the older generation.

Citizens Advice was established during the second world war to meet the needs of a community facing poverty, disruption, anxiety, uncertainty, housing issues, homelessness and bereavement.

The issues are no different today but have different causes. But what is different is modern social structure and informal support networks. Families no long live in the same street or neighbourhood. A successful career in the 1950’s was to follow in your parents footsteps on the factory floor; now its living for 2–4 years in one place before moving on, some on a global scale. I know many people who have children and grand children in the far east or Australia. Traditional networks and support are very different now. Local communities now are full of surrogate families in the form of village agents, lunch clubs and social activities. I talked about Loneliness last year; a modern phenomenon I think, where individuals without close local links to family and close friends “disappear”. They reappear at the door of Citizens Advice in crisis; usually confused and in need of urgent help.

In a recent survey of Local Citizens Advice in Hampshire, almost unanimously the development of digital channels is a key goal in the next 3 years. Yet, is it all about quick easy access? Is that what our clients want? For some yes, our client gap in age is indefinably under 25 years but the majority are middle aged or older. And for sure, we know it is the older generation who will need our greatest focus and support. A recent KPMG study by Liz Forsyth Listen, Learn, Lead asks Chief Executives of Global companies for their top 5 key priorities in the next 3 years. The first is Building a stronger customer focus (or better meeting customer needs). Digitising the business (or technology transformation) and becoming more data-driven also feature.

I think we should be building a stronger customer focus for our clients of the future, who no doubt will be largely older and socially isolated. We need to develop an understanding and affinity with clients that will enable us to design and provide the right support at the right time. Giving advice may not be enough, helping to put that advice into practice to resolve problems must be our goal. We need to find vulnerable clients earlier by working in partnership with other agencies/business. We have to be smarter and more proactive rather than passive and reactive. The key success factor will be human interaction, that human touch; that means face to face.

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