June 2019

The June 2019 seminar was held at the Lab’s offices at Buckfast Abbey and had four contributions.

Patrick Diamond from Queen Mary, London spoke about what it means to be a social policy expert in an age of ‘post-truth’ democracy. It explored the current state of evidence-based policy in the UK and the developments that strengthen and challenge its use. Patrick's slides are here.

Tim Hobbs, director of the Dartington Service Design Lab, then discussed the Lab’s achievements in its first two years and outlined future plans, inviting observations and advice from fellows.

Martin Knapp from the LSE described the dementia challenge caused by the growing numbers of elderly people in most countries of the world and the role of economics in helping fashion services to tackle it. The tension between welfare and economics, along with moral issues about end of life care and responsible use of public money were discussed. Martin's slides are here.

Finally, Liz Burns a systemic family therapist asked how far the Children Act 1989 principle of the child’s welfare being paramount has been implemented and practised. She used as a basis for discussion extracts from the 2017 film The Children Act.