The New Wealth of Time

Faith in the money economy and our debt-based banking system is collapsing. As a long and deep recession looms, and credit becomes scarcer, this report describes an alternative means of exchange to keep our communities and public services vibrant: time.

Beyond the market: timebanking as a new form of recession-proof exchange
The report describes how timebanking, as a tool to stimulate co-production, is already helping to create better services across a range of areas, including mental and physical health, services for young people and older people, regeneration, housing and criminal justice.

Co-production is a theory based on the premise that people and societies flourish more readily where relationships are built on reciprocity and equity: enabling people to give freely, yet also facilitating the give-and-take of time, knowledge, skills, compassion and other assets. These are not commodified through allocating them a ‘price’. They are abundant, not scarce, in our communities. This is not to say such activities don’t have value, however: back in 1998, the total household work done in the USA was valued at $1.9 trillion, whilst in 2002, the informal care that keeps the elderly out of homes was given a replacement price of $253 billion.

Timebanking is a practical tool that enables co-production. Unlike the money economy, timebanking values all hours equally: 1 hour of time = 1 time credit, whether you are a surgeon or an unemployed single mother. Timebanking recognises that everyone, even those defined as disadvantaged or vulnerable, has something worthwhile to contribute. Timebanking values relationships that are forged through giving and receiving. As such it adds a new dimension to what Richard Titmuss called the ‘gift relationship’.

This report shows how timebanking can help give people more control over their lives, prevent needs arising and grow what we call the ‘core economy’ – our ability to care for and support each other and to engage in mutual and non-materialistic exchanges and civic activity.

Much in the same way that the market economy – unless appropriately regulated – neglects and erodes the ecosystem, so it can also undermine and weaken this core economy. In the same way that the market fails to incorporate the environmental damage caused by production into the cost of goods and services, it also fails to value the contribution of unpaid labour. Currently the core economy is taken for granted by the majority of public service interventions. As globalisation intensifies economic competition, however, people work harder and have less time with families, friends and neighbours and the core economy is weakened. ‘Time poverty’ leads to community breakdown, mental health problems and distrust.

As market economies across the world are threatening to implode, co-production in the form of timebanking suggests an alternative route by tapping in to abundant but neglected human resources that can help to meet people’s needs and promote well-being for all.

Recommendations: growing the core economy
This report argues that co-production should become a key component of public services, using timebanking as a tool – where appropriate – to achieve that objective. Thus, the values outlined above would inform and shape mainstream public services.

To encourage co-production and grow the core economy, public service leaders and commissioners should embed networks of exchange, such as timebanking, within public organisations, including doctor’s surgeries, hospitals, schools and housing estates. These institutions should become community hubs, rather than simply service delivery vehicles, as our case studies demonstrate. But to complement this push, a number of other actions are also necessary for different parties involved in public services:

Commissioners and philanthropic funders can:

• Ensure funded programs embed and reward reciprocity, reserving a proportion of payments to enable people who use services to play a role in delivering them.
• Replace output targets with broader measures of what really matters (to service users), to enable practitioners to demonstrate the value of co-production approaches in terms of individual and social well-being (for example using the outcomes star described in Appendix 2).

National Government and local policy-makers can:

• Give higher priority to funding measures, including initiatives such as timebanking, that increase the resilience of individuals and communities, in order to prevent needs arising. This will reduce demand for services and safeguard resources for meeting unavoidable needs.
• Ensure a greater proportion of funding directed at ‘meeting needs’ is redirected to support preventative measures, such as timebanking, that increases resilience and reduces reliance on more expensive, intensive services.
• Ensure that the personalisation agenda takes a holistic view of people, including their strengths as a key part of the solution, rather than focusing disproportionately on people’s weaknesses and problems.
• Recognise that many successful interventions have value across service silos because they engage communities rather than individuals with predefined problems.
• Ensure greater collaboration and sharing of resources between departments as with the agency to agency timebanking model described in Chapter 2.

Regulators and auditing bodies can:

• Ensure systems of assessment and audit take account of how far public services are co-produced – i.e. how far those who provide services treat those who are intended to benefit from them as equal partners, not only listening to and acting on what they say is of value to them, but also involving them actively in planning, designing and delivering the services.
• Carefully examine legislation around risk and confidentiality to ensure it does not block informal systems of mutual care and support such as timebanking.

The third sector and other sectors delivering public services can:

• Avoid the adoption of a top-down, ‘service delivery’ culture which mimics some public services and defines people as problems.
• Refocus the roles of frontline works as partners, coaches and ultimately catalysts for service users, not ‘fixers’ of problems.
• Rather than talking about ‘added value’, recognise that co-production, where it occurs, is the critical ingredient in creating better outcomes and recognise the assets of service users and enlist them as co-producers.
• Collaborate and share resources and assets rather than just compete for funding, as illustrated in the case studies of King’s Cross and Rushey Green time banks.

What this report is for: building better public services
The report is for public service leaders and policy-makers, as well as commissioners and providers of services in the public, private and third sectors. It has two objectives:

1. It is an argument for changing the way public services are designed and delivered, to produce better outcomes for those intended to benefit from them.
2. It is also a guide for using a particular tool – timebanking – to help achieve that change.

The challenges are well documented: rates of mental ill-health, chronic diseases and obesity are rapidly rising; the prison population is growing; the population is ageing; the gap widens between rich and poor; and there is now strong evidence that wealth and well-being are disconnected. Public finances are increasingly unstable and future prospects for public spending are insecure. How can these challenges be met?

We suggest the challenge is ensuring sustainable well-being for all. This will involve three key and connected objectives: giving people more control, preventing needs arising, and engaging sustainable resources to maintain effective service provision.

1. Making people more powerful. People and communities must play a bigger role in defining their own needs and have more power to do what it takes, individually and collectively, to improve and meet those needs. For this to happen, they must have more control over the processes that shape and deliver services. They must be co-producers, with frontline professionals and others, of their own well-being.
2. Preventing needs arising. As far as possible, co-produced public services must be geared towards preventing needs arising in the first place, maintaining and improving the quality of people’s lives, and extending the opportunities as well as the capabilities of individuals and communities to look after themselves. This brings a double prize of maintaining well-being and saving money for essential services by not paying to meet avoidable needs.
3. Engaging sustainable resources. Public services and support systems that underpin co-production must be robustly and sustainably resourced. We can no longer assume that the economy will grow at a rate that can fund ever-expanding services. It is more sensible to plan for low growth or no growth. So not only must we avoid unnecessary expenditure by giving priority to prevention, we must also look to the human resources that are not priced by the market – the wealth of human relations, time, social networks, and knowledge and skills based on lived experience. These assets are abundant in every community and they don’t ebb and flow with the vagaries of the market – although without them the market economy could not function. They are the operating system that underpins the private and public sectors. As such, they are more than just the ‘non-market’ economy. They are the ‘core economy’, which can be grown for the benefit of all.

Celebrating 10 years of timebanking
Many of these ideas may seem radically new, but in fact timebanking is long established in the UK as a tool for building communities and creating more effective services. As this report goes to press, timebanking is celebrating its 10th anniversary in the UK, with 600,000 hours or 71 years worth of mutual exchange behind it and 109 active timebanks.

Yet its full potential has yet to be realised, particularly in the mainstream of public services. So there is everything to play for, particularly as the economy slows. The case studies included here show how different models of timebanking are currently operating to:

• improve mental ill health;
• regenerate disadvantaged communities;
• reduce isolation and improve the health of older people;
• improve the well-being of young people; and
• create a more effective criminal justice system.

The case studies in this report show how this has been done: how young gang members in inner city Washington can become effective peer jurors; how isolated older people in London can help each other recover from physical illness; how people recovering from mental health problems can co-design and deliver services to fellow users; and how a de-industrialised Welsh mining village can be rejuvenated through collective action.

In every case, timebanking is a way of enlisting the time and resources of service users to help themselves and support each other in the co-production of services, creating better outcomes and more sustainable systems of support.

Timebanking as a flexible tool with core values
There are different ways of using the timebanking tool; public service agencies and communities themselves should adopt models that best suit their circumstances. Several broad approaches to timebanking are described in this report (Chapter 2) and illustrated by the case studies, many of which combine these approaches:

• Person-to-person: reweaving social networks, strengthening communities.
• Person-to-agency: enlisting people to contribute to agencies missions.
• Agency-to-agency: ensuring agencies share existing skills and resources.

The report shows how timebanking works through a range of brokerage, including local community currencies, ledger books and IT programmes. Each of the 11 case studies has unique dynamics, reflecting the uniqueness of the communities in which timebanking has developed.

There is no generic blueprint for timebanking – but there are key steps organisations should take to help them decide what kind of approach to adopt. These include a careful consideration of the mission and aims of the organisation; an understanding of the existing assets within a community, including voluntary and civic activity that is already taking place; and a review of potential allies and partners. Timebanking builds on and engages community networks – as such it cuts across public sector silos and third sector specialisms. It demands joined-up activity and collaboration between agencies, rather than competition.

But while timebanking is a flexible tool, the idea embodies a set of core values. These apply in every case and infuse the broader concept of co-production. In summary, they are about:

• Recognising people as assets, because people themselves are the real wealth of society.
• Valuing work differently, to recognise all that people do to raise families, look after those who are frail and vulnerable, and maintain healthy communities, social justice and good governance.
• Promoting reciprocity – giving and receiving – because it builds trust between people and fosters mutual respect.
• Building social networks– because people’s physical and mental well-being depends on strong, enduring relationships.

As the report goes to press, global financial markets are in turmoil and the UK is entering a recession. Here is a timely antidote. Timebanking offers a range of opportunities for growing the core economy. It taps into a complementary currency of abundance, unlocking human resources – relationships, time, energy, knowledge and skills – which can be realised through co-production, helping to foster reciprocity, strengthen social networks and develop sustainable well-being. These resources have long been neglected by a welfare system that veers between treating people as passive recipients of top-down services, and expecting them to behave as customers in a market-place. Now more than ever we need a better option.