Who'd of thought it - we are sociable animals to whom relationships are extremely important! Thank you to Charles Leadbeater for putting these ideas forward. After nearly 30 years of hearing "there is no such thing as society" (Margaret Thatcher) and that money is the measure of all things this is a relief.

My view is that our lives work through thousands of relationships large and small - from family and friends, workmates, passers by, people who have produced all the things we use and buy etc. It doesn't end with human relationships either. Plankton provide half the oxygen we breathe, green plants provide the rest, soil contains billions of bacteria, fungi and tiny organisms that make it fertile etc etc.

In short we are embedded in a huge mass of relationships. The more we understand that and behave accordingly the better for everyone.

“The key is to redesign public services to enable more mutual self-help, so that people can create and sustain their own solutions.”

Maybe it would be more practical for government to stop pretending it has either the “knows how” or “can do” for anything
and instead of taxing people, with the intention of doing great things,

they withdrew from interfering in peoples lives, leaving more money in the pocket of the individual to fund individual “self-help, so that people can create and sustain their own solutions”.

Reagan called it “smaller government”, it happens when politicians actually respect the sense and reasoning skills of the people who elected them into a position of power –

versus treating the electorate with contempt by pushing grandiose, socialist, monolithic edifices of engineering (of diverse disciplines), which lack any potential for success, down their throats.

“For most of the last decade, we have seen public services as systems and standards, to be managed and rationalised. Instead, we should reimagine public services as feeding the relationships that sustain us in everyday life.”

And the problem with public services, as history continuously records:

the “objective” becomes the vested interests of those employed and getting fat off the service budget, instead of “joe public” (the consumer), who, instead of being the primary consideration, since he lacks a direct say, is treated with least concern and taxed, remorselessly, to fund the burgeoning service.

Charles, obviously if it's self-help supplied by you, it's not self-help.

It is not legitimate to compare organisations which obtain their funding by the voluntary payments of their customers, with organisations which obtain their funding by threatening to lock people in a cage if they don't submit to having their income confiscated.

Another way of looking at how to improve your service is this. Ask yourself: is this a service that people would willingly pay for? If not, it should be abolished, and taxes reduced by that amount, since the people who own the money can make better use of it, in so far as they would be restricted by law to voluntary, and therefore ethically superior transactions.

However if this is a service that people would willingly pay for, then there is no need to fund it through taxation, is there?

Charles there is really nothing new in your suggestions. There are already a myriad of government funded relationship building programmes that you speak of - like mentoring and relationship support for the lonely, marginalised and disabled.

Governments at all tiers have always been mindful of the need to reduce dependency but the fact is that while these relationships are being built, people need in the first instance some practical and financial help to avoid falling through the gaps.

Work for the Dole, Return to Work and the current Green Corps jobs are testament to the desire to reduce dependency on social welfare but still retain a duty of care to provide necessary training and support to enable people to find and keep work.

Providing relationship support say for carers while, vital for mental health and wellbeing, does not absolve us of the fact that the carer still requires financial support.

Much of what you argue is already being provided at community level but of course more can be done to support needy groups like carers, those with mental health issues, aged pensioners and the disabled.

Great organisations like Carers Australia provide relationship support, respite and other services but the reality is carers will still require financial support from governments to be able to live above the poverty line. Otherwise we may as well resign ourselves to the fact that all of these cared for would otherwise be in institutional care.