Following on from the success of the Towards Relational Public Services (TRIPS) conferences we would like to invite you to join us at this year’s conference in Manchester June 23-25th of June 2026.
This conference seeks to continue our explorations of the challenges of making Relational Public Services a reality for service users, professionals and academics alike: in an increasingly complex world, how can public services and social interventions create and sustain positive lives for the people and populations they serve?
There is increasing pressure for a radical change in the form and function of public administration, management and governance. Genuine social change – to deliver high-level conditions of societal wellbeing like quality-of-life, health, criminal behaviour, gainful employment or educational attainment or responses to climate change or energy shortages – are simply too important to be delivered by top-down policymaking, target-driven and transactional approaches to management, or more rigorously-evidenced social interventions. Human and relational services are better achieved and value better created by investing in the capability of public service systems, those who work to improve communities and people’s lives and engaging meaningfully with the complexity of the contexts that we all live in.