Hello, I'm Mike

Thanks for visiting my website

The purpose of this site is to share my thoughts on how public services could be reformed to meet current and future demands. What makes more sense - to keep arguing that there is not enough money for public services (there never has been nor will there ever be); or to consider how services could be radically transformed by communities themselves, working closely with local and national politicians, with public, private and charitable organisations? I know where I stand and there is theoretical and practical evidence to suggest the future is brighter than we think.

Do today's statistics stand as an accurate guide to future expectations? Can we predict the future? Could we go into a class of 10-year-olds with a 'Pass' stamp and highlight those children we expect to do well in education, in work and life more generally? Could we do the same thing with our 'Fail' stamp for those classmates who we expect to fall by the wayside? I can see us carefully navigating through the little tables and chairs, "Well done David, it's a thumbs up for you ... Unlucky Olivia, you have no chance!" Could we do something similar in a pre-school nursery? How about at conception or even before that?

Motivation and biography

Many years ago some of my students suggested that I create a website to share insights based on decades of working in a variety of paid and unpaid roles in public services. After 20 years teaching at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, I retired from my role as a Senior Lecturer at the end of May 2025, almost 40 years after becoming a Ministry of Defence Police Constable. Looking back my CV became quite packed and diverse in the intervening years with lots of study, roles in youth work, adult social services, child and family social services, as a trustee for two Welsh charities, and in national government as a programme manager for two major initiatives - children's services and community development. As rewarding as these roles were, none comes close to the experience I had as CEO of a unique charitable company between 2002 and 2014. The Hill Community Development Trust Ltd. was created to build on the foundation of the only European Union URBAN Community Initiative in Wales. It was innovative and ambitious and therefore doomed to fail, but it worked far better than anyone dared to hope on day one. The solutions for the many problems faced by communities often described as 'the most deprived' were not to be found in the corridors of power. They lay hidden, waiting to be unlocked, in the heart of the most affected communities themselves. It seemed strange to me that the tendency in local and national government was to fire-up the steamroller of public service intervention, rather than have a frank conversation with the communities themselves.

I remain as a Swansea Councillor and Chairperson of the Council's Education and Skill Service Transformation Committee; as Vice Chair of Dylan Thomas Community School; a governor at my old primary school - Gendros; and as Chairperson of Friends of Ravenhill Park. I hope this website will be of interest to anyone with an interest in taking a relentless grassroots, bottom-up perspective to the design and delivery of public services, especially in those communities where we tend to have a concentration of incredibly costly problems to deal with. With budgets under pressure and increasing issues this should be a central priority for us all.