Is what we do fairness informed?

Have you ever sat back and problematised whether strategy and policy developments are experienced as fair? Or asked yourself whose needs are your strategies meeting - is it the people you serve? Your organisation? Both? What does fairness mean anyway and to whom?

When completing research for my PhD I explored experiences of fairness, and unfairness, amongst people with learning disabilities who were engaged with professionals due to domestic violence and abuse. Drawing on the participants thoughts and experiences, the following definitions of fairness and unfairness developed:

Fairness means treating everybody with the same dignity, respect, and common humanity whilst ensuring that the aid required to make choices, undertake day to day tasks, and pursue goals and ambitions is provided without discrimination (Hutchison 2024).

Unfairness is discriminatory treatment within relationships of unequal power which operate to maintain the unequal structure of aid. Unfairness can be experienced as vivid emotional responses to discrimination linked to the unequal structure of aid, this is often linked to experiences of discrimination throughout the life course (Hutchison 2024).

From these definitions I developed a practice framework called Fairness Informed Practice (FIP). FIP places people’s experiences of fairness and unfairness at the centre of the development of Domestic Abuse practice. FIP advocates for practice that is relationship-based, trauma informed, anti-discriminatory, and reflexive. I would argue that the same principles can be applied to strategy and policy development.

Central to FIP is developing effective relationships. This is something that is central to facilitating the development of meaningful and impactful strategy. People often tell me that institutions just don't care about them. People want us to get to know them, their story, their expertise as people with lived experience. They want to see themselves in the things we develop.

The second key component of FIP is an acknowledgment and understanding of the impact of trauma throughout the life course. FIP also places a particular emphasis on doing no further harm through re-traumatisation. Re-traumatisation occurs when people experience dis-empowering dynamics in the supportive relationship. Central to this is avoiding inadvertently repeating dynamics of violent, abusive, and neglectful experiences. In essence, when developing strategy and policy it should not feel coercive, structurally violent, financially abusive, and should not seek to harm people.

As a framework FIP is anti -discriminatory. It is critical, values human diversity, and seeks to illuminate the impact of power on experiences of fairness and unfairness, eradicate discriminatory treatment within relationships of unequal power, and challenge unequal structures of aid. It is thus incumbent on strategy and policy professionals to attempt to eradicate discrimination and oppression from their own practice, challenge it in the practice of others, and within institutional structures and cultures.

Finally, FIP is reflexive. Central to this is an understanding of the influence and impact of our own personal and social characteristics (i.e., education, gender, sexuality, cultural identity, disability, class etc) on what we are doing and how we see things.

To summarise, policy, and strategy development impacts significantly upon people’s lives, and we must question whether what we are doing is fair, who would answer yes and no to this question, and why.