Camden Centre for Relational Practice

The Camden Centre for Relational Practice is a research and practice centre launched in November 2024. The Centre is dedicated to creating relational cultures in public services.

About us

Relational public services have to mean more than just ‘having good relationships’. The Camden Centre for Relational Practice is about increasing institutional capacity to do things with people, not to them. To do this, we support public services to put relationships at the heart of staff practice and at the heart of the environments staff work in.

This doesn’t just mean training people to do relationship-based practice, it means designing workplace systems to support relationships. This could be from the language used in a policy to the way a meeting is run. We believe relational cultures can thrive when public services do both of these things.

Led by Camden’s Director for Relational Practice Nana Bonsu, the Centre aims to support 21st century public services to tackle 21st century problems. Through relationships of reciprocity, recognition and respect, with residents and with each other. This starts with institutional cultures, where relationships are deliberately designed into the fabric of the organisation.

What we do

We offer support with:

relational practice – drawing on the Camden relational practice framework
relational infrastructure – designing policies, processes and services that support relational practice
relational leadership – supporting public service leaders to champion and model relational cultures
collaboration and participation – practices to help public services to work with residents and solve problems together.

Watch: Relational Practice in discussion

Who we work with

We work with:

local authority children’s services in England, offering peer support through the DfE Sector Led Improvement Programme
internal Camden services, including delivering Camden’s relational practice framework training for council staff.
academic institutions, knowledge centres, policy labs and community services who are wanting to try new things in relational public services, acting as a research and development partner and test site.