Not because the system is working. Because the real price has been transferred elsewhere: to the atmosphere, to depleted soil, to public health budgets, to supply chain workers in countries most of us will never visit.
The system looks efficient. It is not. It has learned to make its true costs invisible, and the same logic runs through the welfare system, the housing system, and every crisis support service in the country. The costs do not disappear. They migrate: to A&E, to emergency housing, to the criminal justice system, at five times the original cost. The 50p Lettuce is about that pattern, and what a genuinely different approach looks like in practice.
Drawing on fifteen years of frontline experience delivering the Rebuilding Lives model, Mark Goodway argues that our systems are not failing by accident. They are failing by design. And the assets required to build something better are already there, waiting for someone to ask a different question.
This is not a theoretical argument. It is an evidence-based one, grounded in what actually works, written for the leaders, funders, and commissioners with the power to change the systems that need changing.
The lettuce is still on the shelf. The question is whether we are finally ready to ask what it really costs.
Endorsements
The 50p Lettuce is a provocative and timely challenge to how we think about efficiency, cost, and resilience in our social sphere. Drawing on deep experience in Bristol, Mark Goodway asks uncomfortable but necessary questions about who really pays the price for apparent efficiency, and what it would take to build systems that genuinely work for the most vulnerable. Whether or not you agree with every conclusion, this book is an important and thought-provoking contribution to the debate about how we fund and design support for communities.
David Knott – CEO, The National Lottery Community Fund
This book is well worth a read for anyone working with people and communities, designing support services, funding the work, or evaluating it. Mark gives an inspiring frontline account of building an alternative crisis support model in Bristol - one that invests in people and relationships and unlocks existing strengths within a community. This is genuinely transformational work, yet existing funding models, system designs and measurement frameworks have failed to catch up. This book makes a compelling argument for asking different questions and making different choices at every level of the system. Powerful stuff!
Katie Boswell – Independent Systems Change Consultant
Mark Goodway has gone to the heart of the matter, identifying how and why so many systems repeatedly fail our most vulnerable people. In The 50p Lettuce, he offers a radically different approach that puts the people they serve at the starting point, and the heart, of those systems; it should be required reading for anyone involved in working towards a fairer society.
Diane Trembath – Communications Consultant, not for profit sector; Freelance Journalist
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