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Policy driven change is challenging, with a significant gap between theory and practice. A key tension in enacting such change is achieving a balance between bottom-up development of local, context-specific approaches, and top-down, centrally determined policy solutions and their mutual sequencing. Ideal type models of the policy-making process envisage a rational ordered approach, driven by evidence and accompanied by ongoing evaluation of outcomes (Parsons, 1995, p77); however, the reality is far more complex. We examine the implementation and early operation of the New Care Models (NCM) Vanguard programme in England, using Matland's (1995) ambiguity-conflict model, to explore the aims and expectations of the programme. We consider the relationship between top-down and bottom-up approaches to policy development and draw attention to the pressures coming from what was initially perceived as a permissive policy approach of encouraging experimentation, whilst also requiring rapid learning, scale and spread. We suggest that future programmes for large-scale policy implementation initiatives could be crafted differently to take account of the environment of implementation and render ambitions more realistic. Rather than aiming to create a set of definite products and templates, it may be that a set of principles for design and implementation should be developed and spread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metaphors are inescapable in human discourse. Policy researchers have suggested that the use of particular metaphors by those implementing policy changes both influences perceptions of underlying reality and determines what solutions seem possible, and that exploring 'practice languages' is important in understanding how policy is enacted. This paper contributes to the literature exploring the generative nature of metaphors in policy implementation, demonstrating their role in not just describing the world, but also framing it, determining what is seen/unseen, and what solutions seem possible. The metaphor 'care pathway' is ubiquitous and institutionalised in healthcare. We build upon existing work critiquing its use in care delivery, and explore its use in health care commissioning, using evidence from the recent reorganisation of the English NHS. We show that the pathways metaphor is ubiquitous, but not necessarily straightforward. Conceptualising health care planning as 'designing a pathway' may make the task more difficult, suggesting a limited range of approaches and solutions. We offer an alternative metaphor: the service map. We discuss how approaches to care design might be altered by using this different metaphor, and explore what it might offer. We argue not for a barren language devoid of metaphors, but for their more conscious use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]