By The role of the third sector, or voluntary sector, has expanded hugely in the last decade. In part as a result of people volunteering – every day in Leeds West, where I am standing for parliament, people are putting something back in to their communities. But the expansion also reflects government recognition of the strengths and advantages of a sector which is not a government bureaucracy, but equally, is not a for-profit organisation.
One of the key strengths of the voluntary sector is that it is often more knowledgeable about local need, and more responsive to people’s individual circumstances. For example, one charity in West Leeds is working with young people at risk of becoming embroiled in the criminal justice system, making a huge difference – as I saw just last week when I attended their awards ceremony and met the seventeen year old now doing an apprenticeship at college. I believe that it is often right for government to encourage and pay for the voluntary sector to deliver local services.
As the general election approaches, the voluntary sector is asking how the respective parties view the future of the voluntary sector. This is particularly the case as the sector is feeling the pinch - being asked to do more for less, with demand for services rising while donations and grants fall.
David Cameron talks about setting the voluntary sector free to flourish. I am sure that we can find cross-party consensus support for that, but what does it mean in practice? Even the largest third sector organisation in Leeds West, with a turnover of £2million, receives the vast majority of its funding from central and local government grants. For smaller charities locally up to 100% of funding comes from government grants or through commissioned services. In Leeds West, average earnings are only £16,000 and most businesses are small businesses or sole traders. Although we have social enterprises – a community cafe, arts festival, a gardening business and new business supporting older people stay in their homes – the voluntary sector here does not have the capacity to be independent of government. he voluntary sector will not flourish without partnership with the government.
There is real fear, especially among smaller charities and ones in poorer areas, that Cameron’s policies mean charities fending for themselves, relying on philanthropy which might not be there, making it impossible to deliver the front line services the community needs.
The Conservative Party doesn’t seem to understand the day to day reality of how voluntary organisations are funded. They may be the third sector, but just like the public and private sectors, the voluntary sector has bills to pay, staff to employ and services to deliver. Partnership is therefore needed with the public sector, as well as individual and corporate philanthropy to be able to deliver services in the voluntary sector. The delivery of front line services by the third sector is one of the most effective means of public spending but it cannot be achieved for free.
The reality is that Labour has supported charities better than any previous government. By 2008 the income of all British charities was £48.4bn, more than double what it was in 1997. More recently the government announced a £42.5m package to help volunteers, charities and social enterprises through the difficult economic climate, as well as a further £16.7m for the sector announced in the 2009 Budget.
In his recent ‘Big Society’ speech, Cameron said the State had ‘squeezed out kindness’ from society. But, we give the second highest amount to charity in the world (0.73% of GDP), and around 30% of the population volunteer on a regular basis. In Leeds next year we have the year of the volunteer – and I’m working with one local business which is supporting two schools and a group working with elderly people, helping them live independent lives.
Given the facts, why are the Conservatives constantly doing down the contribution of the hard working, generous British people? We should be proud of our record. But it’s like the attacks on ‘Broken Britain’ – a slogan that ignores the fact that in most of our neighbourhoods people do look out for each other, young people are respectful and hard-working and the vast majority of parents do their very best for their children. But that doesn’t fit Cameron’s rhetoric.
The voluntary sector needs government to back up its commitment with money and concrete support. The voluntary sector has expanded as giving has increased and as the state has commissioned more services from the third sector – recognising their strengths in delivery. But, small charities, especially in deprived areas, will not flourish without a supportive state. Warm words don’t hide that reality.
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Ian you have made my point for me. The very people this legislation is supposed to prevent getting into positions of trust will still do it if they are desperate enough, all it takes is say £1,000 to acquire a hijacked NI number, false documentation and 'bingo' you are OK again. All things a legitimate volunteer would not need to.
Its not rocket science and I bet there are already criminals offering this service along with false passports, credit cards etc. Hence it remains stupid legislation for sensible reasons as it does not do what it says on the tin and gives a false sense of security...while reducing the pool of volunteers dramatically.
Ask the Scouts, Guides, Sea Cadets and other youth organisations how well their adult recruiting is going ...
The only way to track and control paedophiles, sexual abusers and the like is through the courts and the justice system. The police actually have a good record on this.
Say you wanted to employ a teacher to work with young children, or a volunteer on a play scheme surely you would a system to check that they have no record.
Yes nothing is possible to stop the situation we saw in Plymouth but we can prevent people from getting in
First, claims that the third sector is implicitly better, in whatever regard, have to be substantiated. When unpacked, we see that the overwhelming evidence is of a deliberate tying-in and incorporation of voluntary organisations to such an extent that a ‘shadow state’ now exists. This limits the freedom and autonomy necessary for these agencies to pursue often diverse missions, innovate and facilitate the local interpretation of local needs that is undoubtedly necessary to inform quality service provision. Add to this an enforced competition for contracts among providers and it is clear that this too inhibits the very collaboration that all acknowledge is vital to good service delivery. At best, what we see are, as the Nuffield Review of 14-19 education found, ‘weakly collaborative systems’. Perhaps, as I think you suggest, cost-cutting is the primary agenda?
Furthermore, there is no intrinsic reason that the voluntary sector knows more about what is happening on the ground in the first place, although this is often the case. Indeed, where contracting arrangements are short-term workers often have little time to develop this knowledge. Add to this the growing phenomenon of the national players bidding for local work and assumptions about the added value of the third sector ring increasingly hollow.
It has to be concluded that permanent mainstream workers have the best chances of developing this knowledge, whether they are employed by the state or the voluntary sector. In sum, what is needed is a greater commitment to trust local professionals, whoever they work for, longer – much longer – funding regimes through direct assistance and an end to the third sector investing a good deal of its time and energy in the messy and unproductive world of competitive tendering when they could be getting on with responding to people’s real needs. A more rigorous qualitative rather than number crunching assessment regime would deliver the accountability that, like many things these days, masquerades as something else.
http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Church-shelters-forced-to-turn.5847829.jp
Some of the commentary is on the money, especially:
"If Edinburgh have passed this obligation on to the voluntary sector for money then the voluntary sector lose the ability to advocate on behalf of homeless people if they are providing a direct service to them."
But why do you need one for each different organisation you work for?
Secondly the check will only pick you up if you have a 'relevant' conviction or police caution. Ricki would probably have problems because of his 'drug conviction' ten years ago under the regulations but why that should given his conviction is 'expended' under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act is a question for Labours equality people.
Finally the system itself is slow, inefficient and prone to mistakes.
Otherwise - yep, it is a really good idea.
you have experience of the sytstem, my wife regularly has to have one but in the end you have to check. A central database seems the obvious answer, maybe someone can explain why this has not happened ?
And there is a question over rehabilitation and time limits but frankly as a parent I do not want my child to be in contact with someone who has been convicted of a child related offence.
However clearly if someone 10 years ago had one convinction for posession that is different.
How on earth you put rules and regs around this I have no idea.
As for pre-emptive guessing of people's intentions (with no convictions) that is simply impossible and should not even be attempted.
Added to this is the fact that the CRB system is woefully inefficient. They can take up to 3 months to come through after the initial application, and I have spoken to people for whom it never arrived through their letter box.
How difficult would it seriously be to have a central computer system where every registered employer could enter the name of a new employee and find out in 5 minutes whether they were barred from certain jobs? Surely it could be designed so as to be safe from the risk of abuse?
1. CRB check. It doesn't work - professional perverts can easily get round it like Ian Huntley did. It puts ordinary people off. It is very expensive for people working on a tight budget. And there is an important principle here too: you are innocent until you are proven guilty. You get really lazy just when you think you are safe.
2. Churches are the motor that drives the best charities at least where I live. the lumbering old state is miles behind. But, sorry! Labour is not religious so that is that. At our Church, in order to get a "pot" we have to pretend that we are not at all religious in any way. What? Us religious? Nosir!
These two things are strangling charity work. And I haven't even mentioned the Charity Commissioner.
My point remains that most charities and their volunteers are routinely plugging gaps that are the statutory duty of care of National and Local Government to provide, using their charities own money and their volunteers time and effort. My view is they work because Government keeps their noses out but those which rely on local and national government can not be assured that they will have their funding year on year so how do you plan a five year program for drug recovery, for example, when you can not be sure you will be funded after next April?
With councils being forced to cut expenditure over the next five years, the first service to loose funding will be associated voluntary sector programs. Why? Because cutting funding to volunteers does not involve Unions or tricky Employment Act conditions for consultation and redundancy. The number of people effected are small and few have a high enough profile to attract media coverage.
Now the Charity Act is very clear: charities should not use their funds to provide services that should be provided by national or local government. The reality is the charity / volunteer sector routinely acts illegally in terms of the act to plug the gap. The Charity Commissioners routinely turn a blind eye to this by agreeing that the individuals evidenced need is great enough.
So the RBL provide wheel chairs because the NHS ones provided are not fit for purpose, they pay for disabled house conversions when council plead they can not afford it, put in ramps .... the list is endless where charities and their volunteers provide services that are statutory duties of local and national government.
The real issue is volunteers and charities do this because they are interested in meeting the individual's needs and not the political kudos of a photo call.
Forgive for saying it but you're all over the place with your views there. The role of the voluntary sector/charity sector/etc is not to hold up a mirror to the inadquecy of state provision. In the 21st century it's the state that is funding and using the third sector to plug it's gaps!
People tend to trust third sector organisations more, allowing them to have a reach and effect that local authorities or other state institutions don't seem to be able to manage. They are also, in the best cases, adaptable and flexible in the way large state organisations aren't.
You're mistaking campaigning charities with charities that provide services. Many charities do both, hence the change in charity law that Labour put through.
Look at housing chairties that argue for more government funding to provide housing advice and services, as well as highlighting to government what further changes in the housing sector are needed.
As for CRB checks, well we need them now and they're a bit of a pain but so are people being abused by those they thought were supposed to be helping them.
The point I think Rachel's making and which most people hear don't actually seem to want to understand is that Labour has worked to support and fund the work of charities across the UK. The Tory position is that they want to leave everything with charities (and so cut state provision of services) but without having said whether they'll maintain current funding levels or future funding needs.
To suggest, as the author does, that the rise of the voluntary sector is a benefit of New Labour's policies is disingenuous or naive. To talk about New Labour's inane legislation as a benefit leaves me wondering what the author has been sniffing. The biggest problem for voluntary organisations working with the 'at risk' groups is legislation such as disclosure which in fact inhibits volunteers as they find the idea of giving freely of their time combined with being considered by Government as guilty until proved innocent as a complete turn off. I work with both young people and the elderly in the course of my volunteering and now have clocked up 5 disclosures so far as each organisation has been told by their lawyers that the need their own disclosure. I also know that many people who volunteered previously have withdrawn precisely because of this legislation.
If the author is talking about pretendy, voluntary (jobs for the New Labour boys and girls) organisations where most of the government / local council money is eaten up by administration and wage costs and little goes to the people in need then I take complete issue with the content of this article.
The reality in the voluntary world I work in is the main task of the 'voluntary sector' is to hold Government and local councils to account for their failings and more importantly their failure to meet their legal obligations. For example the Royal British Legion and other forces charities have shown the repeated failings of Government in terms of the legal requirement and claimed commitment with respect to the armed forces and especially those who have physical and psychological injuries.
Keep politics out of the voluntary sector, we have enough problems with out further meddling from politicians and the funding of voluntary organisations based on political favour.
Agreed.
"the voluntary sector is...often more knowledgeable about local need, and more responsive to people’s individual circumstances."
"The delivery of front line services by the third sector is one of the most effective means of public spending"
I do not like these sentences one bit - they sound very Conservative. Are you suggesting Rachel that we follow the Freud welfare reforms and instead pump more money into charity in order to pick up the pieces? Are you suggesting that we rely on philanthropy more than government spending to help the needy?
It all sounds very New Labour to me.
That paragraph, and indeed a fair bit of your article, gives an impression completely at odds with the reality: small charities are in fact less, not more, likely to rely on government funding. Indeed three quarters of charities get no money at all from the state. Among the very smallest charities (with an income under £10k a year) the figure is 91%; among the largest it's just 27%.
Likewise, while we do indeed give the second highest amount to charity in the world the percentage given as a percentage of GDP has fell by a quarter between 1992 and 2008 - one of the reasons why the government is now the biggest funder of charities.
That why over a thousand people volunteer for Crisis Christmas (http://tinyurl.com/yhqtcad) each year. I help manage one of the centres (the one in Hammersmith) and the volunteers that help us give up their Christmas selflessly.
And don't tell me that work done by charities like Toynbee Hall in the East End, which provides free debt and legal advice for those that can't afford private advice, isn't crucial. I lived in Toynbee Hall and volunteered there too. The queues will not get smaller under the Tories.
Currently that work relies on company donations but in a recession that money soon disappears. How is Cameron going to explain to those people that they're better off if DWP/Government doesn't provide funds to carry on that important work?
But it isn't just Government handouts that are needed. More and more people are looking for seed funding and investment for genius ideas that have real social value and can be run sustainably. The whole social enterprise movement has be grown out of Labour's determination to realise the potential of ordinary people's hard work and social entrepreneurship.
It isn't just the idea that Cameron would sweep this all away that is maddening, its his insistence on ignoring it rather than nurturing it.
As things stand the only funding options for enterprises with charitable or social aims are grants/donations and loans.
I am pointing out that there is now in fact an
investment mechanism available for both - and come to that, available to the public sector as well as a new form of Public Equity..
However the more options the better!
You attack "broken britan" , There problems here in dagenham that where there 12 years ago , The benifit trap has grown and our leaderships ideas of attacking the disabled and there carers show that they dont get it , there does need a radical rethink on thease problems , We need to reach out to the parts of our socity that didnt vote in 1997 and proberly still dont vote , The gap between the political class and the voters has grown further .
ricki