Counting the cuts

I hesitated before posting this – I’m sick of the bad news myself, so don’t really want to be spreading misery. But anyway, there’s a new site crowd-sourcing the impact of local/central government cuts on voluntary organisations. Use it, pass it on – if we can’t stop things we can at least ensure that this assault on the sector doesn’t go down the memory hole:

http://voluntarysectorcuts.org.uk/

If the Big Society stories could slow down a little, I’d appreciate it. K thx bai

Events have overtaken me. Every time I’d make some notes for a new blog post a new Big Society story would trump the last one. This wasn’t helped by my increasing anger and need to turn off news items that mentioned or debated the topic.

On those lines I should make a public apology to my flatmates; I did find myself shouting at a debate on ‘Ten o’Clock Live’, particularly at the charity boss they’d found, Shaun Bailey, whose views made more sense when it turned out he’d been a Tory electoral candidate. When I say sense, I meant more in terms of at least you knew why he was saying these things, even if they were awful.

If you can bear it, go to about 34mins into this video. If you don’t have the time (or the patience with Channel 4′s player) here’s a choice quote:

If organised volunteering collapsed tomorrow it wouldn’t make a big deal because private volunteering goes on all the time. Is there anybody here who’s babysat? Do you look after your neighbour’s kids, you kept your sister’s kids while they’ve been ill? You help the woman down the road that’s volunteering, it happens all the time.

We all know that informal volunteering is an intrinsic part of our communities. The idea though that this is what could/should run public services is stunningly ignorant. It would be interesting to know if his charity involves volunteers or not, whether there’s any management or co-ordination of this, and whether they’ve picked up on legal and good practice issues from Volunteering England and Volunteer Centres.

But maybe I’m wrong. Forget organisation, forget volunteer management, we’ve been wasting our time.

Well, the anger levels are rising again, so I’ll put this to one side and carry on with the rest of the blog – the cat gets confused when I start shouting at my computer screen.

Most of the fuss has been about cuts to voluntary sector funding. Quite rightly of course, as it is an absurdity to talk of voluntary action when so many local infrastructure bodies are being not so much cut as eviscerated. Blaming local authorities is laughable. Government spokespeople were so wide eyed and shocked, shocked! that councils drastically reducing budgets would do this that I considered exploiting this naivety – I’d be quids in through emails claiming to be a treasury official in a foreign government looking to transfer a large amount into a handy bank amount. It’s especially hollow given that bodies such as Volunteering England were cut by, er, central government.

Anyway the ball started rolling with Elisabeth Hoodless’ leaving present to the sector. I have to say, it’s not often I’ve agreed with her public pronouncements, but she did us proud this time. The story splashed across the media. Something we all knew in the sector entered the public consciousness.

Mind you she did spoil it a bit – according to the BBC ‘she backed a US idea that ties the funding of public bodies with the number of volunteers recruited’.

Even Volunteering England, which normally finds the fence its most comfortable perch, sounded a critical note. Chief Executive Justin Davis Smith pointed out in the same BBC report that organisations were “having their capacity to deliver, to recruit more, to train, to support their volunteers taken away from them”, although he still supported the ambitions of the Big Society.

Government was prodded a little, and some extra money was announced. The phrase ‘too little, too late’ is well worn, but it’s definitely apt here.

What we’re in danger of missing is that the funding issue, while egregious, is not the central problem with the Big Society idea. For me it’s the very concept of using voluntary action to replace public services.

The key question remains: who will do this? Who will have the time and expertise to run these services? Surely those people with the time and inclination are broadly already volunteering. Will such projects end up merely poaching volunteers from local Age Concerns, advocacy services, befriending projects?

Whether by design or happenstance, or perhaps design, the plan amounts to a new form of privatisation.

Firstly it’s a way of expanding market principles further into the social sphere. This is an issue I have always had with some forms of social enterprises. There does seem to be an ideological kernel behind the concept (supported as much by the Labour Party as the Conservatives) – there may not be private profit, but the idea of market discipline is central.

Will volunteer effort be used to undercut other potential suppliers? Where does this leave volunteers? Where does this leave people in what are already low paid precarious jobs?

Secondly, where local services run by volunteers fail to deliver, I can’t believe they’ll be brought back under the public sector. The government’s reaction will be, well, we tried that, valiant effort there by the plucky community groups, but time for the big boys to come in. Private companies like Serco will be circling like hawks.

I don’t think I’m being that cynical to say that it makes this agenda sound so much nicer to talk of community groups running services than the private sector.

And to back up the last point, just as I was putting this post together I saw this story on the BBC website:

David Cameron: End state monopoly over public services

David Cameron has said the government will set out plans to allow private and voluntary groups to run almost every kind of public service

It won’t come as much of a surprise to the more forensic reader, but I don’t support the ambitions of the Big Society.

Philip Pullman on the Big Society

The author was speaking last week at a meeting in Oxford on the County Council’s decision to axe almost half its libraries:

Nor do I think we should respond to the fatuous idea that libraries can stay open if they’re staffed by volunteers. What patronising nonsense. Does he think the job of a librarian is so simple, so empty of content, that anyone can step up and do it for a thank-you and a cup of tea? Does he think that all a librarian does is to tidy the shelves? And who are these volunteers? Who are these people whose lives are so empty, whose time spreads out in front of them like the limitless steppes of central Asia, who have no families to look after, no jobs to do, no responsibilities of any sort, and yet are so wealthy that they can commit hours of their time every week to working for nothing? Who are these volunteers? Do you know anyone who could volunteer their time in this way? If there’s anyone who has the time and the energy to work for nothing in a good cause, they are probably already working for one of the voluntary sector day centres or running a local football team or helping out with the league of friends in a hospital. What’s going to make them stop doing that and start working in a library instead?

Especially since the council is hoping that the youth service, which by a strange coincidence is also going to lose 20 centres, will be staffed by – guess what – volunteers. Are these the same volunteers, or a different lot of volunteers?

This is the Big Society, you see. It must be big, to contain so many volunteers.

Full text here.

Do as we say, not as we do

Sometimes events satirise themselves.  The ‘Big Society Tsar’ is to reduce his volunteering hours in order to earn more money and ‘have more of a life’. In some ways it’s refreshing – usually politicians take a step back from responsibilities in order to spend more time with their family. It’s nice to hear one wanting to spend more time with their money.

Lord Wei was appointed by David Cameron as an unpaid government advisor on the Big Society last May, and is based in the Office for Civil Society.

According to The Guardian, “Whitehall sources said that when he was invited to take the role he had expected it to be remunerated but was told only the night before that it was a voluntary post and there would be no salary.” Mind you, I wouldn’t feel too sorry for him – he got a life peerage as part of the package, and it’s hard to imagine that he won’t be able to pick up some non-executive directorships.

The story does seem to highlight the absurdity of the wider-eyed visions of the Big Society. If the person at the top is finding it hard to make ends meet while giving up a substantial chunk of their time, and feels that doing so gives them no life, how are the rest of us meant to bear up?

While this story may have an amusement factor to it, another story from the last few days makes for much grimmer reading. Volunteering England have reported that 30 Volunteer Centres are facing closure or severe curtailment of capacity. To be honest, just from the VCs I’ve had contact with, I suspect the figure is even higher. I’m not looking forward to hearing the news come in of local authority spending settlements. While there is a proposed local infrastructure fund – £42.5 million over 4 years – it will be too little too late. Good organisations will have gone under by then, committed and knowledgeable staff moved on and local organisations left floundering. New groups will have to reinvent the wheel.

This of course follows Volunteering England itself losing over half its staff. The cutting of government funding for infrastructure bodies demonstrates the hollowness of the government commitment to volunteering. Volunteering needs support. Volunteer managers need support. Without bodies to pass on accumulated good practice – and legal guidance – new and old volunteer-involving bodies alike will be left to fend for themselves.

The Big Society and human nature

I’ve been reading around in preparation to write something in longer form about the Big Society. It’s taking me a while I’m afraid, but I thought I’d draw people’s attention to the essays the Government commissioned to tie in with the Giving Green Paper:

http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/giving-green-paper
One paper in particular jumped out:

Geoffrey Miller, Psychology Department, University of New Mexico: Harnessing human nature for charity and volunteering: some ideas from evolutionary psychology

My eyes lit upon this article as I am somewhat sceptical about evolutionary psychology. I claim no great knowledge or expertise in the area, but (and perhaps this is the fault of the media) I do get the impression that a lot of the time a past we can only make educated guesses about is being used to explain current phenomena.

A notorious example was the assertion that girls innately like pink – the explanation being the female role in gathering red berries in prehistory.

Maybe it sounds plausible. We all know blue=boys and pink=girls right?

The problem is that it’s nonsense. It rests on the idea that there’s a biologically hardwired affinity between people with two X chromosomes and pink, while blue is more manly. Yet go back less than a hundred years and the reverse was assumed:

“There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”

Ladies Home Journal 1918

“If you like the color note on the little one’s garments, use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention.”

Sunday Sentinel 1914

_{(Source: Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science column)}

The gender/colour idea is culturally determined.

And this seems to be a problem with the discipline as a whole. I’m not denying a historical, biological impact on our psyche; it just seems that there’s a desire to see this as trumping our current culture, economy and society, along with some bold claims that lack hard evidence.

Looking at the essay in question there is an assertion on an evolutionary basis for altruism, but really, this is just a guess, and we shouldn’t base public policy on guesses around prehistoric human activities that if true may have an impact on current behaviour that we can’t really judge. At the very least we’d need to look at more than one opinion on the roots of altruism (which is an interesting topic, even if I can’t see how short of time travel we can ever reach a conclusive answer).

However we don’t really need to worry about that as much of the article seems more about promoting a particular ideological agenda than anything else:

First, policy needs to acknowledge that in an efficient market economy, most of the power that individuals have to ‘do good’ depends on them acting morally as workers, consumers, and investors – not on the more conspicuous virtue‐displays of charity and volunteering.

…

Many social and environmental problems that charities try to resolve were exacerbated by government over‐regulation, subsidies, quotas, tariffs, monopolies, or failures to enforce property rights.

This of course has nothing to do with psychology or evolution, it’s just standard right-wing economics. You could also argue that many social and environmental problems that charities try to resolve were exacerbated – or perhaps caused – by market driven policies. Economic inequality and climate change being obvious examples.

It does seem to confirm my suspicions that many evolutionary psychologists seem to be seeking to justify the status quo by appeals to evolutionary causes.
If the author read this no doubt he would assume that I’m writing from a pro-big government, state socialist point of view. I’m not, I support neither the free market nor the state, though I must admit to wanting to keep the safety nets of the welfare state and similar reforms that staved off the worst aspects of an unequal society.

It’s been bad enough trying to fight compulsory or remunerated activities being defined as volunteering, try this for size:

Yet within the market economy, there is plenty of scope for moral virtues to improve human welfare ever further. Any workers doing their job with more skill, attentiveness, and integrity than strictly required by their employment contract are already ‘volunteering’ that extra labor for the common good – and these are pro‐social work values worth celebrating.

While there may be a case here – a pleasant chat with a person on a till can give a feeling of goodwill – it’s massively overstated. A worker putting in extra effort is more likely to be filling the coffers of their employer without any remuneration than anything else. God forbid anyone in a precarious low paid job just does what they’ve been paid to do. The inhuman monsters.

***

Another paper that did make me smile was the title of a paper by Stephen Howard, CEO, Business in the Community:

Great companies support communities through difficult times

Cynics might argue that they could start by paying their taxes…

A new start

Looking back I think it’s fair to say that I haven’t really seen this as a blog, more of an online presence.  However recent developments in the voluntary sector/volunteering world have been causing me great concern. I don’t really have a say in anything, so all that’s left for me is to at least speak out, even if it is to no one in particular.

So I’ll be blogging more regularly on issues related to volunteering and the big society over the coming weeks and months. I think the posts are likely to be opinionated, forceful, even angry at times, but won’t apologise for this – I think we need a bit more passion in the debate over the future of volunteering and the voluntary sector.

I should be clear that my criticisms of the big society are not party political. I had strong criticisms of many volunteering related proposals under the Labour government (for most of this time I was employed by Volunteering England, so had to temper my views in public), and indeed I do not support any political party, major or minor.

Volunteering needs support

I had a recent conversation with someone with a degree of influence in a local area that stopped me in my tracks. This person didn’t see the point of volunteer centres.  Given that we were talking about increasing the quantity and quality of volunteering I was a little lost for words.

So much is expected of volunteering these days.  It’s meant to help with social cohesiveness, employability, crime, health, regeneration and just about every local or national government agenda you can name.  However no one with any clout seems to understand that this doesn’t all magically happen out of thin air.   Elsewhere I’ve talked about the importance of volunteer management, but volunteer management needs support too.   Volunteer centres provide locally delivered guidance, facilitate peer learning and support, help develop local programmes (how much supported volunteering would be going on without VCs to drive it?), not to mention campaigning and promotion.

One of the biggest problems VCs face is that their brokerage function is grossly misunderstood.  Realistically they’re not going to ever place more than say 5% of the volunteers in their area, and as they’re seen by some as simply being recruitment agencies this can look like a failure.  Well, firstly as I said above VCs do a lot more than recruit volunteers.  Secondly, the people they do place are exactly the people who do need more support.  They’re people unsure about where to volunteer and in what capacity.  They’re people who lack confidence.  They’re people new to the area or the country who do not have the links/knowledge to find voluntary work directly.  They’re people with additional support needs of some kind.

It was noticeable that the Commission on the Future of Volunteering didn’t have much to say on Volunteer Centres, and what it did was ignored by government.  This seems symptomatic of a long term failure at that political level to appreciate the need for local support for volunteering.

Unfortunately our Volunteering Champion doesn’t seem to understand this either, else she’d be spending every breath shouting for adequate funding for volunteer centres.

I should say here that I no longer have a particular axe to grind.  When I was working for Volunteering England you could argue that I’d just be saying this kind of thing because I was part of the VC infrastructure.  I’m not anymore, and on top of that I’ve never had any illusions about the quality of some Volunteer Centres.  However, the poorer examples I’ve seen have generally been that way because they are underfunded, not because the VC model is flawed.  It’s clear from my blog posts that I have the bitter heart of a true cynic, yet I am always impressed and inspired by the work carried out by VCs.

We can all go on about how great volunteering is.  How vital it is to our society and to individuals.  But this talk is meaningless if there’s no material support for volunteer engagement, and if people holding the purse strings just expect it all to happen through cosmic serendipity.

What part of ‘voluntary’ is so hard to grasp?

Gordon Brown has come out with yet another statement on compulsory community service for young people.  Ok, to be fair, he didn’t use the ‘V’ word, but of course subsequent reporting is full of it.  If Labour win the next election young people must clock up 50 hours of community service by the age of 19.

The focus on youth volunteering is hard to understand.  After all, young people regularly volunteer more than any other age group (according to the Helping Out national survey).  I really don’t understand what is to be gained by forcing young people into community service, other than some approving Daily Mail headlines.

The plan basically relies upon giving voluntary organisations and volunteer managers in particular a policing role.  Why should groups have to deal with young people who do not want to be there?  It will place volunteer managers (because it’s VMs who will be expected to manage these schemes) in an antagonistic role – montoring attendance and the quality of their charges’ work.

One wonders what will actually separate those carrying out ‘community service’ from people carrying out ‘community payback’ sentences.  Perhaps the ‘vests of shame’ will be in a different colour.  That way we’ll know to boo and hiss the right ones.

What are these young people going to do?  These kind of schemes rely on the idea that there is an infinite amount of work waiting to be carried out.  This is simply not the case, as the volunteer management capacity survey suggested..  Or at least isn’t if paid jobs aren’t going to be displaced.  What about people from other age groups who want to volunteer?  Are they going to find it difficult to get involved because most roles are going to pressganged youth?

Presumably what is to be considered community service will be within strict boundaries.  However,  the young people at the G20 climate camp were fulfilling an active citizenship role.  Why shouldn’t those hours be taken into account?

I can’t believe that this scheme will not meet resistance, both on an organised basis and informally.  There is no way I’d have willingly submitted to such a scheme  when I was young – I’m just old enough to have not paid my Poll Tax, and I would have resented this form of state compulsion just as much.  If popular opposition develops, which side will the volunteering infrastructure find itself on?

Brown cites Martin Luther King , who “once said that everyone could be great because everyone can serve”.   However in spuriously bringing in MLK he is missing the obvious point that serving others only carries moral weight when it is a free choice.  If you are going to quote King, there are quotations that are a little meatier and more apt to the current climate:

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

“And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you beging to ask that question, you are riasing questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question you begin to question the capitalistic economy.”

“We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that [radical] questions must be raised…..’Who owns the oil’…’Who owns the iron ore?’…’Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?’

Volunteering in private companies

This is a topic that I’ve had a couple of conversations about recently, sparked I think by comments from our Volunteering Champion, and a general confusion about what is volunteering and what is work experience.

Call me an old stick in the mud, but I cannot agree that involving volunteers in private companies is a good thing.  Where someone is making a private profit (as an owner or shareholder) I can’t see how volunteer involvement is anything other than exploitation.

The waters are muddied by the increased privatisation of public services.  Should users of such services miss out on the added value that volunteers bring?  I’d argue that such services should be paid for by the private company contracting voluntary sector groups, and that this element of care must be considered as part of any commissioning arrangement.

Part of the problem here is that we haven’t had a strong pro-volunteering voice able to affect local and national government agendas on such issues.  It would be great to feel confident that there was an organisation out there championing the cause of volunteering, even if that meant putting the volunteering champion’s nose out of joint occasionally.

I realise that many people will just write me off as some antiquated fossil who should just get with the times Daddy-O, but there are practical issues too.

People on benefits cannot volunteer in private companies.  Nor can asylum seekers.    That’s the current legal position, and I can’t see it changing for either status.

Government advice on work placements in private companies states that such unpaid help should be time limited – ideally to two weeks but no more than four.

I’ll sneak something more controversial in at the end.  I’m not entirely convinced that some social enterprises should be involving volunteers, even though their profits are not going into private hands.

Social enterprise covers a wide range of organisations.  I guess I’m particularly referring to those that are set up with an explicitly market driven model.  This seems like having your cake and eating it to me.  If the market is such a wonderful way of doing things, shouldn’t the workers be paid their market rate?  And isn’t this giving an uncompetitive advantage over other private companies not involving unpaid labour?

v.uninspired

For a moment I was wondering whether Third Sector was proposing a second April Fools Day – It was the 1st October, 6 months to the day after the eponymous let-hilarity-ensue festival of mirth.  But no, it was a true story.

Youth volunteering charity v has decided that the fusty old term volunteering isn’t ‘with it’ enough, so are attempting to substitute ‘favours’ instead.  The Third Sector story is here, though you may need to register (free) to see it.  V’s home page reflects this new orientation too.

It’s a classic ploy if you think you’re selling a dud.  Windscale became Sellafield, BP changed their logo to an abstract sun/flower hybrid, illegal wars became police actions.  I remember the day that I went from being unemployed to being a ‘jobseeker’.  Apart from my UB40 being replaced with a fancier model, I didn’t feel much different.

But do v have so little faith in the product they’re selling?

I can see using different terminology for informal volunteering – encouraging people to ‘help out’ perhaps – but for formal volunteering?  Most volunteer involving organisations do not want ‘favours’, they want someone to come in on a regular basis to carry out defined tasks.

The irony is, according to the Helping Out survey, 16-24 year olds are more likely than any other age group to be regular formal volunteers.  Occasional or one off volunteering is lower, but the commitment shown by regular volunteers suggests that whatever the perceptions of ‘geekiness’, they’re not that strong a deterrent.

Having outed myself as not being a ‘youth’ with the reference to unemployment and UB40s maybe I’m hopelessly out of date.  But I think it’s both patronising and underestimating young people to avoid calling something by its name.