Earlier this year, we asked voluntary organisations and charities working with children and young people in the North East to describe the impact of spending cuts on their organisation and their beneficiaries, as part of a survey undertaken with Voluntary Organisations Network North East (VONNE).
The responses that we got were fascinating and painted a very complex picture. Some organisations had made staff redundant as as result of decreases in funding whereas other had not been affected to date. The variety of responses serve as a good reminder that the ‘third sector’ is not a homogeneous group of organisations, which is how it is often presented by politicians.
Quality vs Quantity
A number of responses highlighted that they attempted to protect the quality of service provision and felt that it was more appropriate to change the reach and scope of their provision (the quantity of it) rather than the quality:
“The quality of our service is the same, but our volunteer advocate has decided she needs to get a paid job so we have lost her”
“we try not to let the quality of our work be effected by cuts in our income”
“No change to quality of service”
“Quality of service remains high”
“The quality has not diminshed, but the health and wellbening of staff has”
“Lack of funding means that we are having to close groups and limit the service we are offering”
Early Intervention
Anoher theme that emerged form the responses was the pressure that funding reductions placed on early intervention projects and services, despite good evidence and government rhetoric about shifting service delivery towards early intervention and away from crisis intervention. Some organisations also noted that the cuts meant they potentially had less time to spend developing and maintaining relationships with service users:
“we will not be able to spend quality time with sevice users and early intervention support will be at risk”
“Giving less time and resources for clients”
“Domino effect of cut in services and resources meaning we are less able to … work proactively at prevention”
“this (the uncertainty surrounding the future of the project) limits our ability to provide consistent and meaningful relationships with young people”
Commitment of staff and volunteers
A number of responses also highlighted how staff and volunteers had helped to support the organisations and the young people they worked with and how the situation had affected them:
“20 staff were made redundant over the last year due to decrease in funding”
“The quality of our service provision has not been affected, but this is manily due to the commitment of our volunteers, who enjoy working for our organisation and have fully supported the ethos and vision of the project”
“Less staff to work with children on essential basic skills such as reading and writing”
“have had to make staff redundant and others on shorter hours, using reserves to fund part of the work until funding can be found”
“The loss of funding for one part time youth worker has meant that we have withdrawn from work with the older age group. But the increasing level of young graduate unemployment has meant that we have been able to build up a very skilled group of young volunteers. Subsequently the number and quality of our activities has increased”
“Staff stayed with us on reduced salaries to continue our services”
“The quality has not diminished, but the health and wellbening of staff has. We are relying more heavily upon in kind donations and volunteering above and beyond what is expected or safe”
Conclusions
It is, of course, difficult to draw any conclusions from a small number of responses but that is part of the reason for looking to continue the conversation here and the responses perhaps raise more questions than hey answered. In summary, some organisations are doing ok at present, whilst others are faring a lot worse. Whilst the number of service users is predicted to increase as a result of the economic situation and cuts to public services and other charities, the resources available to the voluntary organisations is, in a lot of places, already decreasing. Some organisations noted that staff had altered their working hours or salaries to stay with the projects, whilst others noted an increase in volunteers – potentially as a result of increased unemployment and a very competitive jobs market?
Lacking the necessaries of life…..
A couple of weeks ago Jeremy Cripps, the Chief Executive of Children North East wrote a powerful blog about how funding cuts passed from central government to the local authority and then to his charity meant that they were unable to afford to provide a meal for some children in temporary accommodation over the summer holidays that they work with. Jeremy wrote:
here we have a Government without the humanity to care for very vulnerable people until they are deported by giving them even a minimal amount of money to feed their children; a local authority providing shelter for those families but forced to cut back on its spending by the Government; passing that cut on to a charity which too has to economise; the buck passes to the charity’s staff who cannot stand by and do nothing while in daily contact with children in basic need of food; so they take it upon themselves to make sure children do not go hungry. This is the reality of the so-called ‘Big Society’ in ‘austerity Britain’.
This story was picked up by the Guardian Cuts Blog which ran it under the headline ‘who pays for lunch when the state does a runner?’ and another similar story was posted earlier today
Earlier this year, as part of a blogging day during Volunteers Week, Carrie Brookes of VONNE asked readers to ‘imagine if we all stopped volunteering tomorrow’, noting that the value of unpaid care in the UK had been calculated at around £87bn. She finished her blog thus:
The fact is that much of the work undertaken by volunteers and charities saves the state a huge amount of money. Prevention of problems such as poor health, teenage pregnancies, helping people get back into the workplace, support for homeless people, advice and guidance, drug rehabilitation, they all save the state an awful lot of money. A lot more than the £87bn mentioned above. We cannot afford to deal with the consequences to society if that support for volunteers and activity they support is stopped. (my emphasis)
The last line of Carrie’s blog provides a flip side to a couple of polemic paragraphs from one of my favourite books, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Robert Tressell, writing in the early 1900′s suggested it would be better if we all did stop volunteering tomorrow in a section which touches on a number of issues relevant to the situation above:
Meanwhile, in spite of this and kindred (charitable) organisations, the condition of the under-paid poverty stricken and unemployed workers remained the same. Although the people who got the grocery and coal orders, the ‘Nourishment’, and the cast-off clothes and boots, were glad to have them, yet these things did far more harm than good. They humiliated, degraded and pauperized those who received them, and the existence of the societies prevented the problem being grappled with in a sane and practical manner. The people lacked the necessaries of life: necessaries of life are produced by work: these people were willing to work, but were prevented from doing so by the idiotic system of society which these ‘charitable’ people are determined to do their best to perpetuate.
If the people who expect to be praised and glorified for being charitable were never to give another farthing it would be far better for the industrious poor, because then the community as a whole would be compelled to deal with the absurd and unnecessary state of affairs that exists today – millions of people living and dying in wretchedness and poverty in an age when science and machinery have made it possible to produce such an abundance of everything that everyone might enjoy plenty and comfort. If it were not for all this so called charity the starving unemployed men all over the country would demand to be allowed to work and produce the things they are perishing for want of, instead of being – as they are now – content to wear their masters’ cast-off clothing and to eat the crumbs that fall from his table’ (my emphases)
It is, of course, very obvious that the state can afford to provide funding for these families. Central government can also afford not to cut funding to local authorities. Local authorities can also afford not to cut their grant to charities by 10%. The fact is they choose not to do these things, choosing instead to spend money on other things or choosing not to increase the amount of money at their disposal, leaving Jeremy and his staff with little choice but to dip into their own pockets. John Veit-Wilson, in his ‘Horses for Discourses’ paper makes this point better than anyone:
Ensuring that all the members of society, residents in or citizens of a nation state, have enough money is a clear role which governments can adopt or reject, but they cannot deny they have the ultimate power over net income distribution.
I don’t necessarily agree with Tressell’s proposal or his representation of charitable organisations (which were very different when he was writing), but I do agree with his analysis of the system of society. How can we call ourselves civilized when we deliberately and knowingly let families live without, as Tressell puts it, ‘the necessaries of life’ when the world has never been richer? At what point will we stop and realise that we have accumulated enough ‘stuff’ and wealth’ and sit down and work out how to divide it up better?
Thoughts, as ever, are welcome……
Steve
ps – in the interest of full disclosure, I’m running the Great North Run this year and am raising money for Children North East. Feel free to donate here
Share this:
Like this:
Leave a comment | tags: jeremy cripps, voluntary organisations, welfare reform | posted in child poverty, comment, in-work poverty, North East, poverty, services, voluntary organisations, welfare reform, wellbeing