Tulketh Mill Preston

Saturday March 2nd 2007.. 4;30pm.. the light was great, the building left over from the age of cotton mills is now a call centre for Carphone Warehouse.

Canalside Photos Hebden Bridge

check out the location at http://www.hebdenbridge.co.uk/tourist-info/

Dipper on Hebden Water

I was really lucky to get these pictures of one of my favourite birds on February 24th near Hebden Bridge West Yorks. If you want to know more about the species click
http://www.rspb.org.uk/birds/guide/d/dipper/index.asp

Voluntary Sector is "full up"?

BBC web site reports http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6402965.stm


The government has won a vote over plans to privatise the Probation Service, despite a backbench revolt. MPs voted 293 to 268 in favour of the Offender Management Bill - cutting the government's majority from 62 to 25. Critics said letting firms and voluntary groups in England and Wales run services would increase reoffending rates and destroy "local connections".

When one’s partner is someone who has worked as a probation officer for over 20 years waking up to this news is not a pleasant experience, as it was me and the dog that were lightning conductors for anger directed at John Reid and the stupid government..

But the issue it raises for me is where will the governments expectations of the voluntary sector end? In one area after another they are looking to the third sector, the voluntary, community and faith groups to take on work loads, and compete for contracts that in previous times were seen as the natural task for the local or national state.

My own local experience in this sector is suggesting that we ought to recognize there is an absolutely limited capacity in the sector to do any more and that before long we shall need to put up signs saying “sector full up” or “services suspended due to staff shortages”.

For example I was at a local neighbourhood management board this week, trying with others to move forward co-ordinated local regeneration action and service delivery. While I find this commendable in terms of the desire to collaborate and implement joined up planning, and in the desire to give local residents a voice in the way their locality develops, the practical reality is somewhat different. There were about 15 (good and committed) people in the room. Four or five were local residents although two of them draw a salary from an organisation working in the area, which is largely funded out of the public purse and were there in work time. The rest were all employees of statutory bodies or their arms length agencies, including the police, the city council, two registered social landlords, an FE college, and SRB funded community projects. Only three people were giving unpaid voluntary service in attending this meeting, although at least 10,000 local residents would be eligible to be involved in the process of neighbourhood management. Community meetings in this city typically follow this pattern, despite calls for widening participation in volunteering and community governance, there appears to be a small pool of “active citizens” sometimes known as “usual suspects”, and most of them are paid.

For those involved in the Third Sector research and policy making it poses these key questions:

1. Do we have a clear definition of what “voluntary action” means and an understanding that much of what goes on in the “voluntary sector” is no longer truly “voluntary”?

2. Are there measurable limits to the quantity of voluntary action or potential volunteer hours available within the population of the UK and in the context of other demands on peoples time, (e.g. earning a living, caring for self and family, being a consumer, leisure and entertainment) are we nearing that limit? Is any one (Institute of Volunteering Research??) doing research on this?

3. Given the wide range of opportunities for unpaid contributions to the community which choices do volunteers make? My impression is that lots of people offer time in sports clubs, in religious groups, in some campaigns, in fund raising drives and in some hobby and leisure groups, but that apart from the few “usual suspects” most are reluctant to engage in neighbourhood community action, in committee and trusteeship work for the sector and in anything to do with politics. I should think the data from the Home Office citizenship surveys bears this out, though I haven’t had time to check it.

One final thought with Red Nose Day coming up. I wonder if in our celebrity and consumer culture we are seeing a phenomenon of “vicarious volunteering”. In sociology of religion Grace Davie and others have argued that the typical form of English religion in the late 20th Century was “vicarious Christianity”. People believed in a vague way but didn’t bother to belong to a church or take an active role, or give more than a few pence, but expected the church to be there to pray for them to christen, marry and bury people as necessary and to offer practical help in time of need. How far is it the case that the general public feel warm that Lenny Henry, Bob Geldorf and their mates organise TV charitythons, might give a few hours of their time and a couple of quid to the collection, but are really quite relieved that a few other people are paid to deliver charitable service to the homeless, the refugees, the children with cancer and leaning difficulties? Is anyone doing current research on the contemporary culture of charity and volunteering? What do you think they would discover?

Web resources for Fundraising

Hope these links are useful

FunderFinder is a small UK charity producing software and other resources, mainly for grant-seekers. Some of the things produced are free, some cost - though many people use the software we sell at no cost in a library or resource agency. ..... specialise in information and advice about charitable trusts and foundations that fund in the UK.
http://www.funderfinder.org.uk/index.php

The premier online database of UK sponsorship opportunities
http://www.uksponsorship.com/

Fundraising UK Ltd is the UK's leading Internet fundraising consultancy. Founded in 1996 by Howard Lake, it helps charities in the UK and internationally to use the Internet as a fundraising tool to enhance and extend their existing fundraising activities.
http://www.fundraising.co.uk/index.php

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The Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF) is the UK wide support organisation for grant-making trusts and foundations of all types. the ACF website does not contain any information about ACF members, other than links to their sites
http://www.acf.org.uk/linkstrusts.htm

Although Voluntary Arts England itself is not a grant-making body, this section of the site aims to give you the advice and guidance you need when seeking or applying for funds.
http://www.vaengland.org.uk/cgi-bin/website.cgi?tier1=england&tier2=funding&fp=true

More on equality diversity and monolithic uniformity

Well I thought I would provoke a debate and for the most part I think I provoked a reaction!

posting my piece to the VSSN list has generated a thread of nearly a dozen replies! you can read them in the archives at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A1=ind0701&L=vol-sector-studies-network

This is my response

If you read carefully what I was trying to say the "problem" is not gay adoptions or equal rights for gay couples, but whether government should impose a monolithic model of provision of any service on a sector which by nature includes a wide diversity of groups, with strongly held values.

Tony Hermann latched on to this in a most helpful way and the example of the diverse translation services and the pragmatic solution is an excellent one. In the real world of course this pattern of service operating through consumer choice will lead to de facto discrimination

In the same way I would support state funding of various telephone help line services for particular niche markets, e.g. one for women at risk of domestic violence, child line and a gay and lesbian help line. And of course similar patterns do occur in the case of state aided faith based schools, or the tax relief given to almost every religious congregation and place of worship even though membership is only open (either de jure or de facto) to those who share particular beliefs and rituals.

So why do secular equal rights activists want to impose uniformity on religious groups who have a conscience on particular issues that are not shared by the whole of society..?

Equality Law Contradicts Diversity Policy

The decision by the UK government not to allow an exemption on the regulations on gay adoptions seems to me a perverse and dangerous one, threatening the whole concept of the independence of civil society organisations who work from a strong value base... For the full news story see the Guardian article at.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2001834,00.html#article_continue

It doesn’t really matter what one thinks of the RC church and its supporters who included the two Anglican Archbishops in general, or in the case of this political protest. My view (as I’ve already blogged) is that this was the wrong (minor) issue for Christians to get fundamentalist about. The reality is that the secular fundamentalists have imposed their will in a manner which has rarely been seen since the French Revolution or the demise of Joseph Stalin.

I never feel comfortable to be in agreement with Ann Widdecome but this time I am. According to the daily Telegraph

the former Home Office minister, said she was not surprised that Mr Cameron had not intervened in the debate so far but added: "I would hope that he will come out in favour of freedom of conscience. "It’s one thing to say that gay people can adopt and quite another to say they must be able to adopt from a specific agency. It’s like saying someone not only has the right to have an abortion but they also have the right to demand an abortion from a specific doctor, regardless of that doctor’s freedom of conscience."

There is a supreme irony in that it was the secular enlightenment that fully developed the idea of diversity and toleration in civil society, though its roots in England go back to the religious tradition of Christian Dissent. Voltaire I think it was who said "I may disagree with your belief but I will fight to the death for your right to believe it". But now the state seems to be saying that all religious and voluntary groups must believe in and practice equality as set out in the law, even if this is anathema to the individual and group conscience.

There seems then to be an inherent contradiction, or at least tension, between the diversity and equality agendas. We are still encouraged to celebrate diversity and ensure public services reach all sections of society. I was at a seminar today where the local NHS mental health service for children and adolescents was enthusiastically trying to communicate with, learn from, and build partnership with, the representatives of many of the diverse faith communities in the city. But we can only wonder if clergy and religious youth workers really are going to be allowed to counsel and work with youngsters with clinical depression along cultural and faith lines they are familiar with, or whether the state is going to step in and insist on some treatment with some universal Prozac.

The other current example of this state control freakery is around the social cohesion agenda. Multiculturalism is being attacked from all sides and the very ideology that led to gay pride is overwhelmed by the revived rhetoric of citizenship and integration. Only the not so new Labour government seems to be able to determine what is appropriate and permitted behaviour for the “good” British citizen. Implicitly their definition means you can’t be a committed Muslim, a faithful Catholic, a born again Christian or even a Scots Nationalist and still remain a true Briton. Still less can you be an asylum seeker or refugee, a hoodie, a kid who hangs out on street corners etc. But apparently you can be a casino entrepreneur, an arms trader paying bribes to secure business, or David Beckham, and still present a perfect image of a good citizen. There is either a whiff of hypocrisy or a corruption of values in this approach.

One can understand why a government so desperate to retain votes goes down this route as they continue to listen to polls and focus groups. In a post 9/11 context, in response to the discontents of globalization, in the maelstrom of diverse and ever changing social identities many in the mainstream feel insecure, and clutch for straws of imagined traditional certainties. And it is the mainstream groups that swing elections. Of course the media, especially the tabloids develop the theme. Or more often trivialize it around celebrities as in the recent Celebrity Big Brother case.. see http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1994828,00.html And the politicians give us all a pat on the back for our supposed “tolerance” as a Great British virtue.

It is very disheartening that a government who for ten years have been pushing the benefits of partnerships involving faith communities and religious social welfare organisations should have ended up like this. Perhaps it always was a sham and they only wanted to take us over on their secular terms. There have been plenty of policy reports that have picked up the issues and tensions that were unresolved in these policy areas and in my view the policy makers just haven’t understood.

Faced with a strengthened secular establishment what are churches and value based groups going to do? Inevitably some will continue to sup with the devil as government funding is the only way their organizations can survive? Others will try to remain in critical solidarity, at least on the issues that they agree with the government, but I suspect will find it increasingly difficult to remain true to their own ethos. And some will decide on the purist option refusing to take government money with strings attached and closing down some of their services. A few may even decide to carry on in their own sweet way, either retreating into their own silo, or engaging in various levels of civil disobedience.

The law of unintended consequences will surely apply. In seeking to impose equality the government is attacking liberty, and fracturing fraternity/ community. The very policies they see as enhancing social cohesion and building social capital are leading to even lower levels of trust and fragmentation.