CYP Now - Should social enterprise deliver public services?

Social enterprises are driven by social justice and deliver a range of public services including health, social care, children, services, education, homelessness, housing, domestic abuse, public health, leisure, culture, employment, training, transport, criminal justice across local, central government and the NHS.

June O'Sullivan is chief executive of the London Early Years Foundation. Picture: LEYF

Some are small and local, others are very large with a multi-million-pound turnover employing thousands.

Collectively they contribute £60 billion to the UK economy. They remain active in their communities. Despite their size or location, they all demonstrate a flexible, entrepreneurial, fleet of foot, innovative and collaborative approach. Set that against the patronising stereotype of the social sector doing good things but doing it outside the grown-up economy and you get the frustration of leaders of social enterprises.

This view, I think, is often shaped by the traditional corporate social responsibility approach which appears to reject our ability to trade and forces some social enterprises to be coy about using the word “profit”, dressing it up as surplus or even worse “not for profit”.

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