Think Big Society
Monday, September 13, 2010
David Cameron has pledged to scale back state-run public services and give citizens the power to "build the Britain they want". Here, six leading figures from the sector explore what the Prime Minister's vision will mean.
YOUTH WORK - NICK WILKIE, chief executive, London Youth
The big society has a rough ride from the very people who might be expected to embrace the idea. Many have remarked unflatteringly that the big society heralds a return to Victorian philanthropy - the suggestion being that such talk is merely convenient cover for cutting the duties of a civilized state.
Yet at the turn of the 20th century, you couldn't move for original thinking about young people. What's more, the coalition's stated vision of small groups of engaged citizens taking real responsibility for the raising of our young accurately describes the work youth workers are already doing every day and night. We are the big society.
So what could possibly go wrong? Money. Obviously. Nobody has suggested that our banks, for example, should be led into recovery by armies of well-intentioned volunteers. So surely we don't think that equally complex social ills can be remedied entirely without professional expertise and full-time commitment?
And if the days of a universal youth service are threatened by a thousand cuts and we fall back solely onto targeted support for those most at risk, we risk too great an emphasis on presenting symptoms, such as unwanted teen pregnancy and educational failure, and too little on supporting the whole young person.
Equally worrying, there appears to be very little recognition of the importance of infrastructure. While nobody is going to argue against cutting unnecessary bureaucracy, eliminating waste isn't the same as dismantling infrastructure. Activism requires organisation.
Plus, this is a long game. It is establishing trust and real relationships that makes real inroads in youth work: you don't change young people's lives with a website and a comms plan. You do it by showing up on wet Wednesdays and being there when they need you. Nor will National Citizen Service, thoroughly good thing though it is, engage the most disengaged and it must not become a political fig leaf to cut the heavy lifting of ongoing work at the sharp end.
A big society works smarter when it works with an enabling state.
EARLY YEARS - DENISE BURKE, children, young people and families consultant
Childcare and early years education are key parts of the big society and we all have a role to play in bringing up the next generation.
But funding cuts over the next few years mean that local authorities will have to make some difficult decisions regarding the financial sustainability of children's centres especially.
It is clear that children's centres will not be able to provide the plethora of services that they currently provide for all families. Indeed, a number of local authorities have already decided not to progress phase three centres.
However, for those local authorities that want to provide a children's centre in every community and deliver universal services, there are opportunities to do things differently.
One option may be to deliver targeted services from within a universal base by way of locality working, sharing staff across the locality, reducing the number and frequency of free services, providing only evidence-based activities, and in some instances charging for programmes.
My preferred option would be to think more creatively about the use of children's centres. Many centres are a wasted resource open for limited periods rather than being available all day, seven days a week.
Transforming the building into a shared site offering a multitude of services and facilities to the wider community makes not only financial sense but helps build stronger communities - the big society.
Three intergenerational centres on which I've worked in Brent and Merton bring together all ages from birth to 90-plus years. A range of agencies from health and the voluntary sector to local authority departments share the costs and thereby save on individual budgets.
The benefit of shared sites is not only financial. They also help to break down barriers between generations. This can help improve educational attainment, reduce crime and fear of crime, improve family health and provide a better sense of community.
Local authorities must take action now and plan what role children's centres will play in the coming years. Despite a reduction in funding, closing centres shouldn't be an option. Looking at different models and developing new ways of working more effectively and efficiently has to be the right approach in the big society.
SOCIAL WORK - CORINNE MAY-CHAHAL, interim co-chair, The College of Social Work
Social work has always depended on the support of volunteers to help manage community schemes such as playgroups, Home Start initiatives and unsupervised contact centres. Unfortunately, over the last two decades, the longstanding tradition of community development has all but disappeared, as individualised approaches to social work have taken priority.
There is great potential for social workers to become valued members of communities. The danger is that public sector cuts will affect social work and vulnerable children may fall through the net.
Increased awareness of child abuse and of the impact of domestic violence on children has resulted in an increase of referrals to children's social care services. The growing volume of referrals of alleged child abuse can impact severely on local authority time and resources and no amount of volunteer support will reduce this task. Indeed, as volunteers become more heavily involved in social work initiatives, workloads may increase, as more people will feel obliged to report their concerns.
The big society aspiration of accountability will have particular relevance for social work. Greater transparency has already been exercised through the publication of serious case reviews. This "right to data" will enable the public to understand the complexities of social work first hand, but may also encourage higher levels of reporting, resulting in unmanageable volumes of work for qualified social workers.
Financially, the big society faces major challenges; unemployment is predicted to continue to rise, family expenditure will increase and cuts in public services are likely to affect on the poorest in society. As a result, the numbers of vulnerable and "at-risk" children may rise, creating even more referrals to children's social services.
The financial repercussions of an increase of social work support, particularly in the private and third sector will also be something to watch over the coming months. Third sector organisations may consider becoming more involved with the social work sector and the encouragement of social enterprise may lead to the growth of more independent social work agencies that are accountable to the communities they serve.
The big society initiative will enable social workers to work alongside other professionals and volunteers, to achieve the best outcomes for children and families. Co-working can also fill gaps that have grown over the years in mentoring, visiting and befriending schemes.
Social workers will play a vital role in the future of the big society. They will lead and manage teams of volunteers, assist with training and will provide continuing professional guidance and supervision. This leadership will encourage the growth of community engagement and family support skills, while continuing to ensure that children remain safe.
YOUTH JUSTICE - ROB ALLEN, former member of the Youth Justice Board
Preventing crime lies close to the heart of the big society idea. Minister David Willetts once memorably illustrated the philosophy of cohesive communities tackling wrongdoing by contrasting the Amish community rushing to Harrison Ford's aid in the film Witness with Gary Cooper being left alone to confront the gunmen in High Noon.
Youth justice offers several opportunities for a big society approach, many of which build on New Labour roots. The National Citizen Service for 16-year-olds will add to a range of preventive initiatives that involve local people as mentors to young people at risk and bring young people into contact with grassroots organisations offering educational, sporting and cultural opportunities - though the continued existence of many schemes must be in doubt. Local volunteers could play a greater role in the justice process itself by expanding the use of referral order panels or by increasing options for restorative justice.
Devolution of power could see local authorities take greater responsibility for meeting the high costs of custodial placements or re-investing resources to develop more effective alternatives, especially in neighbourhoods with the highest concentrations of children in trouble. More diverse providers, including charities and social enterprises, could also run community-based or even custodial services.
But more power to local people could unleash a punitive parochialism that excludes rather than includes young offenders. Concern about persistent offenders in the early 1990s saw processions of village elders in North Wales marching on a young offender's home. More recently, a local paper reported a five-year Asbo as a "Ban for the Imps of Satan".
The big society may, of course, prefer not to get involved. As a Home Office official in 1993, I was despatched with a special adviser to negotiate with the Ministry of Defence a way for more young offenders to be given a taste of military discipline through the cadets. Military chiefs left us in no doubt that while this was a great idea in principle, it would be too hard in practice. It might put off the "good kids" or worse contaminate them. When we arrived, the special adviser, foreseeing opposition, suggested that I rather than he should make the pitch. Seventeen years on, will David Cameron take the same approach to the inevitable concerns?
EDUCATION - JOHN DUNFORD, former general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders
It's not easy to grasp what the big society means and it is probably a safe bet that it will look very different in five years' time from the concept first put forward by the Prime Minister.
In relation to the education process, we can probably take it to mean that the old world of professionals solely delivering education and young people receiving it will change. Instead there will be a greater variety of provision and changes in the learning process itself, which will mean young people being co-creators, rather than simply recipients, of their own learning, with greater input from parents and non-professionals.
We have already had an Academies Act that will greatly increase the variety of types of school and there are certain to be a number (but probably not very many) of the so-called free schools, promoted by parents and other groups and run by commercial companies or co-operatives. Some of the academies will want to use their additional autonomy to go it alone, but others will want to work in partnership with others to strengthen their brand.
Both for free schools and academies, therefore, we shall see more groups of schools, only some of which will be geographically based in the way that local authority groups have been. Some will be run by commercial companies, some by co-operative agencies and some by highly successful entrepreneurial schools. Governing bodies - a numerically important part of the big society - will have a big role to play.
We shall see an opening up of the learning process, with most 14- to 19-year-olds engaged in voluntary work, so learning outside the classroom will play a part, although there is certain to be a stronger focus on more formal learning after the promised government curriculum review reports next year.
As online reporting develops more widely, parents will feel better able to engage with the education of their children, which will be a hugely positive development. Schools will look to non-professionals to enhance the curriculum, but young people themselves will have a bigger say in how they learn, with student voice becoming focused on the learning process in more and more schools.
HEALTH - CHRIS HANVEY, chief executive, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
A "Brokeback" government to repair a broken society, or a new "people-centred" way of delivering services? Whichever view you take, David Cameron's big society provides children's health services with an opportunity to, in the Prime Minister's words, "give citizens, communities and local government the power and information they need to come together, solve the problems they face and build the Britain they want".
Health, in general, is potentially well placed to support the principles of the big society as, in the particular case of children's services, there is already considerable community and voluntary input. Many child health services are delivered in local communities, community paediatricians are very active in their local areas and there is a good tradition of co-operation between health and voluntary sector organisations.
The development of children's centres, for example, and the recent consideration of basing more health visitors in such places, will bring health and social care closer, in settings where local people are already engaged in how services are run.
Similarly, a majority of local voluntary organisations are run by local people, already used to bringing in community health services for children.
The real opportunity of the big society for health is to absorb the lessons from the last government's Total Place initiative in how you can co-ordinate across departments, and also learn the lessons from successful children's centres.
The threat of the big society to children's health services is that "people-centred" initiatives could be focused on the fashionable areas such as cancer or heart disease. Traditional Cinderella areas, such as child and adolescent mental health services, may remain excluded from the ball. And, of course, children often find themselves without a voice. Ensuring that they are genuinely heard will be particularly important.
A good litmus test for the big society will be how it affects the way child protection services are developed. If, as the African proverb asserts, it takes a whole village to raise a child, it involves a similar community-wide vigilance to ensure that children are not in any way harmed.
Child protection represents an area where responsibility has been rested squarely in the hands of professionals, whether these are paediatricians, social workers or the police. But we have to return to the situation where members of the community are aware of child protection and actively seek assistance when they think children are at risk.