Neighbourhoods: Accept no substitute

Thursday, 04 November 2010

Accept no substitute

This paper by Anna Coote, published today, is quite simply the best statement on big society yet, IMHO.

In her presentation at today's launch, she emphasised that big society cannot be seen as separate from the public spending cuts:

'Big society and the cuts are all about replacing paid with unpaid labour.'

'When things go wrong, there is a grave risk that we shall only hear the voices of those who can shout loudest or whip up the most colourful media outrage.'

'We must not undermine the support systems already out there'.

The main concern of most civil society organisations, she argues, is that

'efforts to reduce the deficit will undermine the very networks and groups that are most needed as life gets tougher for those who are already the most disadvantaged.'

Coote's conclusion was that:

'The cuts make the best ideals of the big society impossible to realise.'

4 Nov 2010 21:23:11 | Social capital, Social exclusion

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CD creates £2.16 of value for every £1 invested CDF have just published the summary of a social return on investment project carried out by nef which apparently shows that for each £1 invested in community development activities, £2.16 of social and economic value is created. And that for every £1 a local authority invests in a community development worker, £6 of value is contributed by community members in volunteering time. I'm reminded that back in 1992 John Bell and Gabriel Chanan came up with a figure of 14.9 hours of voluntary action generated per hour of community development. Work reported in the Netherlands in 1989 suggested a ratio of 15.8:1. We couldn't do much with that data now, and this new study is obviously timely. Community development workers and their allies acrosss the country need to get their hands on the figures from this study, and use them to minimise the damage caused by uninformed funding cuts that threaten to remove the catalysts for genuine empowerment, co-production and civic involvement.

How's business? I wouldn't expect to see hairdressers advertising on posts in the street, but these are difficult times.