Monday, 01 November 2010

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.

 

1 Nov 2010 21:58:54

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Big soc, good soc? I took part in a debate, ‘Is the big society the good society?’ yesterday at the Battle of Ideas, alongside Councillor Steve Reed and Jim Panton. Here’s a tidied up summary of what I said. I see big society as a brand, which wraps together some general motherhood-and-apple-pie progressive ideas about the citizen and state with which few of us would disagree. I don’t imply that it’s empty or necessarily misleading or corrupt. I think it’s a smart piece of idea-management and I’m curious as to how Labour party thinkers are feeling, since they had most of the components – including smaller state, according to one persuasive view yesterday - but failed to put them together into a package. The key effect of the branding process is to have got people talking about broad cultural change in a positive way. There’s a great deal to be said for that, although the debate has probably not been as extensive beyond Westminster as those within shouting distance might like to believe. I offered some quick points by way of critique, beginning by referring to the point quoted by Will Davies that we live in a society ‘in which massive gains are privatised and massive losses are socialised’. The financial crisis illustrates why this is so stupid. Big society doesn't even address it. Much of what is described in big society rhetoric implies consensus within localities by use of the C word. It’s as if the country is parcelled into neatly delimited neighbourhoods, populated by like-minded people who are ready to reach agreement on what needs to be done, and who have the time and energy to get on and do it. It’s not healthy that we have politicians who are so ready to elide the realities of life at local level that they see ‘communities’ as unified structures, there to be consulted and acted upon. It’s patronising to people to expect or require them all to think and act alike. (I’m indebted here to Jeremy Brent). I like the idea that big society is not about trying to do more with less, it’s about doing more with more – the extra energy resulting from galvanising civic involvement. That’s powerful and it's what community development does. So will this new civic energy be evenly distributed? No. Some localities will continue to experience a shortfall. Do we have the strategies for dealing with that unevenness? Not as far as I’m aware. Is it even recognised at policy level? Not as far as I’m aware. Again, within localities, the distribution of civic power and the new influence over resources will be uneven. Because communities are not cohesive units constructed for the convenience of politicians, sense of community in a given place tends to be dominated by some groups to the exclusion of others – adults denying space and audience to young people being the classic example. That phenomenon is likely to be accentuated under big society. I offered a few thoughts about the proposed army...
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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.'

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