Bankrupting the ‘Big Society’

This summer, the Department of Communities and Local Government published ‘Inspiring Communities, Changing Behaviour’.  With the backing of the slightly sinister sounding ‘Big Society Delivery and Vanguard Division’, this document serves two purposes: first, to explain the government-funded ‘Inspiring Communities’ project; second, to offer tips and guidance to those who want to launch similar outreach programmes.

However, what it represents in reality is the withdrawal of state support from community initiatives founded by the Labour government.

In 2009, the ‘Social Exclusion Task Force’ – an organ of Gordon Brown’s Cabinet Office – launched a pilot scheme to improve the aspirations and attainment of young people in some of the poorest areas in Britain. Extensive research into the long-term personal and social effects of having ‘low horizons’ and inadequate qualifications made a solution to this problem a national imperative. The report noted that “educational and career aspirations developed during adolescence can have lifelong significance, influencing future occupational outcomes.” Meanwhile, a ‘poverty of aspiration’ was linked to low attainment and below-average employment.

‘Inspiring Communities’ sought the help of community groups and neighbourhood partnerships in building activity programmes and learning projects that could make a real difference to young people’s perception of the world and themselves. 64 of the most deprived local authorities in Britain were targeted, and 15 were selected in the summer of 2009 to share a £10 million government fund. This money was put to use by local stakeholders to create innovative community programmes aimed at encouraging younger people to expand their horizons and developing their self-esteem.

In Barnsley, the local partnership used government sponsorship to expand ‘The Barnsley Academy’, an initiative that sought to inspire and motivate young people while encouraging parents to engage with their children’s future. Thetford’s partnership founded a ‘Meet-Up Cafe’ “for young people to meet and take part in a range of activities.”

Many of these schemes enjoyed great success. The ‘Meet-Up Cafe’ boasts a membership of 150 young people, who get involved in all manner of inter-generational volunteering. The Rawmarsh Neighbourhood Partnership established a panel of young ‘Community Ambassadors’ to devise a project that would both bring the community together and provide its younger members with the experience of organising and executing a medium-scale event. They settled on producing a music festival, which goes live later this year.

The effect of such programmes on young people cannot be underestimated. During the evaluation stage of the programme, 38% of questionnaire respondents “felt their campaign had made a big difference to young people’s attitudes and behaviour”, with 62% responding that it had made “some difference”. A number of case studies included in the report testify to the positive influence these campaigns have had on the aspirations and motivations of young people.

The success of the programme has been rebranded by the current government as the adventurous vanguard of the Big Society in action. ‘Inspiring Communities, Changing Behaviour’ contains plenty of practical tips and guidelines to help budding social entrepreneurs establish their own partnerships and launch their own schemes.

However, the language used near the end of the document betrays how the Coalition is seemingly offering opportunity on the one hand, while withdrawing it with the other. The report admits that “government funding ended in March 2011”, forcing the initiatives set up under the scheme to source income from “local partners” in the private sector.

Elsewhere, it is left unclear how certain activities are supposed to continue over the coming months. On one activity targeting NEETs in North East Lincolnshire, the report states “it is hoped the work will be sustained through a partnership with a local college.” The impression is that many of these projects have been thrown into limbo and forced to fight on their own for survival.

‘Inspiring Communities’ thus serves as an example of the paradoxes that lie at the heart of the Coalition’s ‘Big Society’ project. Individuals and partnerships who have established working programmes in their local area are held up as community champions. The government provides advice and ‘how to’ guides for those who seek to emulate them. However, it would appear that the government is wilfully ignorant of the fact that the programmes in Thetford, Barnsley and Rawmarsh were all financed by the state, and require more money to survive.

Yes, the government should do its bit to create a climate where individuals and partnerships are encouraged to do more in their local area for young people. But it still remains the case that the state can do the greatest good by providing funds to those who seek to improve their communities. All projects need an idea and money to become reality.

Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ is asking people to find both for themselves.

Louie Woodall is a Young Fabian member and Assistant Editor of the Young Fabians Blog.

• Further reading: Inspiring Communities: Customer Insight Research Report, Inspiring Communities, Changing Behaviour: A Guide, Aspirations and Attainment in Deprived Communities

Building Stronger Communities – responding to the Big Society

In this member post, Timothy Stacey – a member of the Young Fabian Building Stronger Communities Policy Commission – shares his reflections on the Commission’s first meeting.

Last week saw the first in a series of meetings between Young Fabians, Labour MPs and community professionals as part of the Building Stronger Communities Policy Commission, chaired by Richard Angell and with guest speaker Anas Sarwar MP. A key concern was how Labour can responsed to the Big Society.

Sarwar opened the debate by asking if it was wise to shape Labour’s attempt to build stronger communities as an afterthought to the Big Society. There was the usual suggestion that the Big Society was a cover for economic cuts. Angell added that in fact Labour is historically the party of grassroots organising. This is absolutely correct. But I worry that Labour is getting caught in a cycle of reiterating this fact as opposed to reinventing what it means.

It is also worth noting, as far as political point scoring is concerned, that the coalition is failing to be grassroots. It seems like small news that the coalition rejected Citizens UK in favour of Locality for its contract to train 5000 community organisers. But the strategic differences between the bids make the decision philosophically damning. Whereas Citizens UK look to build policy from the people, Locality offer to turn communities into an integrated third sector whereby the people take control of whatever the government decides it cannot afford to.

Grassroots organising partly means having the humility to connect with traditional grassroots groups and ask them what they want. In recent times Labour has drawn a line between itself and its union support base (despite being elected with union support, Labour leader Ed Miliband failed to stand by them during the pensions strike). But it also means connecting with new kinds of groups in the face of shifting social circumstances. Many people are not in a job long enough to see a union as representative of their long-term interests.

This would mean building real connections with groups like Citizens UK. The government’s rejection of its community organising contracts bid makes it a good time to get involved with Citizens UK. Many in the organisation are angry and looking for alternative means of support. They feel they have been shunned due to their independent manner of operation. But others are happy to have maintained this independence.

Often, it is seen as problematic that Citizens UK will only align itself with an external body if issues of the people are addressed. I see it as a good thing; as well as keeping Labour in line with what local communities want, Citizens UK can provide an active support base. Organisations like Citizens UK will also save taxpayers’ money in the long run because projects are often internally funded by participants.

In policy terms, this would require community organisations themselves to formulate policies as the government acts as an enforcer and provider. The living wage campaign is a good example of where government can support. The most sure-fire and exciting way to get people’s votes is not to guess at policies that will inspire them but to act as actual representatives, the messenger between their own ideas and government. It is for this reason that Ed Miliband has himself said that Labour should be more like Citizens UK.

Apart from all the long-term sociological factors, one of the reasons the BNP are so good at building a community support base is that they actually act like a community organisation: holding rallies; lunches and dances; listening to and articulating (albeit often very bigoted!) ideas. We politicos so often forget how important it is to engage people socially before we can gain privilege to their deepest insights.

There were two other areas not discussed in last week’s meeting.

The first, ironically given the Commission is being run by the Young Fabians, is that any policy that wants to rebuild communities needs to involve young people. A joint report released in June between ResPublica and Action for Children entitled Children and the Big Society had some exciting ideas on this note.

One project was simply getting to know the names of the children five houses to your right and five houses to your left. Similarly, it is hugely important to young people to get to know the officers patrolling their streets. The strategies used in projects like PREVENT, whereby officers enter youth clubs and chat to young people about their troubles and aspirations, get young people learning officers’ names for the right reasons. The police become heroes rather than enemies.

The Young Fabians is a wonderful way of getting young people involved in politics. But it could go further. Why not actually get young people from communities involved in these roundtables? Each of us involved could interview people from our community (and many of us work in education already) and ask them for ideas.

The second area we missed was the increasing importance of religious groups in community development. Over the last ten years this has often meant simply trying to outsource centrally defined services to religious groups. Instead the groups themselves could have a say in the services that are provided.

Working with religious groups saves money in the long run because religious groups are great fundraisers for their own projects. They also feel massively unrepresented at the moment so finding a way to actively engage them in policy formulation is extremely important.

Research by the Institute for Community Cohesion (ICOCO) suggests we are always thinking too small. We keep thinking of this or that policy idea but never think about the big picture of how to reactivate communities from the grassroots. Partly this is because we need to relearn how to be grassroots. Partly it is because we do not want to. Labour has become more conservative in how it formulates policy and in how it elects its representatives.

At last week’s Policy Commission, I was really enthusiastic to see how problems were being approached holistically with respect to, for example, housing, crime, and equality. But one of my chief worries is that in a roundtable about building stronger communities the talk so often turned to central policy and to how to create better networks between departments.

Most of those working on communities cohesion projects require government support (finance, resources, expertise) for local decisions. This is a difficult balance to strike.

Timothy Stacey is a member of the Young Fabian Building Stronger Communities Policy Commission.

• You can find out more about the Young Fabian 2011 Policy Commission work by clicking here.

Finding a cure

In this member post, Young Fabian member Louie Woodall suggests a cure to the current NEET epidemic.

Unemployment is rightly termed a social disease, and it is rapidly turning into an epidemic within one of the most vulnerable and important groups of all: the young.

Figures released on 13 April were stomach-turning: more than 1 in 5 people aged 16-25 are now out of work; within just a few months, the number of jobless young could reach 1 million.

The prognosis for the economy is bleak. Research by the London School of Economics suggests that the average ‘NEET’ (young person Not in Employment, Education or Training) costs the state £97,000 over their lifetime. More importantly, there are shocking implications for the future health and wellbeing of an entire generation of Britons. A survey conducted by the Macquorie Group Foundation/You Gov between 26-29 November 2010 revealed that those young people who were unemployed were twice as likely to suffer debilitating physical and mental health conditions, including self-harm and panic attacks. Research undertaken by The Young Foundation also publicised that NEETs are more likely than their peers to have mental health problems, learning disabilities and a dependence on substances.

This epidemic is virulent and wide reaching; touching the poor school drop-out and middle-class graduate alike. An effective cure must therefore consist of a variety of interlocking programmes that serve to prevent and protect all those at risk.

First, the inoculation. The most consistent predictors of NEET status are poor school attendance (recurrent truants are seven times more likely to be NEET at 16); belonging to a home where no-one works; exiting the care system; and being a teenage parent. Remedying and reducing the incidence of these predictors at an early stage in a child’s life is key to solving the problem.

The solutions are varied, and there’s no harm in trying them all.

An increase in alternative education environments, such as Studio Schools, after-school clubs and community youth centres, could help cultivate those children and teens floundering in our regimented state schools. Employment schemes that target jobless parents should be broadened. A reconstituted care scheme that prioritises the support of those undergoing the transition into adulthood, and a more comprehensive network of state services that seeks to both reduce incidences of teen pregnancies and improve the range of support options available to young mothers and fathers, would also tackle the NEET disease at its very roots.

Second, the antidote to the current wave of youth unemployment. Interestingly, arguments that suggest youth unemployment is attributable to sloth and a range of perverse disincentives in the welfare system seem wide of the mark. NEETs in Leeds interviewed by The Guardian in January claimed they had a real desire to work, and that they wanted to have a purpose, to have a reason to wake up in the morning. Similarly, a survey of NEETs in Bedford reported that when asked, young people listed possession of a job as their uppermost need.

Therefore, the problem must be understood as the product of economic and institutional failure. The Adam Smith Institute suggests that the National Minimum Wage prices young people out of employment, as businesses are reluctant to shell out between £4 and £5 an hour for unskilled labour. Furthermore, the leap from the Youth National Minimum Wage to the National Minimum Wage, for which Britons become eligible at 21, has been highlighted as a reason why those under this magic number are disinclined to seek employment. Why not do something radical, and standardise the Minimum Wage across all ages?

On institutions, the evidence suggests that those services attempting to meet the needs of NEETs are overstretched, understaffed, and ill-equipped to provide the lengthy, one-on-one support needed to ensure a successful transition into full-time work. Some services are bureaucratic labyrinths to the uninitiated, and some choose not to seek available state help because of the complexity of its workings and/or previous experience of disappointment.

This is an area where ‘The Big Society’ needs to step in, and there are some encouraging steps in the right direction. Make It Happen is a government-sponsored programme helping graduates to establish their own firms, while the Calman Trust recently secured £16millon for a training hotel in the Scottish Highlands, designed to both teach and employ jobless youngsters.

If, as David Cameron insisted in PMQs in January, “the long term structural problem of youth unemployment” is one which the government has “to get a grip on”, it needs to start now, and it needs to recruit those outside parliament – you and me – to lend a hand.

Cameron and the spirit of Stanley Baldwin

In this guest post, Young Fabian member Laurence Turner reflects on the historical comparisons made with the current coalition government.

Nick Clegg would have us believe that we live in an age of reform comparable to the 1830s, but in truth it feels more like the 1930s.

On May 12th, David Cameron announced that the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats had ‘overcom[e] political differences to forge a new government in the national interest.’ This was powerful rhetoric, but the words were of a different age. They could easily have been uttered by a triumphant Stanley Baldwin almost eighty years earlier.

As historical actors, Baldwin and Cameron strike a similar pose. Both modernisers, both easy media performers, both leaders of anti-Labour coalitions. It seems from his speeches that Cameron is taking Baldwin’s style of leadership seriously, and so should we.

Like Cameron, Baldwin transformed the Conservative Party from a sectional organisation, ill-equipped to appeal to a changed electorate, into the dominant force in British politics. Most importantly, he successfully established his Party’s ‘non-political’ credentials and, by way of contrast, associated his opponents with the stigma of factionalism.

Of course, ‘non-political’ appeals are by their nature political, and inclusive rhetoric can be one of the most effective means of excluding and marginalising opposition groups. Baldwin spent almost ten years building a contrast between the ‘National’ Conservative Party and a ‘Socialist’ Labour Party – a strategy which provided the National Government with its rhetorical clothing.

There is a present danger for Labour here.

As Philip Williamson has argued, after 1931 ‘appeals to national interest, national unity, equal sacrifices, and responsibility overwhelmed those to socialism, social justice, and class’. The proof is striking: the National Government ticket won the 1935 General Election with 53.3% of the vote. Labour must engage more meaningfully with values and ideology, but if we phrase our appeal too narrowly then we will be similarly outmanoeuvred. The Left’s intellectual renaissance during the thirties needs to be emulated today, but that in itself was small compensation for a decade of Tory ascendancy.

Cameron and Clegg will try to emulate this achievement. The Left must develop the arguments needed to prevent this from occurring. History provides us with one small example: how can this be the ‘New Politics,’ when even the rhetoric has been lifted from the era of the Great Depression?

Of course, the parallel is inexact, and the contrasts are encouraging. Labour is not so hopelessly fractured as in 1931, and Cameron – though he has taken to coalition life well – does not seem as formidable an opponent as Baldwin. In terms of grand vision, for example, the Big Society is weak stuff compared to the enduring appeal of the Property Owning Democracy.

The spectre of The National Government does, however, help us to define the scale of the challenge that must be overcome if we are to see a genuinely progressive government back in Number 10.