LOST IN AUSTERITY. Rethinking the Community and Voluntary Sector. Niall Crowley. (Independent Equality Consultant) with contributions from

Transcription

1 LOST IN AUSTERITY Rethinking the Community and Voluntary Sector Niall Crowley (Independent Equality Consultant) with contributions from Siobhán O Dowd, Ballyhehane/Togher CDP & Déirdre O Byrne, Independent Community Consultant Prepared by ISS21 Civil Society Research Cluster, University College Cork,

2 Contents Contents... 2 LOST IN AUSTERITY: Rethinking the Community and Voluntary Sector... 3 INTRODUCTION... 4 A SECTOR?... 4 AN AGENDA FOR SURVIVAL... 4 A STATE AGENDA FOR TRANSFORMATION... 5 SOME RECENT HISTORY... 5 THE CHALLENGES... 6 CONCLUSION... 7 Lost in Austerity Rethinking the Community & Voluntary Sector: a response... 9 Lost in Austerity: Rethinking the Community and Voluntary Sector a response to Niall Crowley s paper: Service provision Migrants The cuts

3 Preface University College Cork s Civil Society research cluster is one of several research clusters established under the aegis of UCC s ISS21 (Institute for Social Sciences in the 21 st Century). ISS21 is an interdisciplinary research institute, which fosters research on social, economic and cultural issues in 21 st Century Ireland. The Civil Society research cluster aims to provide a forum to promote research and facilitate exchange of knowledge between academic researchers and representatives from the voluntary and community sector. Current members of the cluster are drawn from the Departments of Applied Social Studies, Geography, Government, Law and the Centre for Co-operative Studies. In February 2012, a mini-conference was held to mark the official launch of the research cluster. The keynote speaker was Niall Crowley, independent equality consultant and former Chief Executive of the Equality Authority, who delivered an address entitled Lost in Austerity: Rethinking the community and voluntary sector. Invited discussants from the community and voluntary sector related their own experiences of the impact of the ongoing economic downturn on local communities. The conference was attended by 80 people from the university and the wider community. The research cluster seeks to identify a relevant, contemporary research agenda and to stimulate debate on issues affecting the community and voluntary sector. With this in mind, this document which includes the presentations made by Niall Crowley, and discussants Deirdre O Byrne, independent community consultant and Siobhan O Dowd, Community Development Officer, Ballyphehane/Togher Community Development Project, Cork is intended to facilitate the dissemination of the conference proceedings among researchers, practitioners and policy-makers. The research cluster welcomes interest from researchers, individual practitioners and organisations interested in the work of the cluster. Contact details: InstituteforSocSc@ucc.ie For further information on ISS21 and its research clusters, see the website: 3

4 LOST IN AUSTERITY: Rethinking the Community and Voluntary Sector Presented to the ISS21 Civil Society Cluster, UCC, Feb 23 rd By Niall Crowley INTRODUCTION This is a moment of crisis for society and for the economy. The threats are multiple. Unemployment, mortgage defaults, banking collapse, social divisions, deepening poverty and diminished public services to list just a few. How should the community and voluntary sector be responding to this crisis? It is also a moment of crisis for the community and voluntary sector itself. The threat seems to be singular at times. Funding. However threats of cooption by the state and of dissent being precluded by the state have also been a focus. What should the community and voluntary sector be doing to respond to its own crisis? The first instinct in a crisis is to survive. All energies get re-directed to the task of survival. People and organisations turn in on themselves, go back to what they know best and try to hang on in there until the crisis has passed. This response crowds out imagination, analysis and innovation. In this way crisis can only be a threat rather than an opportunity. This crisis does present a threat to the community and voluntary sector. It threatens its existence and it poses threats to its purpose and strategy. But it also offers valuable opportunity to the sector. It provides the opportunity for, and almost requires, a rethinking of the community and voluntary sector. It would be singularly remiss of those in the sector to fail to seize this opportunity. This paper seeks to contribute to a process of rethinking the community and voluntary sector. It aims to be analytical and grounded but it does not purport to be balanced or comprehensive. It is concerned with dominant trends rather than acknowledging all the different strands. It seeks to provoke debate rather than offer a finished analysis. 4

5 A SECTOR? The community and voluntary sector is a well-known entity. It has been talked about, researched and even organised for decades. However it is an entity that has never been easy to define. While it seems to be clear what it is, it can be hard to define its boundaries. Who is in and who is out and why? Organizations must have some purpose, interests or issues in common if they are to be understood, organised and engaged with as a sector. The business sector is made up of a huge diversity of organizations, for example. Businesses are united in purpose by the profit motive. They have shared interests in defending or promoting the best conditions for making a profit. They have common issues that include managing human resources, securing access to necessary capital and ensuring access to a sufficient market. The community and voluntary sector is also made up of a diverse range of organizations. What shared purpose, interests or issues unites these organisations? What unites large multi-million euro not-for-profit enterprises providing services to people with disabilities with small community development projects organizing community employment schemes? What unites national networks of organisations engaged in a policy dialogue with the powerful with local organizations developing alternative more ecologically sound ways of living? What unites identity based groups championing an end to discrimination with area based groups developing responses to the poverty experienced by their communities? Maybe it is purpose that unites this diversity of organisations? But then purpose would have to be defined in some broad form of doing good works to get everyone behind it. Maybe it is shared interests that unite them? But then interests would have to be narrowed to funding, accessing grants and sustaining financial viability. Maybe it is common issues that unite them? There are shared issues of dependence on the state but then not all parts of the sector see that as an issue. Issues would have to be confined to the challenges of providing services to disadvantaged communities if they are to be shared by all in the sector. The concept of sector appears to be less and less appropriate when shared purpose, interests or issues are examined. The concept also becomes limiting. The notion of sector locates organisations with those they have little in common with. This does not 5

6 allow for any broad shared agenda for social change to be jointly pursued. The notion of sector divides organisations from those other organisations they might have more fruitful relationships with but who are in some other supposed sector. This does not allow for any form of adequate power base to be developed from which to achieve substantial social change. It might be better to start from a broader concept like civil society rather than this idea of sector. The starting point would then be to identify the purpose, interests and issues that are most important to an organisation. This could then form the basis for identifying alliances and defining a sector with boundaries that best captures what is important to the particular organisation. Shared purpose, interests and issues are most usefully understood in terms of common values when it comes to defining a civil society sector and its boundaries. This understanding of a sector based on common values would serve a more inclusive and effective approach to sector building. A sector so defined would not be limited to and divided within rigid boundaries. Common values would serve as a banner around which to mobilize and build the sector. There are of course potential pitfalls in this approach to sector definition. I chose to work in the community and voluntary sector because of the values that I found to be shared by many people and organizations in the sector. Over time those I came in contact with enabled me to deepen and evolve my own values. The core values for me are now equality, justice, environmental sustainability and participative democracy. There are people and organisations in, or entering, the so-called community and voluntary sector that have little time for such values. These values are also open to interpretation and there are those who define them in such limited terms that they serve no real purpose in shaping a sector let alone in progressing social change. My starting point in rethinking the community and voluntary sector however is this value base of equality, justice, environmental sustainability and participative democracy. My ambition in engaging in this debate is to see a sector, however defined, emerge out of this crisis with a capacity to advance and make a reality of this value base. 6

7 AN AGENDA FOR SURVIVAL Community groups, voluntary organisations and national networks are facing a crisis of funding at national and local level. Since the onset of the economic crisis there has been a constant whittling away of the resources available to this sector. At best this is a reflection of the limited status of the sector. Politicians see it as expendable and a source of quick and easy savings. At worst it is a reflection of a political hostility to the sector. It reflects a desire to put manners on these organisations. At the same time organisations in the sector are faced with increasing demands on their services. Poverty and inequality are deepening. Public services are being diminished and run down. The austerity policies being followed by the Government and the choices being made by the Government have turned this economic crisis into a social crisis. Organisations in the sector are challenged to do much more with much less. Many organisations in the sector are faced with the task of downsizing and letting staff go. They become ever more conscious and focused on their role as employer and as an employer doing things that they would normally be critical of. Organisations are faced with rationing or reducing much needed services to people in increasing need. They make choices as to who benefits and what becomes the priority. They become one transmission line for delivering austerity at local community level. The voice of most organisations in the sector has grown quiet and cautious. There is a fearfulness within many organisations. Funding relationships must be sustained and the funders cannot be upset. The state is the core funder for most of the sector so the state can no longer be challenged in any substantial manner. Protest remains unvoiced in the public arena, dissent is diminished and advocacy is limited within careful boundaries. The search for survival has intensified the competition that has always been present within the sector. There is increased competition for diminished funding. However it is also a competition for status, for media space, for access to decision makers and even for market share in disadvantaged communities. The sector, already fragmented by its diversity, is further divided by this intensified competition. Some organisations in the sector have tried to resolve this situation by seeking out other sources of funding. Philanthropy offers the principal alternative to the state as a 7

8 source of funding. Philanthropic funding sources have largely refused to take the place of reducing statutory funding. There is some sense to this position. In other cases though philanthropic funding has been used by the state as an excuse to withdraw its funding and the philanthropists have been strangely silent. Overall, despite instances of important funding initiatives, philanthropy has failed to offer effective support to the sector in finding a way out of its crisis. Philanthropy has other concerns. It is principally concerned with its own legacy as the key philanthropic funds enter a strategy of spend down over the next short number of years. Legacy is about responding to the interests of the philanthropist rather than those of the sector. Philanthropic funding sources are also increasingly desperate in their search for this legacy. This desperation has led philanthropic funding sources to take a more hands on approach with the organisations they fund and to the issues they support. They impose agendas on organisations and take places on their boards. They set up new organisations that parallel activity already being developed by community and voluntary sector organisations. They cut funding to organisations that could provide the foundations for a different future for the sector. Legacy is selfish and desperation is controlling. The sector is not being well served in its moment of crisis by philanthropy. The agenda of the sector is currently largely dominated by this need for survival. Advocacy by many organisations now focuses on sustaining much needed services in increasingly disadvantaged communities. It is important to keep the show on the road when the communities served by these organisations are in greater need than ever before. The organisations are partly trapped into this agenda of survival by the predominance of their role as service providers. However, at times, this survival advocacy has been reduced to a demand to save the jobs in the sector. As a result of this dominance of an agenda for survival, the agenda and voice of much of the sector has had only a limited focus on the crisis in society and the economy and on the quality of the Governments responses to this crisis. An agenda to contest the subsidising of speculative bondholders and the stifling austerity policies and an agenda for investment in jobs and services and for alternative models of social and 8

9 economic development only gets articulated sporadically. This is a high price to pay for survival. A STATE AGENDA FOR TRANSFORMATION There is an agenda of transformation being pursued by the state. Public sector reform has become the banner under which the state withdraws from key services and reduces its role in society. Competitiveness is put forward as the argument to reduce the wages of the low paid and cut benefits to those who are unable to get jobs. Stability is the excuse offered for using public funds to bail out private banks. The need to balance the books is offered as the rationale for cutting key public services and reducing benefit payments to those living in poverty. This is an agenda for a society characterised by the dominance of the market and the needs of so-called entrepreneurs and their demand for profit. It is an agenda that deepens inequality and the segregation of society on the basis of wealth and income. It is an agenda for economic stagnation and diminishing creativity. It will be a new and harsher society that emerges from the crisis. This state agenda is defended by the mantra that there is no alternative but to pursue this agenda. This mantra serves as a cover to hide real choices that are being made by Government even within the constraints of the requirements of the international financial organisations. Politicians are encouraged under this mantra to take the hard decisions and to stand up to vested interests. All too often these so-called vested interests are those groups experiencing inequality and poverty. Political unresponsiveness to protest, political acceptance of hardship for the few and political pride in taking the hard decisions have become the order of the day. Democracy suffers and is diminished by this. Everything is changing and yet the agenda of survival has the community and voluntary sector ever more determined to stay the same. The sector has not explored how it is currently structured and the extent to which its structures still serve national and local action for equality, justice, environmental sustainability, and participative democracy. The sector has not explored how its role could evolve so as to contribute to enabling a society based on these values to emerge from this crisis. Nor has the sector engaged in any collective analysis as to what happened to it during the boom 9

10 times, how it operated during those times and what is to be learned from that experience. Few organisations in the community and voluntary sector have put forward an agenda for transformation that goes beyond their specific focus and mandate. What are the alternatives to policy that transfers huge amounts of public money to international bondholders, reduces public services to balance the books and purports to create jobs through reducing the wages of the low paid? What are the parameters of a new model of economic and social development that would make real the values of equality, justice, environmental sustainability and participative democracy? What policies could advance such a model in the current context? In what has been for many organisations an ineffective engagement with and response to such questions, organisations have let down the communities they serve more than by failing to protect their much needed services. The community and voluntary sector has not seen the need for, nor imagined the content of, an agenda for its own transformation. What forms of organization are capable of progressing social change for those experiencing inequality and poverty in this new context? What types of activity are capable of mobilizing people and advancing the agenda of equality, justice, environmental sustainability and participative democracy? The sector runs the risk of rendering itself irrelevant to the challenge of social change in the new context created by the state s transformation agenda. The sector could soon stand accused of no longer being fit for purpose by those it seeks to serve. SOME RECENT HISTORY A brief examination of the recent past assists some understanding of how the sector finds itself in this situation. I will focus on the community sector. This is the part of the community and voluntary sector I know best and it is the part of the sector that is closest to the values of equality, justice, environmental sustainability and participative democracy. In many ways recent history for the voluntary sector has seen those organisations grow and develop ever more like mainstream business enterprises. The roots of the community sector lie in local actions to mobilise people who are disadvantaged and who experience inequality and poverty. Community organisations provided the space within which individual hardships could become collective 10

11 interests. They offered the platform from which to articulate these collective interests and the means to agitate for an effective response to these interests. The agenda for these local organisations emerged from the situation and experience of people experiencing inequality and poverty. The skills in these organisations were those of politicising, mobilising and campaigning. Accountability within these organisations was directly to those who experienced poverty and inequality. Organisations grew at national level and local organisations networked at national level to act as a lobby. Their power lay in their ability to articulate accurately the concerns of disadvantaged communities and to mobilise local organisations behind campaigns and policy demands. Their agendas were formed from the direct engagement of these disadvantaged communities in the local organisations that made up the national networks. The sector developed as a policy focused lobby. It sought a closer relationship with decision makers at national level and, ultimately, to bring its agendas into social partnership. Opportunities for participation with the state opened up at local level too. A division grew between those organisations close to or engaged in social partnership and those outside the partnership process. Those inside social partnership saw those outside as irrelevant. Those outside social partnership saw those inside as compromised. This represented a significant failure to develop a dual strategy. Participation within social partnership was weaker for not being linked to protest and agitation outside of social partnership, and protest and agitation was easily marginalized where it had no means of communication and negotiation with the decision makers. The sector in failing to develop a dual strategy inside and outside of partnership in effect voluntarily traded in its source of power. In becoming a policy lobby the skills base within the sector changed at national and local levels. Policy analysis and policy development skills dominated to the exclusion of the earlier skills base. The agenda was not set out of the experience of local action but out of the knowledge of policy experts. Accountability to those experiencing poverty and inequality became more tenuous as the technical level of the positions developed became more and more complex. 11

12 Participation became the goal at national and local level rather than a means to an end. In many instances the organisations of the sector came to the table with a single demand to participate in whatever the next policy initiative was being mooted by Government or statutory bodies. Participation became the agenda as knowledge was spread too thinly and time for agenda development became too limited. The sector could also be seen as being compromised as a result of remaining in social partnership too long as conditions for the economic crash evolved. Alongside this process of partnership the boom time meant the state had funds to dispense. The sector secured significant access to these funds to provide services within disadvantaged communities at local level. Previously the sector had used such state funds both to provide the service funded and also as a subsidy to the activities of politicisaiton, mobilization and agitation. The boom times changed this by the scale of the funds on offer and by a closer state scrutiny of their use. The sector developed into a service provider at local level. In this the community part of the community and voluntary sector became ever more like the voluntary part. Local organisations took on the interests of a service provider and began to network around these interests locally and nationally. It developed a skills base as an employer and as a service provider to the exclusion of its earlier skills base of politicising and mobilising. This evolution of local community organisations was accompanied by a significant bureaucratic workload. Regular reports to funders had to be provided. Financial controls and reports had to be implemented. Demonstration of impact had to be measured. This workload diminished the space available for these organisations to take on other roles beyond that of service provider. In some instances roles of dissent or protest were expressly excluded in contracts signed by the organisations. Gradually the accountability of these organisations changed from being to their local communities to being to the state and its authorities. There is an interesting parallel in this bureaucratic burden with the practice of philanthropic funding sources. These funding sources came out of the business sector. They too demanded an intensive accountability from the organisations they funded. 12

13 They required these organisations to take on business methodologies of planning, managing finances, measuring progress and reporting. These demands have been to a level that inevitably distracted organisations from their principal purpose. They also had the further impact of changing the nature and culture of the organisations themselves. Key personnel moved from being activists to being managers and the culture of their organisations changed with them. National organisations developed as policy experts and local organisations evolved as service providers. The links of communication and solidarity between national and local levels were broken. National policy expertise was not informed by local action and experience. Local service provision was not supported in national policy development work. The sector has been diminished by this cleavage. THE CHALLENGES There are, of course, many organisations within the community and voluntary sector that expansively embrace and promote the values of equality, justice, environmental sustainability and participative democracy. They face a challenging context characterised by: An economic crisis that has been responded to with a particular Government policy of austerity that has engendered a social crisis of unemployment, poverty and inequality. A political insistence that there is no alternative to the particular form of austerity being pursued and a growing political unresponsiveness to any challenge or demand for alternatives. Government disinterest in and hostility towards the community and voluntary sector with a resultant whittling away of their funding base. A recent history that has seen the community and voluntary sector evolve at local level as service providers burdened with an extensive bureaucracy that in effect entails an accountability to the statutory sector. A growing demand on local organisations from their communities in relation to the services they provide. 13

14 A recent history that has seen the community and voluntary sector evolve as a social partner at national level and develop as a source of policy analysis and expertise while at the same time distancing itself from its capacity for and tradition of protest. The dismantling of the structures established for social partnership and for enabling participation by community and voluntary organisations in the policy process. A continuing hostility in the public administration, in government and among politicians to dissent and advocacy from the community and voluntary sector. A break in the links that had been established between the national and local levels within the community and voluntary sector. A loss of influence for the sector and a diminishing of its voice, particularly in a context where mainstream media offered little space for those who seek to articulate alternatives from within civil society. This is the extent of the crisis in the community and voluntary sector. At one level only, is this a crisis of survival with the continuing reduction in the sector s funding base. At its most fundamental it is a crisis of purpose and capacity. The sector has lost the decision maker audience required for its role of policy analysis and policy development. It has lost the means necessary to adequately play a role in service provision. The skills base it needs to imagine and develop new roles is lacking. It could also be seen as a crisis of values for the sector. Organisations have to take on roles of business planning and management, of downsizing staff levels and of rationing or closing crucial services. These roles leave little room to give expression to the values of equality, justice, environmental sustainability and participative democracy. Organisations at national level and at local level committed to these values are faced with three core issues: 1. How can they redefine their purpose and build the skills base required for this new purpose? 2. How can they structure themselves locally and nationally to first identify and then secure the alliances now required, to re-design and re-establish the links 14

15 needed between national and local level, to reflect a more limited resource base and to play new roles in advancing social change? 3. What type of actions and activities can they implement to achieve influence in a context of political unresponsiveness, media disinterest and deepening inequality and poverty? These questions pose challenges of imagination, organisation and focus to the sector. These challenges are posed to a sector that has been left fighting a rearguard action to sustain its funding base and to individuals in the sector who are ever more pressured and who feel ever more powerless in the face of the austerity project, even to the point of despair. Firstly there is the challenge of imagination to organisation in the sector to define a new purpose and to establish an agenda fit for that purpose. Organisations that espouse values of equality, justice, environmental sustainability and participative democracy need to change their primary roles from being a partner of the state or from being a servant of the state. Their primary role for the next period will inevitably be oppositional to the dominant policy positions being pursued by the state at national and local levels. Organisations need to build and pursue new agendas that go beyond their immediate mandate, that go beyond what they stand against and that establish the alternatives that they are for. These new agendas should come from the experience and situation of people living in inequality and poverty. They should hold some resonance for all who espouse values of equality, justice, environmental sustainability and participative democracy. Academia has an important contribution to make in responding to this challenge of imagination. Academics need to expend intellectual capital and make learning available that enables organisations to think through the nature of such an oppositional role and to devise effective alternatives to current austerity policies. Secondly there is the challenge of organisation to the sector to identify and establish the institutional structures that are required within the sector to effectively pursue its new purpose. Fluid alliances are needed across the strict sectoral boundaries that have divided organisations that espouse equality, justice, environmental sustainability and participative democracy. New relationships of cooperation and collaboration need to 15

16 be brokered. The issues being pursued need to be framed in a manner that enables and gives effect to new alliances. The relationship between national level and local level organisations need to be repaired and redeveloped. National action needs to advance local issues. Agendas at national level need to come from the local experience and situations of poverty and inequality if they are to have resonance. Local action needs to give expression to values, analysis and priorities agreed at national level. In this way local opposition has the possibility of being part of something greater than the efforts of individual organisations. This linkage requires effective communication, trust building and resource sharing. It requires investment of scarce time. This challenge of organisation must also address the reality that there is an excess of organisations operating within the sector. Where there is overlap of function and of value base mergers need to be considered. There is an excess of structures to give effect to cooperation and coordination within the sector. Some of these structures now need to be let go, others need to be given new function and new structures might be required to achieve new relationships and new purpose. Finally there is the challenge of focus to organisations within the sector to establish where the sector needs to focus its efforts. The focus of much of the policy work done has been on the powerful while the focus of service provision has been on the powerless. An oppositional purpose, a context of political unresponsiveness and a situation where values of equality, justice, environmental sustainability and participative democracy only have limited popular traction suggests the focus must now be on the disadvantaged, those at risk of disadvantage and those with potential to be in solidarity with those experiencing inequality and poverty. There is a need to convince people of these values, of their importance in creating the society that must emerge from crisis and of their potential to contribute to a resolution of the broader crises that confront society. The key activities for organisations should be initiatives of conscientisation and politicisation to secure a broad popular traction for these values. Initiatives are also required of mobilisation and demonstration to give expression to the demand for policy and practice to be based on these values. This final challenge brings us back to the challenges of imagination and organisation. The issues that now become a focus for action need to advance the alternatives to the 16

17 current approach to policy that have to be imagined. The alternatives that need to be advanced need a structure and a strategy that have to be imagined. The challenge of imagination is central to rethinking the community and voluntary sector and academia have a key contribution to make in fuelling this imagination. CONCLUSION In conclusion I would like to highlight one example of people and organisations coming together to attempt to make some contribution to the task of rethinking the purpose, structure and focus for the community and voluntary sector. This is the experience of Claiming Our Future. It does not purport to provide the answers to the challenges posed or to be the only source of such answers. However it does offer an experience that has a contribution to make to the debate. Claiming our Future was established in 2010 with the aims of identifying alternative approaches to achieving economic and social development, building popular support for these alternatives and the values that underpin them and developing a movement that demonstrates this support. It has organised deliberative events to identify priority policy themes, to explore a detailed policy agenda in relation to each of these themes, and to implement campaigns to advance this policy agenda. This work has, to date, explored and advanced the policy themes of income equality, developing an economy for society and democratic reform. Part of the challenge taken up by Claiming our Future is to develop new forms of organisation within civil society. It is organising across the different sectors of civil society committed to the values of equality, environmental sustainability, participation, accountability and solidarity. This is with a view to building an empowered civil society base out of a cross sectoral and participative approach Claiming our Future seeks to develop new forms of action by directing the energies and strengths of the civil society organisations and people involved to engaging, educating and convincing the general public of the need for alternative approaches to the crises faced and for new goals to be established as to the type of society that should emerge from these crises. This activity should lead to the mobilisation of greater popular traction for a more equal and sustainable society and the emergence of a new and more forceful demand on the political system for the transformative change required to achieve such a society. 17

18 Claiming our Future has had some success: Over one thousand people from all over the country and from across all sectors of civil society attended its inaugural event in Dublin and identified shared values and priority policy themes for the movement. Well-attended and productive national deliberations have been held on income equality in Galway and on an economy for society in Cork. Working groups have formed to develop campaigns on issues of income equality, an economy for society, and democratic reform. The experience of Claiming our Future, however, demonstrates that: Movement building is slow and complex. Civil society organisations have largely remained silo based and focused in on their own specific sectors. The investment organisations are willing to make in new forms of organisation and new ways of working remains limited. Agenda development around convincing alternatives is challenging. It is not easy to move from clarity about what has to be resisted to clarity about what needs to be promoted. It is difficult to frame issues in a manner that draws different sectors together, that has popular resonance and that advances a more equal and sustainable society. Skills and capacities still need to be developed to support new types of intervention for social change, in particular in the area of building popular traction for values of equality, justice, environmental sustainability and participative democracy. Academia has an important contribution to make in assisting the community and voluntary sector wherever organisations are struggling to overcome these challenges. In particular academia could: Build stronger relationships with those parts of civil society committed to equality, justice, environmental sustainability, and participative democracy and invest intellectual capital in their work for social change. 18

19 Conduct new research and make existing research available to the community and voluntary sector to enable new purpose to be defined, new agendas to be developed and new strategies for change to be applied. Engage in and contribute to public debate that would build a greater understanding of and commitment to equality, justice, environmental sustainability and participative democracy. Build cross sectoral perspectives within academia with a view to making an intellectual contribution that transcends academic silos and enables a linked perspective on values of equality, justice, environmental sustainability and participative democracy. 19

20 Lost in Austerity Rethinking the Community & Voluntary Sector: a response Siobhán O Dowd, Ballyhehane/Togher CDP It would be very easy to focus on the Austerity part of this seminar title : the ITGWU has just published a Brain Harvey report Downsizing the Community Sector which indicates the scale of cuts. However I agree with Niall that focussing the discussion on funding levels or employment levels within the sector does a disservice to the scale and impact of what s happening to those on the margins & on the lowest of incomes, and the necessity of responding to it effectively. Yes our funding levels have decreased by a third in the last three years and the complexity of the bureaucracy we need to complete to draw down that reduced budget have increased proportionately. I believe that within UCC it s called full economic costing & FEC seems like a particularly appropriate synonym for the hoops we all are forced to jump through. Within the bureaucratic framework of grant aid agreements, service level agreement, logic model input/outcome/impact indicators there have also been strict injunctions against campaigns whose primary purpose is to obtain changes in the law or related government policies, the HSE. A letter some years ago from a Principal officer level in the Dept which funds our project states categorically that the job of our CDP and other CDPs was to implement government policy. The community sector has been co-opted as a service provider to the state, measured and valued by the range of services it delivered and injuncted to not in any way to challenge the state if it wished to continue to receive funding. Government from 2005 onwards became very uncivil to Civil Society, even before the age of Austerity. It seems to me that one of the main casualties of Austerity across Europe has been Democracy itself, Italy & Greece most recently, but the McCarthyism of the Irish state toward civil society has been in evidence for some time even if it only went to print with An Bord Snip Nua in For an organisation within the Community & Voluntary sector (however complex that term is when referring to such a diversity of 20

21 groups as Niall indicates) which is committed to participative democracy to attain the ends of social justice, equity, environmental sustainability this is extremely worrying. Niall has outlined why solidarity within the voluntary & community sector is difficult if not impossible to achieve. Recently we ve been hearing about another faux solidarity the notion that we are all in this together. Ireland is praised for taking tough measures, making hard choices but these hard choices seem sought by and implemented by those whose average income is in multiples of those who will experience the cutbacks. Such actions belie the notion that we are all in this together; the annual bash those in receipt of Social welfare day has been re-instated with vigour in the last few years. Such attacks seem to belong to another century quite apart from being deliberately misleading. The Irish Times captured this very well last week: in reporting projected control welfare savings and supposed fraud they linked it to similar harshness by those administering the Poor Law. I m not sure why the default position in a crisis is to attack and demonise the most vulnerable but it is a position we all need to challenge. The news that those on job seekers benefit would be penalised if they didn t turn up to pre - interviews in preparation for jobs that very obviously are not there would be laughable if it weren t so dangerous for those in receipt of this benefit who stand to lose up to a quarter of their payment if they don t participate. I imagine that many of you like me watch Oireachtas Report or The Week in Politics. If you do you will see that the same politicians insisting that job seekers turn up to meaningless interviews haven t themselves turned up to work the dail chamber is habitually empty save for leaders questions and other key-note announcements. They should maybe also refer back to the 2011 ESRI report that the Fas interview/activation process is likely to reduce one s chance of finding work by 17%. Solidarity seems reserved for speeches, the government instead encouraging divisiveness by encouraging tips offs, 300% increase over three years, and contributing to the scape-goating of some of the most vulnerable by the filleting of the Community Employment Schemes. The very deliberate targeting of two most vulnerable groups who have participated widely in this scheme people with 21

22 disability & lone parents and the removal of training grants unless by special pleading panders to the most prejudiced of opinions. Unlike participation in Fas activation Community Employment schemes have actually assisted people to find work. So how are we to move toward something like solidarity? Niall s contention that we need to see beyond our own sectoral silos is really important as is his assertion that it s easier to resist rather than propose. Community work has traditionally seen itself in a space within/against the state, a kind of for/against space especially in relation to public services and maybe more against. So from the bunker of the local community sector the kinds of shifts I think I & my colleagues need to make are to unequivocally come out in favour of Public Services good, fit for purpose, accessible state services in education, health, training, justice, housing, welfare & income support the communities we work in need them and the most disadvantaged in these communities depend on them. But to have excellent public services we need to fund them - we can then retain a right to demand that they be excellent and critique them if not. That may mean hard discussions amongst us about issues such as third level fees, household charges, water charges. Niall talked of the advantages of intersectoral co-operation when the CDP programme was being re-drafted by the Centre for Effective Services we enlisted the aid of many in academia to counter the international expertise line being trotted out by the then Minister: 44 mainly academics signed a letter to the Irish Times which was printed on the day of a national cdp conference to outline the new programme it didn t stop the proposed changes but it stung the Dept & the Minister into a defensive response and perhaps created some space for alternative structures to be considered. Many of those same signatories locally responded to an invitation to participate in Claiming our Future, thus retaining the links between the community sector and the academy. Funding is a huge issue but there are other resources; connections and co-operation that can advance the work we all do the clause I mentioned at the beginning from the hse grant agreement regarding lobbying was imposed nationally but challenged not only by community groups but also by local hse personnel. When this clause couldn t be changed those same personnel encouraged us to signal our disagreement by using the comment section. 22

23 When the Rapid programme was introduced to Cork it was recognised that Lesbian/Gay issues might be difficult to pursue at local community level. Instead a LGBT Interagency Steering group was created by the City Development Board, comprising of LGBT groups, representatives from the hse, gardai, city cdps, the vec, and city council. Cork City Development Board s 10 year plan was the only CDB plan in the country to include LGBT inclusion strategy. This interagency steering group continues to work to ensure that Objective 86 on LGBT inclusion gets auctioned. Working out of our silos can help achieve multiple goals as well as building intersectoral alliances that I think we will all need even more in this age of austerity. 23

24 Lost in Austerity: Rethinking the Community and Voluntary Sector a response to Niall Crowley s paper: Déirdre O Byrne, Independent Community Consultant On the whole, I am agreeing with most of what Niall has to say. I have heard many of the issues that Niall has raised in his paper, discussed at community level. However, when presented en bloc, as Niall has just done, they do present a very depressing picture. In response to Niall s paper, I would like to talk a little about the changing landscape of Community Work and particular areas within the Community and Voluntary Sector, as I know them. Service provision These days there is tremendous pressure within the Community and Voluntary Sector, largely from the state, on the emphasis of service provision. Now, there is nothing wrong with service provision, but it does become problematic if all the work of a community a project is centred on service provision alone. Service provision was only ever meant to be part of the community work that happens in our communities. The rationale for community work has always been to challenge inequality and poverty and to do this by collective action, by which community people were consulted, became involved and consequently became empowered to address the causes, and not just the symptoms of inequality and poverty. I get the sense now that this is a very dangerous and radical thought to be having around community work, especially if there are state agencies in earshot. I recently read of our President, Michael D. Higgins at the opening of an event at Carmichael House in Dublin, where he complained of the new language he was increasingly hearing in community projects. Language that included words like, client, service user, service provision and target group. This is of course is the parlance of the funder. Some years ago, I remember people saying this kind of speak was used when the we were trying to box clever with officials and state funders becuase this was the kind of language that they understood. Additionally, we dropped words like activism and mobilising and terms like working class were 24

25 shunned and banned from funding proposals and policy submissions. This, despite that largely the projects were and still are situated in large working class areas. The result of all of this is that we are now becoming so professionalised as community workers that there is a real danger of what our President has warned that through this language people in our poorer communities will become de-humanised. Staying with language, if we now look at the new allignment process of community work with local development, I now notice some people are using terms like community development interchangeably with local development. I think this is very deliberate and it sounds to me like a form of colonisation, because these are two very distinct and different approaches and models. This use of language I think is very deliberate and needs to be challenged. Staying with the alignment process and in relation to the former CDP programme... local management groups seem to have been taken out of the picture entirely. Originally, as within the former CDP programme, local people were employers and directed policy within their own community projects, but this has shifted completely for the vast majority of those projects to local development companies and has resulted in the a total disempowerment exercise for those people at community level. Migrants I am currently doing some work in the area of the integration of immigrants into Irish society. Some years ago, the Office of the Minister for Integration made funding available to local authorities for the development of local integrated strategies to address this issue. Plans were drawn up between local agencies, such as the HSE, local development companies, the VEC, an Garda Síochána and community groups. Many community groups have taken responsibilities in this area, but despite having their funds cut enormously, I am finding that these groups are still trying to hold up their end of the work. You would say, why?... if their funding has been cut. The reason is they don t want to incur wrath or a suggestion that they cannot deliver on what they signed up to. 25

26 The cuts Along with all of this change, of course we have had the savage cuts that have managed to change drastically the landscape of community development. But then everybody has been cut, haven t they? Have the community and voluntary sector been disproportionately cut? Let us look at a new report, launched two days ago in Dublin and commissioned by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. Brian Harvey is the author and the report is entitled, Changes in Employment and Services in the Voluntary and Community Sector in Ireland, (2012) If we take the years 2010 and 2011, we can see that overall Government funding cuts across all services areas is 6.36% (3.16% +3.2%). (See page 12) If we look at the cuts to those in the Community and Voluntary sector we see the following: Supports Voluntary & Community Sector 39% LCDP 16% Drugs Initiative 18% Family Support Agency 14% RAPID (urban disadvantage) 68% CLÁR (rural disadvantage) 100% Community, Social Inclusion of which: Local V& C.fora 60% Comparing these figures with an overall cut of 6.36%, it is evident that value is not being placed on the Community and Voluntary sector by Government. These cuts are tremendously disproportionate to the overall national cuts. We are being taken out. 26