An uneasy partnership The relationship between voluntary sector
An uneasy partnership? The relationship between voluntary sector organisations and the state when delivering early intervention services Alison Body Canterbury Christ Church University
Defining the ‘State’ District Based Services Local Authority National Policy – Conservative Government
Early intervention policy Early Intervention - Next Steps • Firmly places voluntary sector and philanthropic activity at the heart of early intervention services • Schools increasingly expected to support early intervention – promotion of strong relationships between schools and voluntary sector providers • Definition of early intervention has altered, now termed ‘early help’ and is driven by ‘need not status’ – has resulted services shifting up the ‘tiers’ of intervention • Early intervention services provided in an interesting welfare mix of statutory, private and voluntary sector services
History of Preventative Services for Children • New Labours early focus tackling social exclusion & child poverty (UNICEF, Artaraz) – Introduced National Children’s Fund Programme 2000 (Morris) – Embraced partnership with voluntary sector– commissioning – Progressive hardening of ‘early intervention’ under Labour: ‘protecting from harm’ to children as a ‘social investment’ – Introduced the concept of commissioning and procurement – First strands of the marketization of the sector – Hyper Contractualism (Kendall)
And now… Continued shifting under Conservative led coalition and into the Conservative led government – emphasis placed on ‘school and life readiness’ • Introduction of the ‘Big Society’ • Construction of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parenting - Families failing to ‘conform’ to social ideological norms – punished (Gillies, 2014) • Every Child Matters to ‘Think Family’ (Labour) to ‘Troubled Families’ • Discourse for prevention has ‘contempt for poor and marginalised families’ (Garrett, 2014)
Preventative Services and the Voluntary Sector • Voluntary Sector naturally sympathetic to those ‘at risk’ or ‘in need’, charities particularly expected to help vulnerable children • Theories vary from VSOs being well placed to engender trust to being used as an agency of social control and coercion • Labours commitment to voluntary sector saw increase in prominence of role • In the UK Children’s Fund created a ‘test ground’ for partnership – this continued into the early intervention agenda and now early help
Commissioning in the UK • Not new! – Established and ongoing discourse • ‘A cycle of assessing the needs of people in an area, designing and then securing an appropriate service’ (Cabinet Office, 2006) • Adopted more widely for children’s services in the UK from around 2008 onwards – forcefully propelled by the election of a conservative coalition government in 2010. • Driven by a procurement best value for money agenda • ‘If procurement is about shopping, commissioning is about deciding what to buy and how. ’ (Macmillan, 2010: 9)
Commissioning Cycle
Research that Informs this Study • Combining practitioner background academic insight • Extensive review of research and literature • Tracking of 250 voluntary sector organisations working in early intervention in a single local authority area in UK*. • Interviews with 30 CEOs of Children’s voluntary sector organisations (including 4 Homestarts) • Interviews with commissioners of early intervention services * There are over 600 registered charities working with children in this local authority area
Lessons Learnt… Defining the role of the commissioner Dichotomy of commissioning approaches Engagement of voluntary sector in commissioning cycle Voluntary sector responses Social skill of organisations Social Discourse vs Economic Discourse
Dichotomy of Commissioning Approaches Commissioning approaches exist on continuum between Process and Relational focused commissioning processes Financial: More formal Top down Process driven Framed in an economic discourse. Service Provision: Mixture of formal and Informal More partnership led Needs driven Framed in a social discourse approach Coordinator: Often in-between social and economic discourse Mixture of needs and process driven
Engagement of Voluntary Sector in Commissioning Cycle • Highly dependent upon individual commissioners • Ongoing formalisation of the relationship between state and voluntary sector actors has created contestation amongst actors • Voluntary sector organisations competitors of collaborators? – Fear of competitive advantage – Fear of market engagement • Lack of engagement in needs analysis and priority setting • Commissioning processes out of kilter with local needs? • Providers felt that commissioned services didn’t match need – many children falling through the cracks of services
Contract Management • Contract management one of the biggest areas of contention • Ongoing monitoring – quantitatively driven • Adversarial relationships – Imbalance of power and voice • Changes in requirements • Changes in monitoring requirements • Lack of ability of voluntary sector organisations to respond or influence…. ‘if we try to propose an alternative I know they will come back and say we will MAKE you, we will make you do what we think needs to be done rather than listening to the expertise within the room…’
Commissioners – ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place’ • Definition of services to be commissioned are often highly contested and politicised • Commissioners often act as ‘agents of compromise’ between policy, political actors and practice – Rely on their individual and collective social capital to navigate • Rapid changes to commissioning caused tension for both commissioners and the voluntary sector • Tensions in terms of how commissioners define their role results in different relationships between state and voluntary sector • Commissioners feel they attempt to ‘protect’ services and voluntary sector providers
Equality of Access to the Commissioning Process • Small and Medium Organisations are struggling to survive in the current climate – whilst larger ones appear to thrive – Lack capacity, skills and geographic coverage to independently participate in tender opportunities • Perceived predatory behaviours of larger organisations – Reduction of partnership working amongst early intervention services • Presumption of partnerships and mergers not a reality – Larger services ‘swallowing’ smaller providers • Some partnership working but often perceived as problematic if brought together for opportunities – more success seen in longer established collaborations motivated by ideology
Typologies of Organisational Responses • VSOs very broadly adopt three typology types within any given field of activity where the state exists as a dominant actor: Different Homestart’s demonstrated all three types! – Conformers – strategic, professional, contract reliant, often medium to large- often viewed as predatory: Most likely to have changed/ altered services to suit contracts (risk of mission drift) – Very wide focus often deliver a wide range of services from drug support to domestic abuse to early years – Outliers – small/local, mission focused, often ‘at risk’, unstable: Feel threatened and/or invisible – Often very narrow/ local focus i. e. mental health, domestic abuse etc – Intermediary – strategic, professional, established, multiple strong funding sources, stable: vary in size: Dip in and out of providing statutory services – Often a combination of above some widening of services but generally related to central specialism
Dominating Typology of Relationships Relationship With Conformist Intermediary Outliers Commissioning Bodies Formal/ Informal/ non existent Other VSOs Formal (often Formal/ Informal economically framed) (often ideologically framed) Informal (normally Formal (short Formal/ Informal term/ defined interventions) (some formal interventions combined with relational aspects) (often predominantly relational based) Formal/ Informal Beneficiaries Volunteers with other outliers)
Relationship between commissioning organisation, approach and VSO typology This leads to an uneasy partnership! Assumption is conformers are the most advantaged I argue intermediaries have the least barriers to forming a meaningful statesector partnership
Mobilisation of the Ideological Bias • Deployment of the social skills can position some organisations more favourably than others – collective mobilisation of Homestart groups • Tensions within fields of activities create opportunities for entrepreneurial activity and jockeying for more advantageous positioning. • Some voluntary sector organisations recognise these opportunities and deploy strategic action to out manoeuvre other actors, often pursuing multiple, diverse and at times competing strategies as a single integrated strategy to gain advantage in the complex relations that existed • Often jockeying between conformity and dissent they effectively retain their legitimacy as an actor within the field whilst able to challenge state dominance.
What does this mean for children? Commissioning poses challenges for children’s services: • Contract driven relationships are problematic and can lead to a breakdown in relationships between the state and providers • Small, local services have suffered the most – resulted in more generalist services across wide geographical areas • Organisations delivering early intervention having to be flexible and diverse in what they offer • Reduction in early intervention provision and drive towards short term interventions rather than building relationships • Lack of partnership working between state and sector ultimately leaves the children as the biggest losers • Loss of trust between providers and families
When we had grants we delivered what we were good at and left others to be good at what they did, you worked in partnership because we delivered a different ingredient… it’s a bit like a cake, we were flour, others were eggs, and others were sugar, we all had to work together… now you have to make the whole cake and follow an absolute recipe, there is no innovation, no creativity, no use of what we are good at… any tom, dick or harry could do it, it’s so prescribed (CEO, Medium VSO)
We had one family who thought if they didn’t keep us happy we would come in and take their children, another who thought we were part of the police…. They thought we could cut their benefits as well. They were scared of us… we wanted to help them but we had to tell them that we do have to report to the local authority on everything and they may follow things up (CEO, Medium VSO)
So we have this super difficult family, all kind of crazy stuff going on and that’s it, you are supposed to sort it in 8 weeks… and if you don’t you are hauled over the coals for it and the family will be shifted off to social care for not doing well enough. I don’t feel this is helpful for us or our families, they need time and support to help them move forwards, not threats and sanctions. (CEO, Medium VSO)
An uneasy partnership? • Central issue between the social justice discourse and an economic political discourse • Commissioning in the UK has been a growing and evolving discourse – varies hugely across organisations • Lacks consistency and shared understanding both from state and voluntary sector actors • Translation of national ideology into local policy problematic • It is a highly contestable, politicised and messy process • Relationally driven, inconsistent and highly complex • Debatable whether it has achieved full marketization of the voluntary sector as critics fear; or opened up the relationship with government as a fairer and more open process as promoters hope • To work, commissioning must be defined, roles understood and flexibility and communication truly built into the process
Contact: Alison Body Senior Lecturer, School of Childhood and Education Sciences ali. body@canterbury. ac. uk
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