Children’s Charities in Crisis. Body, Alison
environmental learning and conservation activities, and volunteers for the Scouts Association as a Beaver Scout leader.
While this text is a single authored monograph, largely based upon an updated version of my own PhD study which I submitted in 2016, there must be clear recognition that few academic texts are produced in isolation, and this book is no different. First and foremost, my thanks must go to all the practitioners, professionals, teachers and volunteers who shared their views and experiences, without which this book would not exist.
I am fortunate to work within a small team of inspirational colleagues in the Centre for Philanthropy at the University of Kent. Beth Breeze and Lesley Alborough have been constant sources of encouragement, reflection and motivation in writing this book.
I further am indebted to my wonderful supervisors, Jeremy Kendall, Kate Bradley and Derek Kirton who carefully guided me through the original study and encouraged me to continue that research and write this book. This book also represents my research journey following the completion of my PhD and draws upon further projects, such as the role of voluntary action in education (Chapter 4), which I have been proud to complete with Eddy Hogg.
This book would also not have come into fruition without many long debates with my colleague, Maria Lehane, who actively advised and supported me on structure, narrative and positioning this debate within policy rhetoric. Without her input, especially within the formative ideas of this book, I doubt it would have been written.
Finally, my love and thanks go to my husband, Tom, in recognition of his never-ending love and support, and our two wonderful sons, Iden and Quinlan. They keep me grounded in a challenging world, and for that I am deeply grateful!
‘This isn’t the voluntary sector we once knew, it is a new and challenging landscape, basically a whole new ball game … if you want to play, you need to learn the rules fast.’ (CEO, medium children’s charity)
Let’s start by relaying the experience which inspired this book. It took place in 2016 during an interview with a Chief Executive of a charity tackling domestic abuse. On a blustery winter’s day, clutching a hot coffee we sat, wrapped in our warmest clothes, in a freezing cold office. ‘I’m sorry’ the CEO said, ‘we try to only switch the heating on when the clients are here, money savings, you know’ she broke off, and then she started crying. She went on say how she had started this charity over 30 years ago, as part of the women’s aid movement and as a victim of domestic abuse herself. She passionately believed in holistically supporting women, and particularly their children, through developing play-based early intervention and support. Over the 30-year period they had directly supported more than 6,000 women and children to escape and overcome domestic abuse. The charity had won national and international recognition for their work. Built on their vast experience, knowledge and practice they had developed a specific framework of intervention aimed at helping children cope with, and move on from, the emotional turmoil of living with an abusive parent or carer. Throughout the 2000s this programme had grown, and in the mid-2000s they expanded, becoming dependent upon funding from the local authority. Two days before our meeting she had been informed that under a recommissioning process they had ‘lost’ the contract, a tender for a service which was based on their 30 years of experience, in favour of a large housing association with no previous experience of delivering domestic abuse support services for children. ‘They were cheaper’ is the only explanation she was given. She was distraught, not because they had lost a contract, but because she felt, knowing the organisation who had ‘won’ that all the values and strengths of her lifetime’s work would be lost. In her words, she ‘was done, done fighting, done grovelling for money, done trying to fight’ for the survival of her small but vitally important charity. She finished by saying:
‘It’s all well and good these commissioning documents and compacts that say we will all work together, but the reality is very different, the reality is destroying the local charities which make up the fabric of our communities … but that’s a story that is never told.’
Less than a year later this charity closed its doors for the last time, and we felt it was time to tell those stories and experiences, but in a way that did not present them as isolated cases, but instead as a series of shared experiences, contextualised in current and ongoing debates.
This brings us to this book, which presents original research spanning 2008–2018 about the lived experiences of voluntary sector organisations delivering early intervention and prevention services for children and families in the England, and contextualises these experiences in wider social policy, research and debates. Particularly focusing on the relationship between children’s charities and the state, we talked to 80 individuals from across 40 micro to major children’s charities delivering children’s early intervention-type services. To ensure that we gained a balanced insight into this debate we also spoke to 20 Commissioners responsible for commissioning some of these charities’ services. Commissioners came from across a range of children’s services, including children’s social care, health and education, and from a range of public service backgrounds, including the local authority (including statutory social services and early intervention services) and local borough councils. Drawing these 100 voices together we present here the lived experiences of those working with and on the frontline of children’s charities.
Why this book, and why now?
The title of this book reflects the motivation for this text: Children’s charities in crisis: early intervention and the state. The challenges facing children’s charities are effectively pushing the sector to crisis point. Propelled by increasingly tough discussions around independence of the voluntary sector (for example, Aiken, 2014; Benson, 2014; Independence Panel, 2015; Milbourne and Murray, 2014; Rochester, 2014) fears of mission drift (Cunningham, 2008), incorporation (Fyfe, 2005) and concerns over bureaucratic powers reducing the voluntary sector voice (Milbourne and Cushman, 2013), commissioning and state-sector relationships require further scrutiny. Policy shifts in preventative services have also raised significant questions about how we conceptualise and support vulnerable children in our society.
Nonetheless while all of this happens, the demand for children’s services is increasing. Between 2006 and 2016, the number of child protection enquiries undertaken by local authorities rose by 140% and children subject to child protection plans doubled (LGA, 2018). The complexity of problems facing children and families increases as levels of poverty deepen and inequalities intensify between those who are wealthy and those who are poor. The Local Government Association estimate that by 2025 councils are likely to face a funding gap of £3 billion, this is without costing for increasing demand, which is likely to increase in the face of disappearing early help and early intervention services.
As early help and early intervention support rapidly disappears, children increasingly only get support when at crisis point. According to four of the leading national children’s charities, The Children’s Society, Action for Children, Barnardo’s and the National Children’s Bureau, between 2010–11 and 2015–16, local authority spending on preventative services decreased in real terms by 40%, with a predicted further 29% reduction by 2020. As a result, early intervention support services have been systematically dismantled, almost to a point of no return. This has meant the loss of children’s centres, family support, parenting help and youth work. By 2016 over 600 youth centres had been closed, and approximately one children’s centre has closed every week since 2010. A failure to intervene early means that children are entering the social care system more than ever before.
In