Children’s Charities in Crisis. Body, Alison
explored debate about the relationship between voluntary sector organisations working with children, young people and their families (referred to in this book as children’s charities), and the statutory responsibility of the state to deliver early intervention and prevention services. This is not a new relationship. The ‘third way’ driven by the Labour governments of 1997 to 2010, and the subsequent ‘Big Society’ and commissioning agenda propelled by the Conservative party in the Conservative-led coalition (hereafter referred to as the Coalition) has redefined these relationships and created an altered space, with adjusted rules, within which voluntary sector organisations must now operate. This book aims to examine and explore this space and the relational factors that guide children’s charities, drawing together academic literature, social policy and the lived experiences of children’s charities navigating these changes over the period of a decade (2008–2018).
Defining the scope of the book
This book specifically explores the relationship between children’s charities and the state, particularly in the context of early intervention service provision within children’s social services. By children’s charities we refer to any formally constituted, not-for-profit organisation with a central mission of supporting children, young people and their families. While the majority of the voices from children’s charities which we have included in this book are registered with the Charity Commission, some are not due to size (that is, they are micro, community groups), while another is a registered community interest company, limited by guarantee. We refer to these organisations as children’s charities throughout this book to protect confidentiality.
In the context of this book early intervention means services which are established to intervene as soon as possible to tackle social and emotional problems emerging for children, young people and their families, or pro-actively working with a population most at risk of developing problems. Early intervention can happen at any point in the life of a child or young person and can be delivered through both universal and targeted services.
Local authorities have a statutory duty to provide early intervention support, currently provided under a service commonly known as ‘Early Help’. This book however does not seek to offer a critique of early intervention, moreover it explores the relationships between the voluntary sector and the state in this policy area. Therefore, this book draws specific attention to the intersection between the state and children’s charities in the provision of these services, and indeed the role of wider support services such as schools. Commissioning is the dominant mechanism by which this is managed. Commissioning is the process by which health and social care services are planned, purchased and monitored. Commissioning broadly comprises a range of activities, including assessing needs, planning services, procuring services and monitoring quality. While clinical commissioning groups are responsible for the commissioning of services for the National Health Service, local authorities are responsible for commissioning publicly funded social care services, including children’s early intervention services.
Although specific in focus to early intervention, schools and children’s charities, due to the focus on commissioning, this book offers valuable insight for anyone interested in the role of the voluntary sector in the provision of public services.
Why is this book significant?
Children’s charities play a central part in the provision of early intervention and prevention services. Unsurprisingly, the close working relationship between these charities, schools and the state has come under increasing scrutiny. This book raises and discusses the tension between how the commissioning bodies define early intervention and prevention services, as targeted interventions to support identified ‘problem families’ (Pithouse, 2008; Dean, 2010), and voluntary sector actors, who on the whole reject this definition of early intervention, citing it as too targeted and too late. Instead, many voluntary sector organisations opt for a more universal approach in which services may address wider social concerns (Hardiker et al, 1991). However, the dominant and more process driven, somewhat transactional commissioning approaches often result in prescriptive and punitive contract management and hierarchical relationships, meaning that some children’s charities operate in a constrained space and struggle to act independently and speak out with a critical voice.
In discussing these tensions, three significant arguments are presented in this book. The first is how children’s charities have evolved in light of the changing environment, presenting three typologies of responses. We start by suggesting that by engaging in these process driven commissioning processes, some children’s charities legitimise this discourse and subscribe to the delivery of more punitive, targeted approaches which would normally be considered as sitting outside of the charities’ ethos (Peters, 2012). Children’s charities can become more entrenched in this activity, and these behaviours become more self-fulfilling, as the activity continually reproduces itself. The process of commissioning can therefore contribute to hardening the approach on ‘problem’ families (France et al, 2010), and children’s charities become part of the legitimisation of this narrative.
Whereas some children’s charities have fallen in line with this narrative, others have rejected it, some precluded by the commissioning process and others as an act of dissent against the hierarchal relationship between the state and voluntary sector (Ryan, 2014). In contrast, other children’s charities fall somewhere in between this conformity and dissent. They are, to some extent, part of the legitimisation of this approach as they bend and accommodate contractual obligations posed by the state. Nonetheless, they are also able to utilise social skills and tactics to not only secure themselves more advantageous positions in this environment but also to mobilise their particular ideological bias, that is what they think should be done. The ability to mobilise this ideological bias results in these charities being able to, under the right specific circumstances of more relational driven commissioning approaches, set the agenda for the wider field of activity.
The second of our significant arguments results from taking a closer look at commissioning. We seek to extend our understanding of commissioning beyond the binary divide between process- and relational-driven commissioning approaches. Instead, in keeping with some previous colleagues’ work (Checkland et al, 2012; Harlock, 2014; Rees, 2014; Rees et al, 2017), we propose a much more nuanced, richer understanding of the realities of commissioning service provision, which is multifaceted, complex and often awkward, driven by individuals’ professional and emotional responses to multifarious situations. Building on this richer understanding of commissioning we hope to have responded to the call for ‘further grounded research into the realities of commissioning at the local level’ (Rees et al, 2017: 191), using children’s services as a case study example. The reality is that Commissioners are largely critical of overly bureaucratic commissioning processes, and often seek to rebalance them through the employment of specific strategies, such as informally supporting and promoting certain charities over others alongside trying to act as buffers against the impacts of austerity. Within process driven commissioning styles this means that Commissioners develop strategies and ways to ‘bend the rules’, or ‘play the game’ to ensure that contracts are secured at a local level by children’s charities that they have ‘faith in’ to the deliver the required services.
This leads us to the third significant argument: children’s services are in crisis and change is an imperative. Austerity has stripped support to the core and children’s charities are struggling to cope with ever-increasing complexities and challenges, with fewer resources. As a result, schools are feeling the pressure and being asked to pick up the pieces. However, they too are in midst of a funding crisis with many schools struggling to make ends meet. Thus, they themselves are turning towards charities and fundraising for support. As children’s services come under increasing