FIS Policy E-Newsletter
For those interested in providing a job or job training on the basis of six-month funding.
The DWP Future Jobs Fund has been primarily introduced to deliver on the government guarantee, in a period of rising unemployment,
that from 2010 every person aged 18-24 who has been looking for work
for a year will get an offer of a job or training lasting at least six
months. It is a £1 billion fund to support the creation of jobs for long-term unemployed young people, plus others facing significant disadvantage in the labour market. The money will be spent over the next two years and it is hoped that the Fund will create 150,000 new jobs. 50,000 jobs will be targeted in unemployment hot spots. The DWP state a preference for partnership bids. They advise small and micro organisations to work in partnership with local authorities or other third sector organisations to develop joint bids - so interested organisations need to do a little research via their local CVS or similar coordinating body to see what bodies are leading locally. Bids received by 30 June 2009 will be considered for first allocations of funding, but bids can be submitted after that date. Fuller details can be found here. An Acevo-commissioned report by Will Hutton, Unemployment and the Role of the Third Sector, has argued the £6,500 support per job, available to cover only the first 6 months of employment, is insufficient if voluntary sector employers are to make a substantial investment in training, and has recommended a £5 million fund to help voluntary sector organisations participate in the fund. Acevo (Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations), however, do encourage charities to submit bids. See here.
For projects seeking funding to support training for person/people managing volunteers (under Strand C).
As you will be aware, the government-led strategy for the 'modernisation' for the voluntary sector has involved substantial investment to encourage volunteering. Now Capacitybuilders and the Office of the Third Sector have just announced more details of this (reduced) £3 million fund, first announced over a year ago, for the support of volunteer management training. It has three stands of which A and B are earmarked for specific types of 2nd tier organisations; Strand C - the criteria for which are still under consideration - may be more open.
Strand A (£1.6 million) will be targeted to some 25 local volunteering development organisations and will help these support volunteer managers.
Strand B (£200,000) will be targeted to the national strategic support of volunteering development via the existing Modernising Volunteering National Support Service.
Strand C (approximately £1 million) will be a bursary fund to help support training for people managing volunteers.
The deadlines for A and B are the autumn; C will be available from April 2010. For further information click here.
For those already engaged in (or contemplating) accessing central or local government contracts or development as a Social Enterprise.
As you are aware, the government has opened the tendering process for contracts to the private sector as well as to the voluntary sector and Social Enterprises, the latter a form of profit-for-reinvestment-with-social-objectives organisation which the government is encouraging through its funding programmes. John Gradwell has recently drawn my attention to an article with the headline 'Wanted: social enterprise subcontractors for government contracts', which illustrates some implications of the decision to include the private sector and the threats and opportunities which this presents for the voluntary sector.
The article concerns an international service company, Serco Group plc, two of whose other recent contracts are a £245 million contract for air traffic services at Dubai Airport and an £140 million services contract for Plymouth Hospitals. But here we are dealing with Serco Welfare to Work which will be delivering £500 million worth of welfare to work contracts during the next 5 years. They will, in fact, be in charge of the DWP's Flexible New Deal in north east and south east Wales, in the Greater Manchester region and in the West Midlands. Serco will not deliver all these contracts directly, it expects to work with 20 to 30 main sub-contractors in each of these regions. Further, they are reported as giving the assurance that "this system will be set up to allow as many small social enterprises as possible to gain contracts under this first tier of sub-contractors". While Serco won't say what percentage of its contracts will go to the third sector, a Social Enterprise - The Wise Group, the only non-private sector organisation to be awarded one of 24 large DWP contracts - has said that it will be delivering 40% and sub-contracting 60%.
Serco have however stated that: "There is a particular opportunity
for social enterprise thanks to the fact that under Flexible New Deal
everybody who hasn't found a job after a certain period of time must
spend four weeks engaged in full-time work-related activity." It has instanced the social enterprise Groundwork as an example of the type of organisation which could take advantage of this opportunity.
One can see the benefits the government may hope to gain in managing a smaller number of very large contracts, and in offloading or outsourcing the management of a myriad of smaller contracts. However, the Tories have already said that the size of these contracts constitutes a main barrier to Third Sector participation, and that they will consider offering smaller Flexible New Deal contracts to increase the chances of Third Sector participation. Both ACEVO and the NCVO have expressed their concern at the barriers to Third Sector involvement in public service delivery, and ACEVO have instanced these contracts as a contributor. It is not a surprise therefore that a new Cabinet sub-committee has just been announced, co-ordinated by the Office of the Third Sector and tasked with removing barriers that could prevent Third Sector organisations gaining central government contracts.
However, big contracts are unlikely to disappear through the actions of either a Conservative or Labour government, however the system may be tweaked; nor is the inclusion of the private sector in the market for central government contracts likely to diminish. The problem as the Tories see it is: "[finding] a balance between not having too many contracts that it makes it difficult for the DWP to deal with and not having too few so that there are hardly any third sector players in the market."
We have drawn your attention previously to the impact of private sector competition on a lower scale (see here). While these DWP contracts are at one extreme of the market for contracted services, they have served to draw attention to the broader and more general issue of difficulties experienced by voluntary sector organisations in this market; and to the continuing need to build the capacity of voluntary organisations, including through partnerships, social enterprise approaches, and the identification of niche services.
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This is for the person who works on funding in any organisation which is seeking external funding to support its activities.
Funding Central is a new funding website hosted by NCVO in partnership with the Office of the Third Sector. It contains information about some 4,000 grants, contracts and loans from local, regional, national and European funders - importantly, this does include funding possibilities for small local projects which are unlikely to have the capacity to access larger contract funding. It will provide you with a Guided or Advanced Search suitable to your fundraising experience. This is how it works: when you begin a search it will ask you a series of questions about your organisation, your geographical location, and the project or purpose for which you are seeking funding. I tried a Guided Search, posing as a small, local community organisation based in London, and I found it very user friendly, and it came up with a few reasonable suggestions.
The site also has a number of other useful features, including a 'Find a Partner' facility (don't forget that partnership working is now the buzz phrase, and no organisation is too small to seek local or sectoral partners), a 'Support and Advice' section subdivided under the categories 'Grants', 'Contracts' and 'Loans', and 'Funding Deadlines' and 'Funding Updates' sections. It also has a facility to enable you to sign up to a Newsletter which will bring you personalised information on funding updates, deadlines, news and events.
You will find that the ethnicity question in your search is (as so often) attenuated: 'Asian', 'Black', 'Chinese', 'Mixed', 'Other', 'White' are your choices: I chose 'Other'. (Please complain to NCVO that the 'Irish' category is omitted in this way - although the number of funders specifying 'Irish' as a special concern can probably be counted on one hand!)
Incidentally, there is another funding website on line governmentfunding.org.uk, hosted by Directory of Social Change and supported by government funding from 2003 till April of this year.
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For those who use statistics for national or local representation purposes
Good data is important for policy formation and representation. Yet we are constantly coming across situations in which Irish statistics are not included in reports and analysis from which it would be very helpful to have Irish data.
A recent example of this are the statistics for Statutory Homelessness: First Quarter January to March 2009, published by the Department for Communities and Local Government on 11 June 2009. The statistics in the ethnic tables published in both the 20-page report and analysis and in the more extensive national Excel tables for England were: 'Ethnicity not stated'; 'Other ethnic origin'; 'Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi'; 'African/Caribbean'; 'White'. We have argued strongly in our submissions to ONS about this use of what they describe as 'Combined groups' - because the 'Irish' data is submerged in the 'White' data. We are not the only population group 'hard done by' through this approach, as it also conceals differences - useful for targeting services - between 'visible' ethnic populations. However, in this case the methodology renders the 'Irish' data invisible.
A recent report in which the Irish were included was Lucinda Platt's Ethnicity and Child Poverty (DWP Research Report 576 2009). However, the 'White Irish' in her statistical analysis (Table 6.2, based on data from the Census Longitudinal Study) showed one of the lowest chances of living in a workless household in 1991 and an even lower chance in 2001, so in her study she focused on those with the higher likelihood of doing so.
There is a need to build up a systematic list of such exclusions and inclusions in order to make the case for better practice. So we will continue to highlight examples of both kinds. If you come across such examples in your work please forward them to us and we will add them to the list.
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This item should be of interest to all members.
For information about the Census Rehearsal later this year and a downloadable copy of the Census paper which will be used click here. It is likely that the form of the questions asked in this paper will be the form used in the 2011 Census. These include Country of Birth, Year of Arrival in UK and Passport questions on page 7, and National Identity and Ethnic Group questions on page 8.
There are two categories which will be particularly useful to Irish-born people and those of Irish descent in the Ethnic Group question (Question 16), the 'Irish' category in section A and the 'Any other Mixed/multiple ethnic background, write in' option in section B. Here it is important to stress that the identity stated here relates to cultural background, ancestry, heritage rather than to National or Passport identity.
There is no 'Irish' option in the National Identity question (Question 15), which is generally confined to indigenous nationalities of the UK state. Those born in the devolved Northern Ireland state who are not satisfied with 'Northern Irish' or 'British' options have an 'Other, write in' box at their disposal.
By the way, you are asked to tick only one box for Ethnicity but you can tick as many as you feel appropriate under the Nationality option.
The Passport question (Question 11, page 7) gives you three choices: 'United Kingdom', 'Irish' and 'Other, write in', and again you tick all the boxes that apply.
There is a blank space on page 8 for a question requested by the EU, which is still being tested: this is a Citizenship question; and this, if included in its present form, will give you three choices: 'British', 'Irish', and 'Other, write in', and again you can tick all that apply.
The cross-tabulation of the outcomes of all these choices is likely to present us with interesting, and very useful, information on the pattern of lived Irish identities.
However, in the meantime an important issue needs to be addressed: the substantial number of people born on the island of Ireland and of Irish descent who do not sign up to an Irish ethnic identity. That this is not merely an emotional issue is suggested by the evidence for a poorer health profile carrying into the 2nd or 3rd generations.
At the same time, it is important that - in seeking to increase the number of people signing up to an Irish heritage or identity - that people are not straitjacketed with options that are too narrow to be lived with. For example, despite our need for clear statistics, a person of mixed heritage or identity should not feel that they have to opt for one of these at the expense, or denial, of another. This is why a mixed heritage/identity question to which people of mixed-including-Irish identity can subscribe is so helpful. The opportunity for a person of Irish identity or heritage living in Britain to state a National or Passport identity other than Irish in the Census is equally so.
Michael Snee has identified an important undercount of children of Irish descent and heritage in the educational system in his timely contribution to the latest FIS Newsletter; and he has also identified some very practical ways of addressing the issue which are worthy of being studied and put into effect on a wider scale within the Irish community in the years leading up to 2011.
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