Coming To Terms With Austerity

The recession is starting to bite deeply in Brighton and Hove now.  Protection for grants and preventive services have been promised by the City Council but this is only a proportion of the income of the voluntary sector. There is significantly more competition for the reducing pool of funding and ironically more voluntary sector resources are expended in chasing it. Government fantasies of increased philanthropy along the lines of the American model during the most difficult financial climate for decades is just that, fantasy. One of the Cities most important infrastructure organisations, the Working Together Project, has put the wheels in motion to close down by the end of the financial year. The Business Community Partnership is being kept afloat with volunteer time. A number of other organisations that make an important contribution to well-being in the City are cutting staff hours and serving redundancy notices to enable them to survive.

At the same time the shops are full of smart phones and I feel under an obligation to buy presents that are not needed and will probably not get used and the bank bosses are threatening legal action to get paid multi million pound bonuses they have not earned and they do not deserve.

I have just read James Lovelock’s Revenge of Gaia. He makes the case that the planet can not sustain our current standard of living. The atmosphere already has unprecedented levels of CO2. The population of the planet has more than doubled in the past 30 years. The planetary mechanisms for absorbing CO2, the forests and coral reefs, are being denuded or are dying.  If we do not do something radical to reduce carbon in the atmosphere the planet will not be habitable for more than a handful of humans by the end of this century. Yes we have to stop using fossil fuel but we also have to reduce our standard of living and our proliferation as a species.

Our economy can only work on the basis of economic growth. Current government aims are to increase growth again, prop up failing economies and try and carry on business as usual until the next and inevitable bigger crisis. Ironically this can only endanger our survival as a species. So it is interesting to realise that at a time when capitalism clearly isn’t working, even for the wealthy first and new world, arguably it has never worked for the third world, there is a need to abandon the market economy all together.  40 years ago  E. F. Schumacher in his book Small is Beautiful argued this case. Those in power did not listen then and they will not listen now. George Monbiot, in his book “Heat” points out that in the future we will look back and marvel that we could walk into hot running water to wash every day, have a larder full of food and power on tap to run a thousand gadgets.

But let me dream for a moment. If we were to abandon an economic system that is unjust and no longer works we could adapt to a fair and planned system that delivers social justice for all, a minimum standard of well-being and the possibility of a future for human beings. This would require some radical solutions. We would have to manage population, energy and food production and we would have to come to terms with greater austerity in Europe and North America.

But those that have the most also have the most power. They will continue to make the poorest pay for the latest business crisis. Organisations that support those most in need and who have the poorest life opportunities will go to the wall or downsize to survive. Many of us will continue to do our bit, stop flying, use public transport, reduce our consumption, work to improve well-being and social justice. But this will not be enough.

One example of our profligacy is the way that we have fished one of our valuable food sources, cod, to near extinction. Ironically the last time that cod stocks increased was during the second world war when fishing had to be abandoned and the economy had to be planned. We do know how to adapt to austerity in a war situation.

The Council is currently seeking participation in its budget setting process. In many ways the principles set out in budget papers are right. Greener policies and protection of the most vulnerable. I am not convinced that the spending proposals really deliver this though. To do so would mean cutting back on much of our beloved culture and services. This would not be politically popular. Maybe it is time to change the messages and argue for us to come to terms with austerity. When we do that maybe we will be able to safeguard that which is most valuable.

 

Cloud Computing – Adventure or Nightmare

We are about to embark on the next generation of our IT strategy. Following a major server problem we (that is me on this occasion  have decided to use Google’s servers instead. We will be using Gmail using our own email addresses, Google Docs to store all of our documents and Google Calendar for our diaries and the meeting room bookings. There will be a phased move away from Outlook although by adding a synchronisation application (sync app) those who want to will be able to continue using Outlook. I’ve been a Gmail and Calendar user at home for several years so already know the benefits but have only recently started using Google Docs properly. It is becoming very quickly apparent that we have been used to using a very inferior system. Now that we have all the bells and whistles I wonder how I ever managed!

Finding mutually free times to make an appointment is much easier and more time efficient. Our documents will not be at the mercy of a £600 server but will have the full power of Google. Programmes will be updated on the fly rather than me having to make a decision about buying the latest licences. Working from home will be as easy as working in the office.

We will continue to keep our server but only use it for a few activities. It will no longer be groaning under the increasing use it has been getting.

I am finding that Google Docs do not have the same functionality as MS Office so will continue to use Office until Google catch up which I am sure won’t be long. The whole approach is different but will also be cheaper in the long run. We are buying an additional internet phone line to ensure good redundancy should our current phone provider fail us. On the basis of past performance that is a fair possibility.

A Personal Message from Steve Lawless

Since the announcement that I will be succeeded by Jo Ivens a lot of people have asked about my plans. So here they are for what they are worth!

I’ve been at Impetus for over 7 years now. It has been a fabulous job working with highly committed and motivated staff and trustees. It was my mission from the start to turn Impetus, or Brighton and Hove Community Initiatives as it was then, into a highly professional and successful, values driven third sector organisation. I hope that is what I have achieved. It has been an interesting journey with the need to respond to constant policy changes and yet still hang on to the essence of what Impetus was and is all about. Achieving Silver Investors in People status was a reflection of the work we had done and the distance travelled.

I have been around the third sector in the city for over two decades. I was involved in the genesis of a fair few of the voluntary organisations in the city. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to see them flourish. The Impetus job enabled me to work across the piste in the sector. For three years I chaired the ChangeUp Consortium and initiated the development of the city Volunteering Strategy that so many people contributed to. I have also tried to champion cooperative and partnership working in line with the sectors values. ChangeUp, the Capacity Building project and the South East Wellbeing Consortium are some examples of this.

Seven years is a long time for me in one job. There comes a time when a fresh pair of hands can further enhance what an organisation can achieve. I also want to change my work life balance, spend less time in front of a computer and more time with real people. I have therefore decided to leave Impetus with a view to working two days a week and spending more time playing jazz, staying fit and looking after grandchildren. I shall continue in my roles as a non executive director of Nourish and the South East Wellbeing Consortium (on behalf of Impetus). I not only have a tremendous respect for many of the people in the third sector in the city but am enormously fond of them. I therefore hope to pick up pieces of work that will be useful to organisations, keep me in touch with some wonderful people and enable me to continue to be and active part of the sector.

It will be a big change for me but I hope it won’t be goodbye.

Steve

Impetus Appoints New CEO

Jo Ivens has been appointed chief executive of the Brighton and Hove charity Impetus.  She was previously an independent policy advisor on voluntary sector and local government for her own consultancy company based in Brighton.  In recent years Ms Ivens worked for the Cabinet Office in Whitehall, initially as policy advisor for the Office of the Third Sector and following that post, as policy manager for the Office for Civil Society where she was the lead official on how local government and the voluntary sector work together to build the Big Society.

She will replace Steve Lawless who has been chief executive of Impetus since 2004 and credited with developing the organisation into a high quality service provider and leader within the Brighton and Hove voluntary sector.  Ms Ivens will take up the post in January.

Impetus manages the Volunteer Centre Brighton and Hove, delivers social care and health services to vulnerable residents and business management support to the sector.

For more information contact:

Steve Lawless
Chief Executive
01273 229000
07795 230871
steve.lawless@bh-impetus.org

The Future for Personal Budgets?

Demos have published a new report, Tailor Made. It discusses how far personal budgets deliver personalisation and concludes it is not a silver bullet for empowerment of service users. It does have some good suggestions about how to empower people. I have always been a big supporter of Direct Payments and Personal Budgets and set up the first Direct Payments scheme in Sussex in partnership with the Federation of Disabled People. I argued 20 years ago that “key quality standards” should be set by service users and not professionals. There is no doubt that giving people control over their own resources, thereby turning them into mini commissioners, will give them the potential to have far more say in the way those services are delivered. This argument has now been won and is enshrined in legislation and practice. However the Tailor Made report does qualify the optimism and quite rightly so. The partnership that Adult Social Care has with the Federation for Disabled People is a good example of how service users often require appropriate support to be able to use direct funding properly.

I would add another note of caution. This government have announced this week that they want all Adult Social Care services delivered through personal budgets. This is not an enabling approach and smells of neo-liberalism to me. I suspect that the motivation is that Personal Budgets are proving to assist with cuts in public spending. It does not take a great deal of imagination to work out the dynamics of how that could happen. Regardless of your take on that issue I would raise another real concern. Domiciliary care purchased under contract by the local authority is approximately 1/3rd of the price of care purchased independently. Without the purchasing power of block contracts will people on Personal Budgets find themselves having to pay far more for the same service?

Market mechanisms have made home care cheaper to public authorities. I was involved in the best value revue on domiciliary care a number of years ago. The way it has done this is primarily by reducing the salaries and service conditions of the carers. At one time this resulted in a serious shortage of staff. It has not driven up quality or driven down price by giving service users more choice because service users do not get more choice. As staff are not paid for their travelling time service users have to have the provider that covers that locality. After all is said and done the quality of care is generally very good in the City although it does vary from provider to provider.

My other concern is for preventive services. Our Neighbourhood Care Scheme has a significant preventive impact on domiciliary care services. Isolated people who receive a volunteer befriender will have better mental and physical health and this will put off the day that they need greater home support. If the emphasis in the future is to put all resources for this group of people into Personal Budgets preventive funding and services could suffer.

One to watch I think.

PatientView – patient groups around the world appraise health apps

PatientView has distributed a report “What Do patients Think of Health Apps?”, a review by patient groups of health apps as tools for the self-management of patients medical conditions. See

http://patientview.posterous.com/100-patient-groups-from-around-the-world-look

or http://post.ly/2qjI2.

 

It is fascinating to read of the variety of ways in which mobile phone apps can help people with many different conditions, including Asperger syndrome, epilepsy, haemophilia, hearing disorders and learning disabilities.

 

The report has been made available for download to those registered with PatientView, who have to respect copyright and not pass it outside their organisations.

 

David Botibol, Trustee

Big Lottery Fund voting again.

The BLF are going to be giving away £10M to the “good causes” that the public votes for. Last time the BLF ran one of these scheme we were short-listed. However, in the end a number of factors scuppered us. We were directly competing with a children’s charity which gave us no chance. We were trying to raise funds to support people with mental health issues into volunteering and that is not very sexy as far as the public are concerned. Animal charities also have a great deal of success.

I notice this time that there are five sensible, to my mind, categories for the entries:

• Encouraging Environmental Sustainability
• Investing in Education
• Places – tackling issues related to rural areas, urban or coastal areas
• Connecting Communities
• Promoting Science, Technology and Health

This should lead to a fairer distribution of funds although one could argue if children and animals is what people want their lottery money to go to then why not.

I was also very much aware that we put in a massive amount of work to raise our vote, much of this volunteer time, and all it really achieved was publicity for the BLF, although we did have a 2 minute slot on local television. Again, not necessarily a bad thing.

We have done well out of the Lottery over the years and spent the money wisely for the sake of the sector in the City so I should be slow to criticise. However I will be reluctant to use our time and resources to enter into one of their voting campaigns again. Personally, if I want to support charity then I donate directly rather than buy a lottery ticket knowing that only 28p goes to good causes.

Caroline Lucas to attend Pensioner Action Public Meeting on Fuel Poverty

Dear All

Brilliant news!  I didn’t mention it at our Friday PAC meeting because I didn’t think it too likely, but I had invited Caroline Lucas MP to our 26 September public meeting and her secretary has now confirmed her attendance.

I am planning to request that she does a brief, formal chat and then take questions from our members.  I am hoping this will garner some Argus publicity too, so would ask you to focus on generating buzz re the event as much as you can.

I will be sending through publicity etc this and next week.

Myfan

Myfan Jordan
Group Facilitator
Pensioner Action
Impetus

Smaller Contracts One Option if Competition is to Work

A new research paper published by the Kings Fund today argues for, amongst other things, contracts for smaller packages of care for the NHS.  My view is that this needs to be transposed to social care as well.

When the “purchaser – provider split” was first introduced in the NHS there was a real problem with large units of service provision such as hospitals. They did not fit into a competition model as you did not have the flexibility to buy service from one hospital one year and another the next.

Although what hospitals could offer was negotiated by PCTs the reality was not a lot different to the pre competition days. To have behaved any differently would have resulted in hospitals going bust and a loss of essential services.

Council and Third Sector Together Against the Cuts

Brighton’s new Green Council has publicly opposed the spending cuts. Cllr. Bill Randall, the leader of the Council has said that the Council’s first priority “will be to protect children, vulnerable adults and those at risk of social exclusion.” He has stated that he sees the voluntary sector as a key partner in doing that work.

As I have pointed out before on this blog, it is the most vulnerable people in Britain that are being made to pay the most in the Government’s austerity measures. (Ironically, or some might say predictably, it is those most responsible for the economic deficit that are paying the least.) Obviously this is not just. This Government has fully accepted the role of the voluntary sector to campaign on behalf of our beneficiaries.  This is a legitimate activity, particularly for organisations like ours that have an important advocacy role. Cuts to the voluntary sector will also have a negative impact on volunteering opportunities and therefore the capacity of the sector to support the most vulnerable people.