The changing policy context for third sector organisations

Over some 20 years, the UK third sector has assumed a growing service-delivery role in social care, health, housing, regeneration, education and social inclusion (Kendall, Reference Kendall2000). In parallel, however, there has been increased concern about intensifying demands on the sector and the need to build collaborative alliances – formal and informal – to avoid incorporation into public sector regimes. For example, Harris (Reference Harris, Harris and Rochester2001) identifies that competing for contracts and funding, and associated regulatory frameworks have produced cumulative pressures on small voluntary organisations, with consequent loss of autonomy.

The Compact between central government and the third sector (Home Office, 1998) signalled intentions to raise the sector's profile, marking a shift in public policy from welfare state hierarchies and marketisation, towards networks and partnership working (Rummery, Reference Rummery2006), or New Localism (Aspden and Birch, Reference Aspden and Birch2005). While markets continue to underpin political ideology and strategy, the policy emphasis has been on cross-sector, ‘joined-up’ working and alternative routes to addressing social problems, characteristic of New Labour's Third Way agenda (Hills et al., Reference Hills, Le Grand and Piachaud2002).

Similar developments are visible elsewhere in Europe, where varied examples underline close relationships between the state and voluntary sector, and the sector's intermediary role in generating innovative solutions to public problems with appropriate institutional support (Evers and Laville, Reference Evers and Laville2004). These examples contrast with illustrations from the USA, Australia and Canada where analysis has focused on non-profit organisations as separate from the state, emerging in response to market failures and reduced public services (Lyons, Reference Lyons2001). In such contexts, they provide poorly resourced but essential safety nets in deprived neighbourhoods (Salamon, Reference Salamon2002; Sobeck et al., Reference Sobeck, Agius and Mayers2007). Nevertheless, some studies also consider the diverse local organisation forms emerging – from independent to contractually dependent and co-constructed relationships – and the role of partnerships for sustaining small organisations (Proulx et al., Reference Proulx, Bourque and Savard2007; Sobeck et al., Reference Sobeck, Agius and Mayers2007). A few studies also emphasise the challenges involved in maintaining alternative approaches and representing community voices when these are perceived as counter-hegemonic (Phillips, Reference Phillips2006).

For a decade, partnership working and numerous short-term, multi-agency initiatives have characterised state voluntary sector relationships in the UK, entwining public and voluntary services ever more closely and often increasing voluntary sector funding dependency. Such initiatives have included Education and Health Action Zones, Sure Start and New Deal for Communities, while Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) established in over 80 deprived local authority areas were charged with co-ordinating local neighbourhood renewal strategies by engaging community representatives alongside private and public sector agencies. However, Osborne and Ross (Reference Osborne, Ross, Harris and Rochester2001) show how the rhetoric of collaboration and valuing different approaches has not permeated the practice of regeneration projects; community organisations remain ‘junior partners’, while powerful agencies determine the rules (Taylor, Reference Taylor2003; O'Brien, Reference O'Brien2006).

Despite such barriers, many community-based services have continued to grow, as in other parts of the world, and public authorities have recognised their comparative advantages over statutory and private services in working with marginalised groups of people, for whom mainstream provision is neither appropriate nor cost effective (Glennerster, Reference Glennerster2003). This partly accounts for the central role assigned to UK community organisations in tackling social problems when the Social Exclusion Unit was initially established (SEU, 1997). More recently, this role has been extended to a focus on user involvement and wider community engagement in the drive to promote locally responsive services (ODPM, 2005).

A series of government reports acknowledge the value of third sector organisations (Home Office, 2004; OCLG, 2006), applauding the community knowledge, creativity and experience they bring to engaging socially vulnerable groups (OTS, 2007). These reports highlight the need to build third sector capacity and appropriate local infrastructures, to establish collaborative projects to support small organisations (HM Treasury, Reference Treasury2002) and to resource community providers properly (DfES, 2004a). Guidelines also exhort local public agencies to operate fair practice in contracting relationships and communications, following principles in national and local compacts (Home Office, 2004). Research suggests that such recommendations need better grounding in local practice if they are to address difficulties identified in empirical study (O'Brien, Reference O'Brien2006; Compact Voice, 2007). Moreover, none of the guideline documents questions the appropriateness of a competitive approach to allocating contracts in the context of small community organisations whose user groups have little market influence.

Strategy has moved forward in diverse ways at national, regional and local levels, but in many countries, neighbourhood and community empowerment initiatives have included a strong emphasis on engaging young people (Tisdall et al., Reference Tisdall, Davis, Hill and Prout2006). In the UK, funds have been directed towards professional changes and youth volunteer action (DfES, 2006a). The Office of the Third Sector has highlighted placing ‘users and communities at the heart of public services’, stressing the importance of collaboration with a third sector, able to contribute to local involvement and to addressing social needs (Miliband, Reference Miliband2007). Following the change of Labour leadership, further devolution of powers to the neighbourhood level has been advocated (O'Hara, Reference O'Hara2007). However, Taylor's (Reference Taylor2006) work highlights the challenges involved for community-based organisations charged with community engagement, raising questions about the effectiveness of strategies, as conceived to date.

Positively, there has been recognition of longstanding criticisms (Harries et al., Reference Harries, Gordon, Plamping and Fischer1998; Geddes et al., Reference Geddes, Newman, Root, Thomas and Woods2000) that a surfeit of initiatives and short-term project funding can be damaging, undermining the continuity of developments, which could make a difference in poor areas. Such criticisms underlie the rationale for the longer-term contracts, commissioned through mainstream agencies, now proposed. New commissioning processes are also premised on aims to support collaboration across traditional service and sector boundaries, developing creative work in areas of particular need. However, earlier studies have pointed to factors inhibiting collaborative, inter-agency work, including: inflexibility in statutory organisations, competitive bidding for funds, dominance of quantifiable performance measures, differential power relations and a lack of trust (Kimberlee, Reference Kimberlee, Stewart and Purdue2002; Milbourne et al., Reference Milbourne, Macrae and Maguire2003). More recently, Cairns et al. (Reference Cairns, Brier, Harris, Harris and Hughes2006) identify continuing barriers to collaborative working which must be addressed for partnerships to play their intended role in supporting community infrastructure.

Drawing from the study described below, I explore the extent to which barriers to local engagement and collaborative working have been addressed in recent changes.

Children and young people's services

Since New Labour came to power in 1997, redressing child poverty, supporting childcare and low-income working families to encourage increased employment, promoting parenting and youth education and targeting disengaged young people have been among a number of programmes aimed to improve social inclusion. Many of these projects reflect European policies (Colley et al., Reference Colley, Boetzelen, Hoskins and Parveva2007), and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989, Article 12) has prompted worldwide activity around young people's inclusion. Criticism of conformist and hegemonic approaches implied in social inclusion initiatives has been debated elsewhere (Lister, Reference Lister, Askonas and Stewart2000; Levitas, Reference Levitas2005), as has the tendency of such schemes to individualise outcomes and to attribute blame for failures to excluded individuals and groups (Milbourne, Reference Milbourne2002). However, this analysis also offers valuable insights into difficulties that community-based organisations experience in delivering externally designed projects.

Despite central government funding for a number of initiatives focused on improving children's well-being in areas of high deprivation, a UNICEF report (2007) shows that the UK record on addressing the poverty and well-being of children and young people falls well behind that of other ‘developed’ countries. Data on British young people's unhealthy lifestyles compare poorly with most of their European counterparts, as do their educational aspirations, achievements and participation in post-16 education or training. In this context, the key goal of the government's Every Child Matters (ECM) (DfES, 2004b) agenda of ensuring better outcomes for all children and young people, coupled with aims of reducing inequalities through adequate, high-quality provision in the recent Childcare Act (DfES, 2006b), make good sense. The ECM objectives frame local planning and performance targets for local children's services, underpinning criteria for local area commissioning processes.

These reforms in children and young people's services, however, are premised on potentially conflicting features (Hudson, Reference Hudson2006): an ‘outcomes-led’ planning model which draws on young people's and families' views in designing services, and cross-sector partnerships charged with delivering targets and strategies defined as ‘top–down’. Burnley et al.'s (Reference Burnley, Matthews and McKenzie2005) study of devolution and contracting children's services in British Columbia identifies similar contradictions in the ways users' definitions of services are reshaped to match professional agendas and performance targets (Milbourne, Reference Milbourne2002). In the current UK remodelling of children and young people's services, centrally driven planning and performance priorities, linked to the ECM framework, potentially limit the scope for locally diverse approaches to designing services. Building local third sector capacity to deliver frontline work with young people has been prioritised as a local government strategy, but the centrality of central government health and educational attainment targets is arguably at odds with ‘soft’ targets identified as more relevant for demonstrating success in community-based work (Blackmore, Reference Blackmore2006).

Until recently, UK funding for children's services has been complex, cross-departmental and the result of multiple initiatives, while in some areas youth projects comprised only targeted youth justice or compensatory education schemes (Milbourne, Reference Milbourne2005a). As a result, service providers have had to engage in multiple bids and reporting to a variety of agencies. One rationale for introducing LAA commissioning is to improve inequalities in socially deprived areas through local authorities planning coherent solutions alongside community partners (OCLG, 2006). From a public agency perspective, local area plans will co-ordinate initiatives funded in one area through one reporting agency. However, the impetus for change has arrived top–down, and at community level the logic for the changes and accompanying arrangements is questionable.

Study of community providers of young people's services

This article draws on a study of third sector organisations providing services for children and young people commissioned by one large inner-city authority in England.Footnote ³ The area has a diverse, multi-ethnic population, including significant numbers of recent refugees. Several neighbourhoods are ranked high in Indices of Local Deprivation (Price Waterhouse, 2005) and the area overall has benefited from initiatives intended to address social exclusion. New organisations and cross-sector partnerships have emerged as a result, alongside a longstanding voluntary sector, including many organisations with a successful local reputation for providing services to young people and families.

The study set out to explore ways in which the changes outlined above, intended to rationalise and improve local service arrangements, were experienced in community-based organisations. It considered relationships between community and public organisations, how representatives of different organisations understood the changes proposed and the effects on their work. One of the changes which participants were asked about was the common contract and performance priorities across all children and young people's services proposed in the new commissioning process. Participants were also asked about involvement in discussions on future services and their views on planning processes.

The study took place in 2006–7, and two interviewers undertook over 50 interviews in community-based organisations working with children and young people. Additional interviews included representatives of the local voluntary action council and key local authority service managers, including for Youth, Early Years, Connexions and Teenage Pregnancy services, Sure Start, the Children's Fund and Neighbourhood Renewal. These last three involved time-limited funding streams highlighting immediate concerns.

Researchers also examined a range of documents and publications, including: local plans on commissioning and young people's services, community organisations' literature on their work, publicity and reporting information and ongoing and proposed contracts, monitoring forms and requirements.

The study was limited to one local authority area, with interviews taking place over a relatively short time span. This had the advantage of providing a snapshot of participants' perceptions at similar times in the contractual cycle, a few months before the 2006–07 financial year ended. However, there was little opportunity to re-interview participants or gather data systematically through other means, such as observing meetings or service activities.

This article concentrates on themes drawn from interview data with members of community organisations, highlighting the experiences of smaller organisations rather than those with regional or national support structures. The study uses qualitative coding methods (Glaser, Reference Glaser1992), and employs perspectives of critical social research (Harvey, Reference Harvey1990) to examine the data and question the effects and social consequences of policies in specific localities (Radnor et al., Reference Radnor, Ball and Vincent1998). It uses comparative analysis (Glaser, 1967) of data gathered from different sources to review detail, and as strategies to improve depth and credibility of findings.

In what follows, I have organised examples thematically, focusing on common threads of experience, despite the diversity of organisations involved. In the scope of one paper it is not possible to do justice to the range and complexity of responses, and other themes which emerged will be discussed elsewhere. Initially I outline some broader findings, and then explore issues surrounding collaborative and competitive work.

Plus ça change? Or are things getting better?

In contrast to experiences in some other areas (Milbourne, Reference Milbourne2005a), most interviewees considered that there was a genuine intention to support community organisations in their area and commitment to improving services in disadvantaged neighbourhoods and for excluded groups of people. They discussed progress, for example, in relation to children and young people's projects established through programmes such as the Children's Fund, Teenage Pregnancy services and extended school services. This perception concurs with findings from Lupton and Power's research (Reference Lupton, Power, Hills and Stewart2005) concerning overall improvements in the poorest local authority areas.

There was, however, a gap between perceived intentions and practice, and many criticisms were concerned with top–down aspects of planning and change processes, poor communications, conduct of meetings and documentation. Short-term funding and constant changes, with consequent effects on organisational stability and staffing, workloads and time, were also heavily criticised. Respondents described redesigning data and reporting systems annually, repeatedly generating new funding bids and lacking information on continued funding until after contracts ended. With these experiences in mind, small organisations were inclined to view new changes as ‘more hindrance, you know, just re-inventing wheels’ (Sharon, Playcentre). Shifts in funding and monitoring demands also diverted community workers' efforts away from work with service users:

In terms of understanding proposed commissioning changes, most small community organisations identified another set of procedures they reluctantly had to engage with to maintain funding rather than any more co-ordinated, area-based strategy. Any suggestion that future contracts might commit to longer-term, three-year funding was welcomed, but there was little apparent confidence in the reality of this.

Less experienced organisations generally made little sense of the role of local strategic partnerships, regarding them as settings where larger, better-resourced organisations were more likely to participate. Where organisations took part in meetings on commissioning plans, several criticised meeting notes for failing to reflect suggestions they had voiced. Others felt excluded from discussions and many saw themselves as outsiders in arrangements constructed at local government level. Several organisations pointed to neighbourhood fora as offering valuable contexts for understanding local needs and provision, and for sharing experiences, yet these appeared little used in consultations on future services. Similarly, few respondents perceived the proposed changes as offering more opportunities for local people to shape future provision.

Collaborative work: who benefits?

A key aim of developing third sector capacity is improving community involvement in local services and reaching hitherto excluded groups of people (Home Office, 2004). For this to succeed relies on developing a means to support the growing burdens experienced by small organisations, and is conceived, for example, in terms of collaboration between different organisations, and between statutory and community providers. Here I consider specific examples of collaborative work, rather than broader partnership frameworks. My examples illustrate benefits from co-constructing projects but also visible costs, including the investment of time and energy needed to establish joint working.

The first example concerns Family Links, a small organisation working alongside members of the Children and Adolescents Mental Health Service (CAMHS) to provide home−school support for vulnerable young people and parents. Family Links' staff regarded the project positively, identifying the CAMHS infrastructure as removing some time-consuming burdens, such as funding bids and monitoring systems, as well as providing invaluable access to school-based information. However, they felt the effort to create the project and resolve complementary roles had been considerable and relied on positive individual attitudes. For CAMHS staff, project work meant that they could operate more flexibly than if they were bound by the usual department regulations. Paul (CAMHS) reflected ‘we could develop more creative approaches and combine our different strengths’.

In this case, the project work freed statutory professionals from restrictive procedures, apparently facilitating a more responsive service. In parallel, workers from community-based organisations, free of the stigmas often associated with mainstream social and mental health services, are more likely to engage families and gain their trust. Drawing in community partners, effectively as change agents, also introduces new approaches to address past failures in mainstream services. However, few children or families affected are involved in the construction of these ‘solutions’ to their problems. Some respondents in our study suggested that parents can be confused by the different agencies involved in joint initiatives and were likely to highlight the quality of support gained from someone interested in their needs as what they valued from a service. Donna, based in a primary school home–school support project, said, ‘it has a lot to do with the individuals that make the project work or not, sympathetic key workers, school staff too’. This was similarly evident at the organisational level.

Community workers in extended learning projects cited initial mistrust from school staff and agencies, such as education welfare services, as barriers. Overcoming these often depended heavily on the efforts and credibility of individual workers involved. Otherwise, mistrust hindered access to key information, increasing and duplicating work. As other research shows (Milbourne, Reference Milbourne2005b; Edwards, Reference Edwards2007), key individuals with good local networks and a willingness to set aside organisational hierarchies were important factors in collaborative success. However, reliance on individual dispositions underlines the fragile foundations on which community-level collaborations are constructed.

In another illustration, a large regional voluntary organisation provided advice, support and on-site training sessions for inexperienced community groups. This was generally well received because the staff were familiar with the local area, willing to negotiate use of their time and tailor advice or training to specified needs. Though positive about this support, a part-time worker for a young Somalians' project stressed its limitations.

As critics have argued of international development programmes (Beall and Clert, Reference Beall and Clert2003), the poor (and poorly resourced organisations that represent them) are asked to carry responsibility for resolving social problems, in Samia's case, growing concerns about youth crime among Somalian boys. Somalian community groups with few workers are faced with acting as first line of defence in tackling such problems where they are most acute, at the neighbourhood level. Their policy tasks are growing: to encompass increasing community engagement as a means to improved social order in their locality. The paucity of resources accessible to such groups further illustrates the fragility on which such policy aspirations are based. As Alcock (Reference Alcock2005) argues, expecting community-level solutions when the source of inequalities underlying problems derives from structures outside the neighbourhood is often inappropriate, especially as the problems are not visibly being tackled elsewhere, and separation between the richest and poorest continues to grow (Dorling et al., Reference Dorling, Rigby, Wheeler, ballas, Thoma, Fahmy, Gordon and Lupton2007).

The final illustration of collaborative work concerns an education provider supporting parent–child education groups and providing accredited training for play workers. The co-ordinator described participants.

The apparent success of this project seemed likely to be short-lived with the end of Sure Start funding, highlighting the potential damage to community relationships posed by disruptive policy changes. As another professional commented:

The struggle of involving hard-to-reach, low-income families in designing self-help projects which increase local employment and provide better facilities for children and parenting support, may be easily lost with no visible means of continuity in the neighbourhood. To expect the successes and experience of collaborative work to be transferred into new, larger projects outside the immediate locality, within relatively short time frames, is unrealistic and disregards individual casualties. From an outsider's perspective, the ‘mainstreaming’ of Sure Start and related projects into new area-based Children's Centres may appear a rational development, but it makes poor sense in communities where people see their efforts devalued and their endeavours barred. Community-based development work is fragile, and the risks for individuals high, in a discontinuous policy environment over which they have little control.

Competitive work

Following national guidelines, the local area proposals outline a competitive commissioning process for services, based on outcome-led area plans: that is, using targets derived from needs identified. Larger organisations were reasonably confident of gaining future contracts, but smaller and less experienced organisations felt they lacked both time and skills to compete in bidding. Expressing anxieties about the future, one worker reflected:

Ali added to this view:

The loss of local trust and fear of outsiders with poor local knowledge who would ultimately generate impoverished provision were repeatedly voiced concerns. These apprehensions were exacerbated by the competitive mechanisms for allocating funding, which placed organisations in competition with each other, and potentially with small enterprises, private and larger providers.

In policy terms, small organisations are encouraged to collaborate on bids, and larger contracts reduce transaction costs for public agencies. However, most small organisations identified the additional arrangements required to agree and manage combined bids and contracts as often more onerous than separate undertakings. For small organisations with limited capacity, joint bids with bigger organisations were potentially more beneficial but also posed threats to loss of autonomy over values and ways of working.

In this area, the local government had a reasonable overall press. However, confidence in statutory agencies was brittle and, faced with new arrangements which set community organisations to compete with each other and potentially to new providers, it rapidly gave way to mistrust and demoralisation. Small and inexperienced groups, heavily dependent on volunteers, felt particularly vulnerable. However, experienced community representatives, some regular attenders at consultative groups, also found their relationships re-defined by funder–contractor power relations in the competitive environment of commissioning. Nevertheless, their familiarity with the rules of engagement (Taylor, Reference Taylor2006) distinguished those able to participate in (and potentially influence) planning groups from the less experienced, creating hierarchies of inclusion, insiders and outsiders among community organisations. The spectre of competition also undermined trust in local partnership working highlighting the complex weave of purposes and interests involved.

Gary's mistrust of the benefits from closer association with bigger agencies raises questions about whose interests partnerships will serve, and intrinsic problems because of the differential power of partnership actors. While competitive funding cultures underlie such work, it is hard to disentangle motivations for participation or to lay better foundations for openness and trust.

Competition for funding also generated misgivings in everyday work:

Competitive funding regimes are heavily underwritten by performance targets, which, as interviewees stressed, were rarely negotiable. Paul points to a kind of cultural conspiracy to paper over cracks in achieving attendance and accreditation targets in youth centres, when failures could offer ways to reflect on the challenges. It also means centres focus on young people ‘who'll make the grade’ (Paul's words) rather than those outside the reach of most services.

Workers discussing the evaluation of Sure Start work, similarly, pointed to ways that negative outcomes were obscured, so that opportunities to learn from mistakes and to work collaboratively on unresolved problems, were lost. This tendency for representatives at all levels of such initiatives to become pressured into reporting only positive outcomes has been noted elsewhere (Milbourne et al., Reference Milbourne, Macrae and Maguire2003). However, such pressure may result in narrowing work, limiting targets to those that can be achieved (or client groups that will achieve them), and curtailing developmental or higher-risk work. If targets are achieved, problems apparently have solutions, can be managed and controlled. In this sense, characteristics of dominant managerial cultures (Clarke et al., Reference Clarke, Gewirtz and McLaughlin2000) pervade community delivery, silencing challenges and failures, and negating alternative approaches. Paradoxically, differences of approach are the very reasons for seeking to involve community organisations in the resolution of entrenched social problems.

Commonality and invisibility: one size fits all?

The new commissioning process attracted two further areas of criticism, focused around planning and the nature of the contracts. Firstly, an outcomes-led plan set out local targets for future children and young people's services framed by the five Every Child Matters (DfES, 2004b) priorities. Local young people and families were identified as collaborators in determining the plans, but most community organisations were sceptical about the extent to which local government representatives had reached or discussed service needs with less accessible groups of people. Few organisations appeared to trust the mechanisms for deciding on future services and providers, or that plans genuinely represented local views. A recurrent criticism was that the planning model risked ignoring existing expertise.

Respondents argued that, alongside evaluative information and demand, there was a need to map existing provision against plans, and to commission new services where gaps and new needs were identified. There was anxiety about service continuity, loss of local experience and the poor value accorded to existing good practice.

The second issue concerns commonality of contracts and performance outcomes for all children and young people's services. Most community organisations recognised the part monitoring information played in accessing future funding but found many performance measures were inappropriate to their work. Some providers recognised that the broad indicators were driven by central government but believed local government officers could negotiate more flexible and locally relevant targets, to reflect the diversity of work.

The transition to local area commissioning and common contracts was identified as problematic in increasing the generic nature of targets. A number of community providers already considered that their contribution to targets was contrived, but perceived that the impact of their work would be progressively less visible on paper, disadvantaging them in future commissioning. For example, performance measures for the work of a young people's mediation group were educational attainment targets, whereas workers identified successful outcomes in young people gaining self-esteem and relinquishing more destructive behaviours (potentially enabling other achievements). This lack of visibility of practice also increased organisations' dependency on the knowledge of key officers, familiar with projects, while those with little officer contact felt vulnerable. However, with significant policy shifts ending specific funding streams, such as Sure Start and Children's Fund projects, and high officer turnover, there was flux in collaborative and monitoring relationships with public agencies and limited stability in officer support.

Competitive funding regimes, generic targets, broad planning criteria and more sophisticated bidding processes all favour bigger, better-resourced organisations, while concealing the advantages that small community organisations offer. They also shape their priorities robbing them of power over the changing nature of their activities. This raises questions about the extent to which competitively allocated contracts, and planning framed by common, nationally driven targets, can accommodate the diverse approaches, and community-oriented, locally designed services, identified as necessary to achieving improved outcomes in deprived areas (ODPM, 2005).