A collection of stories and experiences on the impact of commissioning on voluntary action…

• Third Sector and the NHS – The Trojan Horse? Sussex is one area of the country lucky enough to have a feisty local Defend our NHS campaign. Lately the group has been taking a look at the role of voluntary agencies in the struggle to stop the break-up of the Health Service. The result is an impressive paper. Whilst voluntary groups can both oppose ...
• Commissioning & consortia – an advantage or a threat? Rivers Edge Community Project (RECP) defines its overall mission as ‘to promote a vibrant, self-sustaining community in the Rivers Edge estate and surrounding area’ and its core values as: - working ‘with’ members of the community and not ‘for’ them. - developing activities and resources that are locally owned and run’. - helping those involved in the project ...
• What’s happening in the workplace – next 2 Inquiry reports Today we publish the next two reports from our Inquiry into the Future of Voluntary Services. The impact of contracting and commissioning on volunteers and volunteering in Voluntary Services Groups by Colin Rochester charts the rise of the 'workplace model' and the formalisation of volunteer management that "threatens the untamed and often maverick expression of free will that defines ...
• Peterborough Prison and Social Impact Bonds – what’s going on? Recently the Government announced that it was pulling the plug on the Peterborough Prison Social Impact Bond (SIB) pilot, despite an interim evaluation showing "promising results". This scheme - due to have run for seven years instead of the three now planned - has been dragged round the conference circuit now for several years by ministers, civil ...
• GOOD NEWS! – West Sussex localises CVS and Volunteer Centre support Bucking the trend towards mergers, acquisitions and single contracts to corporate predators, positive news is coming in from West Sussex, where fresh agreements between the local authorities and the County’s seven CVSs explicitly recognise the importance of locally accountable provision. Several years ago, the County was a focus of an NCIA study into the effects of ...
• From co-operation to competition and fragmentation The experience of neighbourhood youth projects in Newcastle - In our latest story about commissioning, Michael Bell from the Patchwork Project in Newcastle describes the experience of local groups bidding against the big boy Barnardo's.. Co-operating Several years ago nine neighbourhood-based projects from acrossNewcastlestarted to meet in order to find ways of working better together, to support ...
• Fight privatisation and win? – Yes it can be done!! October 15th marked a decisive moment for anti-privatisation campaigners when the Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust announced that the county’s 8 community hospitals and health services (including 3000 nurses and other health workers would remain in the NHS. This reversed an earlier decision to outsource services by creating a ‘social enterprise’, in what would have been ...
• NCIA Inquiry into the future of Voluntary Services NCIA is collecting evidence about the impact of commissioning on voluntary action, particularly at local level. Post your story below, then we can use it to stop the privatisation of public services and co-option of voluntary action. To start us off, here's Bob Baker's story, Director of the Simon Community, who writes in a personal capacity….. "The ...
• Commissioning has got to stop! In late 2011, a major metropolitan borough council advertised two invitations to tender for their adult social care advocacy and carers support services at the same time, consultation was in parallel and the results announced together within one joint budget. Important aspects were not consulted on, for example, that competitive tendering would be the route ...
• Cuts and Contracts – a date for your diary – 5th October NCIA along with the TUC, Unite, Unison, NAVCA and others are organising a major conference in London on the 5th October. Entitled ‘Outsourcing and Austerity: Civil Society and the Coalition Government’, the conference will aim to examine the impact of cuts in public spending, Coalition Government attempts to abolish rights, entitlements and services, and moves ...
• New NCIA/TUC publication takes the lid off ‘localism’ This week sees the publication of a booklet that we have produced in collaboration with the TUC. ‘Localism: Threat or Opportunity?’ is a series of short essays from 12 contributors expressing a range of critical views about the intentions and likely consequences of the Government’s Localism Act.  Included are articles on: public services privatisation through the right ...
• Value what we do How a CVS in Newcastle is using research to 'speak truth to power' Sally Young is the Chief Executive of Newcastle Council for Voluntary Services (NCVS), a large CVS with 500 members from big charities to small community associations. Newcastle historically is a deprived area with high unemployment. Sally says: “There’s a huge kind of uncertainty ...
• Say what you mean and what you think A contract with the local council has led a welfare rights service away from assessing and meeting community needs A consortium of four different organisations – three registered local charities and one national organisation – successfully bid to run a welfare rights and community development service in a large inner city borough. It is a diverse ...
• Is competition killing us? Event notes available Notes from our May 29th event with London Voluntary Service Council (LVSC) about commisioning, 'is competition killing us?' are available to download here. NCIA has a continuing interest in commissioning and in the policy issues that lie behind it - the future of public services and the voluntary sector's role in this future. We are very interested to hear of ...
• NCIA event: is competition killing us? Tuesday 29 May 2012,  9.30am to 4.30pm, at Resource for London, 356 Holloway Road, London N7 6PA   Free event: register now!   NCIA has joined with LVSC to organise this event to explore the effects commissioning is having on the voluntary and community sector.   Where do you draw the line at taking on a contract? Can you be commissioned and ...
• In Place of Austerity – putting the alternative argument Here’s a good read that elegantly puts together different pieces of the jigsaw – the state of the economy, private sector influences on it, the undermining of public services and the welfare state, and how we might come together to resist the plans that the neo-liberals have for us. ‘In Place of Austerity' is written by ...
• Commissioning is doing us in. True or false? We have been getting a lot of horror stories lately about the developing pace and rampant damage that commissioning strategies (especially local authority-based) are doing to local voluntary agencies. We are especially concerned about the impact of the national corporate predators and the success that they appear to be having in hoovering up local contracts ...
• 5000 fewer managers, 4000 more doctors? Learn to speak like a fully engaged, customer-facing choice moderniser... Health Emergency have an entertaining and insightful guide to the language and spurious concepts used by those currently busying themselves with the dismantling of our welfare state. Have a giggle, get cross, pass it on: http://www.healthemergency.org.uk/pdf/TeachyourselfLansley.pdf
• Surprisingly scathing critique from Barings panel, but no call to arms NCIA was pleased to see a strong attack on the effects of market-led commissioning models, but thinks the panel needs to be less cautious on the change that is needed on two key issues: funding and commissioning mechanisms, and the need for voluntary organisations to combine to fight off the threats to their autonomy. NCIA welcomes the Baring ...
• An essay on the ‘big society’ John Seddon reflects on how a systems thinking method has improved public services but is now under threat from cuts, commissioning and 'big society' as the government fails to move beyond central control and large-scale initiatives. David Cameron described the 'big society' as a ‘culture change’, where people are free and powerful enough to help themselves and ...
• Interviewing the real ‘big society’ Sarah Lamb is a trustee of Adur Voluntary Action. She was one of the people who contributed to qualitative research in 2009 on The local state and voluntary action in West Sussex which showed the damage commissioning does. NCIA caught up with her to find out how things have been going over the last 18 ...
• New NCIA papers on privatisation and ‘big society’ Read our two new papers if you want to get thinking about what privatisation means for charities and community groups and how the 'big society' and localism damage independent action. Big market: how localism and the 'big society' damage independent voluntary action (2011) PDF, 4 pages Voluntary action under threat: what privatisation means for charities and community ...
• Localism in action? Not unless we challenge commissioning and targets Despite talk about a ‘big society’, two new case studies show that small community organisations are still expected to comply with over-complex tendering processes and evaluation systems that fail to value their local knowledge and independence. The case studies show how independent action has been undermined in youth work and how people on the frontline are ...
• Privatising our common wealth: what it means for charities and community groups Read the summary of our new paper on privatisation, including the related topics of cuts, localism and the ‘big society’. This is just the start of setting out our views. Please let us know what you think and help us spark a proper debate about cuts, commissioning, competition and how to protect independent action in ...
• NCIA assembly: Putting the politics back into voluntary action Thursday 27 January 2011, 1.30pm to 5pm Quaker Meeting House, 10 St James Street, Sheffield S1 2EW Cuts, privatising public services, commissioning replacing grants, voluntary agencies being run like businesses, managers who don’t understand the front line work, nonsensical targets... If you’re feeling angry, you’re not alone! At the last NCIA assembly we discussed ways in which voluntary ...
• Delayed compact is definitely useless The latest version of the compact - the bit of paper that reckons to set out a more equal relationship between voluntary organisations and the government - has now been put off indefinitely. We're not too worried as the compact continues to ignore the bulk of small scale voluntary action. Meanwhile the compact industry sucks up ...
• It’s official: commissioning is bad for voluntary action Local authorities and other statutory agencies are damaging relationships with  local voluntary and community sectors and undermining the independence of voluntary action, reveals a new report from the National Coalition for Independent Action (NCIA). The report is based on interviews with 16 voluntary agencies in West Sussex conducted by NCIA working with Adur Voluntary Action, one ...
• Chickens come home to roost The Charity Commission has finally spotted what NCIA predicted at the beginning of the year, and long before - "many charities will go bust because of their reliance on government contracts to deliver public services."   http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-cutbacks-could-wipe-out-25-per-cent-of-charities-1926155.html Hard not to say "we told you so" to those who have tied themselves into  State agendas with little thought about where it would lead. But the ...
• Say No to Commissioning One of the principal ways - perhaps the main way - in which the Government is mounting its assault on the voluntary sector is through the peddling of its latest 'fad' for PROCUREMENT AND COMMISSIONING.
• Fighting back Previous articles in Green Socialist have pointed out that privatisation does not just affect services formerly run by the statutory sector, and also (ironically) that privatisation can sometimes go hand-in-hand with increased state control. Voluntary organisations providing public services are being compelled to adopt the methods and priorities of private businesses through tendering and commissioning ...