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 … Continue reading
What happens when charities and voluntary groups are asked by Government to punish unemployed people and take away legal entitlements? In April 2014, the “Help to Work” programme was launched by Government. It consists of no help and no work. Instead, it continued previous policies that withhold unemployment benefits, unless those entitled to such benefits … Continue reading
Conditions for private renters – now a bigger group than those renting ‘socially’ from the council or a housing association – have become so bad that a new wave of housing activist groups has begun to form. Since the deregulation of private renting in 1989, when rent control and long-term tenancies were done away with, … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
Two more Inquiry reports are released today. ‘Lenin’s Useful Idiots? Voluntary Action and Public Service Reform in Northern Ireland, from Nick Acheson of the University of Ulster, reviews recent developments in relations between voluntary agencies and the devolved administration. It summarises the main similarities and differences between Northern Ireland and the other jurisdictions in … Continue reading
Today we release three more reports from our Inquiry into the Future of Voluntary Services.
The first – The Rise and Influence of Social enterprise, Social Investment and Public Service Mutuals from Les Huckfield of Glasgow Caledonian University. This elegant review documents how New Labour and Coalition governments, within a framework of neo-liberal thinking, have … Continue reading
In what is going to be a pretty massive release, we have today uploaded the first two of sixteen reports from our Inquiry into the Future of Voluntary Services. The general background to our Inquiry is provided by Dexter Whitfield’s ‘The Ideological Context’, which sketches out how neo-liberal ideas have damaged public services and … Continue reading
We have now produced a full briefing for the work we are undertaking on our Inquiry into the Future of Voluntary Services. You can download this paper here. If you want to know more about the inquiry or let us have evidence please get in touch with Andy Benson – andy@independentaction.net… Continue reading
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 … Continue reading