Yes, yet again, our latest newsletter is here, our bi-monthly round up of triumphs and disasters, heroic acts and dirty dealing. Dip into it http://ymlp.com/zO9aGd… Continue reading
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 … 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
Today we launch the next two reports from our Inquiry into the Future of Voluntary Services.
The first “Outsourcing and the Voluntary Sector” by Laird Ryan explores the motivations, progress and impact of the Coalition government’s drive to privatise public services and how this has impacted on the voluntary sector in England. In surveying the … Continue reading
The privatisation of our public services and common wealth is taking place with stealth and subterfuge, and at a great pace. Our money is going to multi-nationals such as SERCO, currently under investigation for falsification of data and sub-standard services. But there are ways to expose what is going on and get it into the … 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
The results of research can be important in shaping and re-shaping our understandings and assumptions about our work and its effectiveness. But often academic research uses obscure language and is presented in ways that make practitioners lose the will to live. So we’ve been playing around with ways to make research more accessible and have … Continue reading
Today, 2 June, is the deadline by which Community Work Placements – the flagship policy announcement at last year’s Conservative Party conference – were required by contract to be up and running [2]. But Keep Volunteering Voluntary, which represents the hundreds of voluntary sector organisations who have pledged not to take part in the scheme, … Continue reading
Get the gossip, be outraged by the scandals and thrill to the triumphs… our latest news letter is now out and you can enjoy it here… Continue reading
G4S is the biggest winner of “Help to Work” contracts, the latest workfare programme which started yesterday. G4S is currently under investigation for fraud. As part of this contract G4S will seek placements in voluntary groups, which will be responsible for reporting claimants for benefit sanctions if they fail to comply with the placement.