Abstract
The UK Coalition Government’s promotion of a ‘Big Society’ has rhetorically placed the voluntary sector at the forefront of policy reform. This book examines the changing nature of the voluntary sector under the previous New Labour and Coalition governments. After setting out some historical context of the role of voluntary sector organizations in delivering welfare, the book draws upon a wide range of case studies to discuss the impact of ideological changes, accountability and the drift towards community in order to explore the changing nature of the voluntary sector in welfare delivery. With the wider context and research established in Chapters Two and Three, the book analyses the consequences of policy change for voluntary sector autonomy through a series of case studies on voluntary sector organizations working with children and young people. For this review I will focus on Chapters Four (the changing ideological context) and Six (changing employment and work relationships) as they outline the shifting work practices of the voluntary sector.
Chapter Four explores the prevalence of the market ideology within government thinking. Noting that the private sector and market mechanisms are considered superior forms of welfare improvement, this chapter outlines the different ways in which this ideology has led to change within the voluntary sector. The promotion of competition between potential providers, for example, creates a number of challenges for voluntary sector organizations (administrative burdens, cost implications, staffing problems) which seek to compete for welfare service tenders. In particular, there is a shift in how staff are employed within the organizations and the roles they adopt, for example, through a focus on grant capture skills, increased performance management compliance and the re-engineering of staff arrangements to accommodate cross-organization working. These changes erode the autonomy of voluntary sector organizations by requiring they comply with the demands of contract culture, audits and funding requirements and result in a change in the nature of work as the risks of operation are transferred to the voluntary sector rather than shared with the state.
The introduction of contracts also leads to changing working relationships between different voluntary sector organizations and between the organizations and local government. As local government departments increasingly work through contract managers, local government employees who ‘know’ the voluntary sector and have high levels of understanding and trust with voluntary sector workers disappear, creating mistrust and frustrated communications between the different actors. Between voluntary sector organizations, these changes often discriminate against the smaller organizations, which lack the staff, resources and capacity to bid for large tenders, thus changing the wider landscape of provision. Collaborations are promoted, but an essential critique, which Milbourne presents, is that improvements in welfare provision rarely occur, as resources are diverted to managing contracts and funding issues – not to front line services. For those interested in issues of work and employment, Milbourne provides an interesting overview of changes faced by voluntary sector employees in the nature of their work such as new demands on activity and skills required resulting from increased managerial and accountability practices.
Chapter Six reflects upon how voluntary sector organizations survive or fail in this changing climate, through the concepts of ‘risk’ and ‘resilience’. Milbourne emphasizes that narratives of the success and failure of voluntary sector organizations are associated with individual actors and organizational structure, thereby overlooking wider structural problems in society. Within this narrative, resilience becomes important; that is, those voluntary sector organizations are likely to survive that are able to keep pace with dynamic processes of change and to adapt accordingly through mergers, collaborative bids and capacity growth. This is an interesting chapter because Milbourne explores, from her case studies, organizations which have either adapted to fit government policy or resisted to maintain their identity and operation. Her research demonstrates that while some organizations have complied with policy changes, this does not necessarily guarantee survival, whereas smaller organizations which have fought to maintain their grassroots identity exhibit greater robustness in the changing policy context. This survival may, however, relate to the case example’s focus on young people and anti-social behavior; and thus, be due to wider public concerns in this area of policy. It would have been interesting here if there had been a discussion of how these robust organizations comply with or challenge the government’s wider neo-liberal ideology that has shifted the operational context. This might then indicate whether voluntary sector organizations reflect neo-liberal ideas of community self-help and resilience or represent the independence of the voluntary sector movement and present an alternative view of society.
This book will be of interest to readers for two reasons. First, it explores the role of the voluntary sector in delivering welfare services, touching upon issues of work and employment within welfare provision. Second, there are a number of discussions in the text which relate to changes in the wider mixed economy of welfare and to the roles of the private and voluntary sectors in delivering welfare, so providing a broader context for future research into employment and working conditions in welfare provision.