Charities at risk

Tweet The Tories started the trend towards greater use of charities and volunteers in the provision of services, and Labour have accelerated it. It's a trend which has always left me a little uneasy, however.

It's not that I want to knock the work of the charities concerned, nor to belittle the excellent work done by volunteers. They make a valuable contribution, and they both give and get a great deal of satisfaction out of the work which they do. 'Extra' services have long been a part of the work of charities. Nor is there anything wrong at all with central and local government giving grants to charities to help them fund the valuable work they do.

But what leaves me uneasy is the feeling that, increasingly, 'core' services are effectively being contracted out to charities and volunteers because the government can get the services cheaper that way, largely because of lower staff costs. What are often called 'partnerships' (don't government agencies just love that word?) seem often to be ways by which 'efficiency savings' can be made by simply moving the provision of some services from the public sector to the 'third sector'. The movement is only ever one way of course.

The services provided by charities are more and more subject to service level agreements which have to be met to justify the 'grants' which they are given. They're still called grants, but they look awfully like 'payments for services supplied' to me.

Today's story about the CAB seems to be taking this trend even further, as the organisation has been told it will have to bid for funding in competition with other organisations in future. This looks a lot like 'tendering for work' to me; with the charity competing directly against private companies providing the same services. Having tried to introduce private sector disciplines and practices into the public sector, it almost seems as though they are forcing charities to go the same way as well.

The government spokesperson said "The most important thing is to ensure equity of access to good quality advice services, coherency, cohesion and value for money". Well, yes, indeed. But that brings me back to the main point. If those are the criteria, should such services really be dependent on charities and volunteers in the first place?