A veteran voluntary sector worker for a Midlands health charity speaks out
“My role is a strategic one: I raise awareness of the voluntary and community sector’s (VCS’s) work on health issues, and represent the sector on local authority decision-making groups. We also work closely with smaller, grassroots organisations – for example, groups that specialise in counselling, or promote healthy living within what are best described as atomised communities – and keep them informed about developments in government policy. The rewards are huge: we make small but important changes that improve people’s lives in a tangible way, helping people address issues such as diabetes and smoking.
The perception of the VCS has become more positive during my time, but there is still a prevailing view that it’s all about well-meaning people with time on their hands who do this work because their husbands are in well-paid jobs elsewhere. That’s never been the case, though it is true that the VCS has become much more professional and employs a greater number of paid staff. Voluntary organisations are run by people who are dedicated and motivated, and the volunteers are much more than well-meaning amateurs. Volunteers nowadays generally have to be recruited, trained, supervised and treated like members of staff.
With all the changes in health – NHS reforms and the creation of clinical commissioning groups – voluntary organisations have to be more savvy about the way we bid for work. We’re increasingly competing against the private sector, so we need professional staff with expertise. But volunteers are still very much at the heart of many organisations delivering frontline services. In fact, in some cases we’re more dependent on them than ever, because new service delivery contracts are so tight that charities have to replace paid positions with voluntary workers.
The NHS reforms, the Welfare Bill and the trend towards localism present both challenges and opportunities for the voluntary sector. There’s more work to bid for; and it’s clear the voluntary sector will have a greater impact on community health, as we can now bid for contracts which were previously run by councils and the NHS. That sounds good, but bidding for work against private companies requires us to take a new approach. Until now, we’ve been able to secure contracts on quality, and because we have a good understanding with commissioning officers at local authorities. We’re honest. We will say: “We can do this, but we can’t do that”, while private firms may bid for everything and subcontract the parts they can’t do.
VCS organisations are increasingly working together, bidding for contracts as consortia, and at other times bidding against each other. These days, we’ve always got one eye on where the next contract is coming from; but I’m not sure that raw capitalism is the right way for us to go about things. It’s an alien concept for us, and if we go too far down that path we could lose some of our greatest strengths.
I’m still struggling to understand what David Cameron means by the ‘Big Society’, though it clearly focuses on volunteering. The idea in principle has benefits – it could trigger people to help each other in communities – but I’m not convinced it will ever happen in a structured way. There is some funding for groups such as ours to take on volunteers, and that’s good; but the hours that volunteers put in are rarely defined or acknowledged. Maybe the Big Society will enable their efforts to be acknowledged in a more formal way. But there’s still a paternalistic ethos that the Big Society is all about a bunch of people picking up a paintbrush and tarting up the local library, while eating home-made cookies during their tea break.
I’m not looking to be too critical, because there are positives. The role of volunteers is becoming more formalised, which you can argue is a good thing. They get designated roles, sign a code of conduct, and feel more like staff members. It can provide work experience for the unemployed, and a feeling of being valued. The flip side is that a lot of volunteers, especially older people, don’t want that formality and can’t be bothered with the red tape.
I’d like someone from Whitehall to come and see what we do, because the impression we have is that the voluntary sector only gets paid lip service, at best, when it comes to consultation. The main drive at the moment is for public bodies to get more for free, and to push workloads – and responsibility and accountability – onto voluntary groups. The assumption seems to be that we’ll make up the funding and labour shortages, but we can’t do so forever.”