Why citizens should be allowed to provide care not just professionals

It is has been an eventful week, and a milestone in a campaign which I and a number of Parliamentarians, ably led by the dogged Lord McColl, have been trying to get the government to agree to allow legal advocates, essentially volunteers like magistrates, to work alongside children who have escaped from trafficking.

You can read more about the context of the scandal of the lost children we are trying to address which I have posted about at Conservative Home here, and I have enclosed the longer version of the speech I had prepared which you can also find in shortened form on Hansard, during the debate on the amendment in the Freedom’s bill which would have made it possible for third parties and volunteers to build a network of such advocates nationally. In the event we secured a major concession from the government to refer the matter to the Children’s Commissioner to make recommendations on the matter, which led us to call off the division or vote. The report will add impetus to efforts to get the system changed from within, though we will not hesitate to harness legislative means to continue to keep up the pressure on the government if necessary. Lord McColl and others have shown how our Parliamentary system, and the Lords, however creaking some may believe they are, can still help secure progress in tackling injustices suffered by minorities who in this case literally cannot vote (having come into the country as aliens against their will to be slaves or farmed for their benefits sometimes as young as 11 months!).

The wider and most interesting point that has hit me during this campaign is how there must be many areas of the state where non professionals, if properly trained, could provide care and emotional and parental like support as legal advocates, better than what currently exists, if only we could open up our public services to let them in and be recognized for what they do, to provide a sort of “right to care”. Our hospitals, care homes, schools, mental health contexts, fostering environments, in an era of austerity, and often weighed down by short term managerial targets or performance contracts, are not the most conducive to being the most loving environments, even though more has been and could be done to enable public servants to increase their levels of empathy and concern (I think even the best struggle when contact time can be so limited now). Historically, and for many people, family and friends can sometimes fill the gap, and more innovations such as respite hotels near hospitals to free up beds and enable family members using online rotas to care for patients and lower the burden on professionals are needed to facilitate this. But there must be many in our increasingly isolated society, who could benefit from someone else, who is not doing it primarily for payment or by statutory dictat, helping to advocate for them. Why not start opening up the state to let them sensitively and carefully in as well?

My Lords I very much welcome amendment 57A, and I also welcome the announcement by the noble Minister which is a positive step in the right direction.
I want to primarily direct my comments to the scope that the amendment provides for the use of volunteers but before I do so, I must make some general observations.

First, my Lords, it is clear to me as it has been to other noble Lords that the level of care currently provided for rescued trafficked children is not sufficient. The fact that between 2007 and February 2010, of the 942 child victims of trafficking that were rescued, a staggering 301 were lost from local authority care is, as others have noted, a huge national embarrassment. I note that over that period the numbers lost decreased each year but the 18% loss rate in the final year is still completely unacceptable.

Moreover, my Lords, as a compassionate country we should want to do all we can to help these incredibly vulnerable children whilst in local authority care. It would be odd to congratulate ourselves merely on the basis that a child’s experience was that they were not lost. The resources of the state are seriously stretched and sadly in this context there are accounts of children being passed from social worker to social worker, having to start again with a new person, rather than having the opportunity to develop a focused, constant supportive relationship. There are also deeply disturbing accounts of social workers failing to turn up to court to accompany children. My Lords in this context of limited resources it is clear that something different and something creative must be done.

Of course there are provisions in the Children Act 1989 that should benefit trafficked children. The Act makes plain that the local authority is responsible for safeguarding the welfare of children. It also provides roles like the advocate, the independent visitor and the independent reviewing officer that have the potential to benefit trafficked children. However, even when considered collectively, these three roles fall well short of the internationally accepted definition of a Child Trafficking Guardian. Moreover, the fact that all these provisions are in place has not addressed the significant failures in the care of trafficked children that I have just highlighted.

My Lords it is for these reasons that the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McColl – and supported across the whole house – is so important. The legal advocate he proposes crucially does not complicate matters by introducing additional bureaucratic burdens on the child. It simply provides a means of helping all the things that must already be done to be done. It provides additional capacity to help and very crucially provide more support for the child and the reassurance that there is one person who will help them who will remain constant, so they don’t have the emotional trauma of having to keep going back to square one, explaining their painful story all over again. The Legal Advocate will be able to provide general advice and support and crucially be permitted to accompany them in all their interactions with state agencies and to advocate to all those agencies on the child’s behalf. This is based on internationally accepted best practice as set out by UNICEF.

My Lords, one of the most important parts of the McColl amendment is the fact that it does not tie the government’s hand but provides scope for Legal Advocates to be the employees of statutory bodies, of voluntary organisations or volunteers with voluntary organisations. I believe that the opportunity for using the voluntary sector and volunteers is hugely significant.

On the basis of the numbers of children rescued between 2007 and 2010 we are talking roughly of about 300 a year. I know very well from my work in the voluntary sector that it would not be difficult to find 300 volunteers a year to be a volunteer Legal Advocate for one child. Indeed I have been approached by voluntary organisations that are ready to rise to the challenge. This presents us with a win-win situation because not only does it address a very pressing problem but in a way that will help to further build British social capital.

Now my Lords, I am aware that there may be those who feel nervous about the role of volunteers. I can imagine people wanting to protect their turf and an agitated Sir Humphrey Appleby telling Bernard, ‘This must be stopped. If volunteers can take functions that should be handled directly by the state, who knows where it might lead. Bernard this would be the thin end of the wedge!
In response to this I would make two key points.

First, the amendment is keenly aware that anyone serving these deeply vulnerable children must be properly trained and all will be subject to the same robust training framework. This is no place for some well-meaning volunteer who just feels compassion but has not been properly trained.
Second, to those tempted to suggest that volunteers cannot do the job I would simply point them to our magistrates system. Magistrates are volunteers. They are properly trained and have to deal with very sensitive situations. Whilst there may be some who, defensive of their turf, are tempted to justify their fears of volunteers by pointing to training, we must recognise that volunteers can be and are trained, as our magistrates system eloquently demonstrates. Another great example of the very successful use of volunteers to which I would direct noble Lords, is that provided by Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASAs) in the United States. Court Appointed Special Advocates are trained volunteers who have a proven track record of dealing with extremely delicate situations very effectively.

Of course the opportunity to make proper care for the victims of trafficking through volunteer legal advocates is hugely important in the current fiscal environment where money is so tight. This is not to say that amendment 57 would have no cost to the state if the volunteer route was used, but it would be minimal and money very well spent when one has regard for the imperative of providing better and more sensitive care for incredibly vulnerable children, and further reductions in the numbers lost.

My Lords my political hero is Anthony Ashley Cooper the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury who arguably did more than anyone else in this house, in the other place, and beyond, to establish the tradition of compassionate Conservatism in the 19th century, demonstrating concern particularly for vulnerable children in factories, mines and sweeping chimneys. I am sure that if he were here today he would be fronting this amendment which comes in the very best tradition of my party historically and recently and which also crucially resonates with the traditions of other parties, whether your vision of society is big, open, good or otherwise. I very much hope that the whole house will support it today.

Speech on social value: a nudge in the right direction

I had the privilege of speaking in the Lords in a second reading debate on the Public Services (Social Value) Bill, which seeks to oblige commissioners of public services to take into account social value. The idea is to open up commissioning so more social enterprises and charities can get opportunities to provide services to local authorities and other government agencies, as well as socially minded businesses and even mutuals. As you will see from the speech, this is definitely a positive step forward and the news is that it should pass quickly into law, which will give a much needed boost to social organisations, many of which have had a tough time lately. I’m keen that we do more to make commissioning easier for smaller organisations, and highlighted a few ideas for the future to make it even more innovative and accountable. Do share any ideas you might have and let’s explore what else we can do.

Here is the speech I gave:

Lord Wei: I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Newby for sponsoring this Bill, and thank the Government for their generous support for it, which is most welcome. I speak as one with a passionate interest in the content of and context behind this Bill, which I wholeheartedly support, not least because of my prior and ongoing work in fostering scalable social enterprise, in which I declare an interest, as well as more specifically being an adviser to the Community Foundation Network, a movement that seeks to enable giving at the local level, often alongside local and national commissioners.

I welcome the intention behind the Bill to promote engagement with and support for social enterprise, and want to focus my remarks on the suggested amendments to the process of commissioning public services in it to ensure that social value is taken more into account.

Some might question, wrongly in my view, why this Bill is necessary, given that, as has already been mentioned, the law already technically provides the flexibility for the public commissioning of services on a holistic basis. Indeed, many public bodies and commissioners recognise that the value of work tendered out has to be about more than saving money in the short term or satisfying minimum statutory requirements, and must take into account the other forms of value without which society fragments and costs for all become greater.

Such smart commissioners recognise, particularly in light of what we have witnessed dramatically throughout the financial and social crises that have marked recent years, that we need to try to cultivate and live in at least three kinds of economy, each with their own kind of value. First, there is the global economy, based on financial transactions, which encompasses everything from tax and spending to trade and investment, and so on. Secondly, there is the reciprocal economy, or what Avner Offer, paraphrasing Adam Smith, calls the economy of regard—that sense of community, however configured, in which we derive mutual support based on principles of reciprocity. Thirdly, there is the gift economy, driven by who we are, what we believe is right and wrong, and what we feel our call and passion is that compels us to help others with no expectation of reward or even recognition.

If we exist only in one of these economies, we become vulnerable when hard times or sudden changes come along, like a wrecked ship with only one section in its hull. If we cultivate all three, we become resilient, like a ship whose hull has multiple sections, able to draw upon funded support from the state, jobs or savings, on the support of our community, and on the support of friends, partners and fellow believers in our hour of need.

Smart commissioners intuitively try to minimise the damage to each of these economies in the way they tender, while promoting their autonomy, sustainability, and the innovation that comes when such economies or spheres overlap and work together rather than apart. Smart commissioners recognise that value includes but extends beyond that which is purely financial today. However, despite the flexibility already enshrined in law to enable smart commissioning, and despite the best efforts of smart commissioners, there remain too many people, I am afraid, who tender out contracts that conform to a more narrow definition of value—a definition that is, to put it crudely, too often about who can apparently deliver the most output for the least money and/or who has the best financial backing, irrespective of their ethos or approach, or who has the best track record of supplying to the public sector.

This is a definition that too often unfairly favours the supplier most adept at writing loss-leading bids, which may be subsequently renegotiated after they have been awarded over those that provide good honest value; the supplier who often has the best private sector backing over those such as charities or mutuals, which have limited reserves financially, even though they have ample reserves from the community of time, networks and skill; or the supplier who is the incumbent over the new market entrant on the basis that one is easier to manage than the other.

This is a definition that may seem to save money in the short term, and that apparently lowers risk, but that costs us more in the longer term, financially and otherwise, and potentially increases long-term systemic risk, as witnessed in major public sector procurement scandals that have arisen from time to time, when risk aversion or fear creates itself over time risk and moral hazard on a large scale—for example when suppliers become to big to fail, to negotiate better prices with, or just to lose.

In many such cases, the answer is to not use commissioning at all but to co-produce solutions or foster citizen-led services without using any or much money, just its power to convene through, for example, matched grants; or to embark on joint ventures where other partners can share the risk of managing new, small, and local suppliers—John Lewis partnership style. However, when commissioning remains the best way forward, this Bill will provide a much welcome nudge to get commissioners to consult properly and to consider the social benefits or otherwise of services that they are about to procure, not generally then to ignore them, which would be unwise, or even automatically to favour the non-monetary over the monetary forms of value, which is equally unwise, given our urgent need to reduce the national deficit, but to try to seek out where possible the solution that is best value over the short and long term financially, and that also can bring benefits of a non-financial nature—the win win rather than the either/or.

There are many areas of commissioning in which this opportunity for consideration would be of benefit. Central government procurement is a key area in health, work and pensions, and transport, to name but a few, where reductionism is rife and long-term value is not always taken into account. In an era of local authority spending restraint and de-ring-fencing, this Bill and its focus on the smart commissioner has heightened importance. Had it been in place earlier, perhaps we would have seen fewer or at least smarter reductions than those that have occurred in some local authorities, which have disproportionately targeted charities and social enterprises, as well as local sustainable businesses, and indeed much loved and valued local public services.

As an advocate of the big society, I have welcomed this Bill from the moment I first set eyes on it, and I am glad to see that it enjoys healthy cross-party support in both Houses. The direction of travel that the Bill exemplifies represents another example of the kind of shift that we need to see, putting more control into the hands of the community and those who are community minded and not just of vested interests, who have monopolised power for too long. It represents a crucial first step in making commissioning more citizen-orientated and less risk-minimisation orientated. I look forward to seeing other concrete future measures beyond this one, such as the power for citizens to recall suppliers in extreme cases, more commissioning that encourages collaborative work between suppliers and not just competition, and measures to make more joint commissioning the norm rather than the exception not just across the public sector but alongside the private and voluntary sectors. But for now, I can only recommend that we pass this Bill speedily.

Sometimes Conservatives are perceived unfairly not to care much about society, given our convictions about the importance of sound finances and their impact, good or otherwise, on future generations and our sustainability. But my honourable friend in the other place, Chris White, has shown how on the contrary Conservatives are actually on the whole socially responsible, caring, and innovative in thinking about how we use the scarce resources that we now have to maximise social value for the benefit of us all. For that, Chris deserves our thanks.

What is the government’s approach to social policy?

With the only focus it seems these days and over the last 24 hours especially to observers of government being economic matters and deficit reduction (or more accurately but less eloquently deficit growth reduction since we are not actually yet on course to reduce our national debt just slow the rate at which it is increasing), it might seem that the government has no non-fiscally driven framework for social policy development.

But this is not true based on my own experience. I was asked recently “What is the coalition government’s social policy?”, by which it was meant its approach to social policy-making rather than every government’s mantra of better schools, policing and healthcare etc. Reflecting on my time in government and on how the coalition came together, this was the answer that I gave.

Government does not have one single social policy approach, but three, which are derived from the the fact that it is a coalition. Social justice, social mobility, and social responsibility.

On the one hand, you have a focus on social justice, championed in particular by Iain Duncan Smith, which is about releasing those trapped in different cycles of poverty from worklessness, to addiction, offending and so on. It incorporates ideas around payment by results, social return on investment, and prime contracting (since it is focussed primarily on the impact not size of suppliers). Such an approach should be welcomed for what it is trying to do, moving away from the previous governments obsession with money as the proxy for poverty, even when that same money itself sometimes kept people trapped in it.

The second focus is on social mobility. Assuming through better interventions, work, and support one is now coming out of one or more poverty traps, how can one progress and aspire to a better life, particularly if you come from an excluded background or group. This approach is championed in particular by Nick Clegg, though it is not right to say that it is only driven through the Lib Dems in government. One might argue that Michael Gove’s approach in DFE is very much focussed on how to ensure children progress whatever their background (to be contrasted with some left wing beliefs that low income kids can never succeed). Here the aim is to help you get up the ladder whatever your background, belief, or lifestyle.

The third focus is social responsibility, which is the heart of the Big Society, and championed personally by the Prime Minister. The focus here is on encouraging everyone to play their part, whether as an individual through social action, a community through community empowerment, or as civic entrepreneurs through involvement in the running or shaping of public services. It is important that neither caricature is assumed here about the relationship between your wealth or lack of it, and how responsible you can be: I have met over the years both low income people who take huge amounts of responsibility for what goes on around them, and equally wealthy people who do not, but broadly speaking whilst social justice targets those most in need, and social mobility those in the middle, the social responsibility agenda speaks first to those who have means to help those who do not and ultimately beyond that to all of us where we can play a role large or small.

Which leaves the final question: what is the social policy of the opposition. My reading is that much left leaning policy remains either decidedly 20th century, focussing on poverty and society mainly in relation to income, rather than in its different felt forms in different contexts; or worse because it lacks a layered approach it confuses social responsibility and social justice and social mobility, for example accusing the government of undermining the Big Society because people are poorer due to cuts, or due to university tuition fees – all of which demonstrates a lack of understanding about how social responsibility can work. It seems in the absence yet of a proper nuanced social policy, the left is currently adopting one of social protest, hence its sympathy for industrial action and street based demonstration. Better it seems when in opposition to oppose, rather than develop and articulate social policies that make sense for the austere world we now unfortunately inhabit.

Of course getting elected still mainly comes down to whether people feel their schools, hospitals, police have improved; the economy; and whether you a trust a given party’s leader. But that is another question altogether…

The Garden Centre as a Community Hub

As I go round the country these days I am often on the lookout for unusual places where community thrives, away from traditional locations we might normally associate with the idea of community. Many of these are sport, arts, or environment related, perhaps because people want to interact in less formal places based more on their interests or leisure – a challenge potentially to those running government and civil society-led buildings given the debate on the future of community assets and their funding at the moment. The future may increasingly about hubs where people already go, which have a dominant emphasis or theme, but which are also multiple-use, clustering many different public, private, and voluntary activities so that the whole is self-sustaining.

One example I recently visited of an unexpected hub for community was a garden centre. Scotsdale Garden Centre in Cambridge is what the garden or horticultural industry calls a “destination centre”. Indeed despite going in the middle of the day it was packed – it seems in the recession and with an aging population more and more people are gardening and growing food, and keeping pets! As well as the expected range of plants and sundries on offer, the store was abuzz with children strolling through the pet and fish displays, a mini-indoor amusement park and several grottos were being built for Christmas, and the restaurant close to full with families (especially grandparents with their grandchildren) enjoying the half-term break. Check out their website for full details.

The main purpose of the visit was to witness the garden industry’s surprisingly strong role within the local community. I was inspired by the Cambridge Cancer Care Help Centre that Scotsdales have built on-site to provide a facility for mutual support and understanding for those suffering or otherwise affected by cancer in the community. The finance was raised by the local community, and the centre is run by volunteers with one professional centre manager. There is an amazing sense of peace when you step into building, and despite being told it was a “quiet” day, there were plenty of people around enjoying a cup of coffee after a presentation on the power of acupuncture!

And Scotsdales is just one of hundreds of garden centres around the UK that play a strong and important community role, according to the Horticultural Trades Association (HTA). Many of them work closely with school gardening clubs, teaching kids a sense of sustainability through how to grow their own food and plants. They raise money for local and national charities. They resource the planting of allotments on and near housing estates. They provide therapeutic facilities for people with learning disabilities and support local hospices. They run social and community events. They are increasingly providing space for local charities, social enterprises, and businesses on their land. And in some cases, they have even become the local post office. I encourage you to visit your local garden centre – like me, I suspect you’ll be surprised how much is going on.

Raising the Village: Speech to heads of local authority youth services

I have just got back from giving a speech alongside a very positive Tim Loughton MP to heads of local authority youth services at their annual gathering organized by CHYPS the Confederation of Heads of Young People’s Services. In it I stressed the need to recover the sense of the village as an actor in helping young people succeed and the role that Community Foundations can play in helping those in and outside of government working with and alongside young people. The full text of the speech is below.

I want to thank you for the chance to come and be with you briefly today and pay tribute to CHYPS and the work of those involved in youth services. So often others can take the limelight, whether the young themselves or politicians, but you deserve credit for often the years of hard slog that sadly frequently goes unrecognized. Hearing about the way you are adapting to changing circumstances and innovating today to allow you still to deliver your mission has also been tremendously inspiring.

All over the world it seems we are in the grip of a crisis for young people – Whether you look at youth unemployment here in Europe or even in booming China, whether in analyzing the riots or comparing the lives of the baby boomer generation and those of the millennials, struggling sometimes to get housing or on the housing ladder and with fewer entitlements, higher costs and less prospective pensions. For our most marginalized young people, living in social housing estates up and down the country, the challenges have been long-standing – NEET levels have been stubbornly high for over a decade despite so much effort to address them over the years. In an era of even more limited resources, what on earth, many will ask, can we possibly do to tackle these chronic challenges?

I do not pretend to have any silver bullet answers, but I would like to focus on one approach which may help us look at the challenges we face differently, and perhaps with a little more hope. I am sure many of the things I will explore today you are already doing already or have witnessed in your professional careers, so I no doubt have more to learn from your experiences. And the approach begins with a provocative question: we perhaps all know the old adage, “It takes a village to raise a child”, could it be that it also takes a village to deliver effective youth services? I ask this because over the years partly because the challenges relating to youth have been so acute in this country, youth services seem often to have become a highly specialized area, subject to the same silos that persist across Whitehall and in local authorities, which was perhaps fine when the money flowed abundantly but perhaps is more of an issue in an era in which the emphasis where limited money remains is now a bit more on early intervention, education, and employment – areas which can be equally siloed but which can dominate policy because they belong to bigger departments (health, education, work). Everyone it seems, is now doing youth work as it were, or work with youth, and it may be that many of the historic workers will and are going to migrate into these adjacent sectors and departments for that very reason. Which brings us back to what is left for leaders of youth services? Can I suggest, again provocatively, that one opportunity is to almost do the opposite, both of what has been done in the recent past, and also from what those involved in health, education, and work may be tempted to continue to do: raise up the village that raises the child, and not just the child. Or to put it in a more pithy way, and without wanting in any way to make a pun on youth culture as a whole: mix it up. Let us take a mixing approach in three ways.

Firstly, mixing up with those other sectors in and outside government, starting with departments in local authorities as well as outside them. It can be hard to do this, so one way may be first to mix up and collaborate with local businesses and voluntary organisations who may in turn create connections within local government and with central government. Community Foundations here have the potential to be a powerful facilitator, and here I declare an interest as an advisor to their national network. With fifty eight across the country, many of these work closely with business, donors and delivery charities and groups, and government. Over half of all foundations have funds targeted at helping young people.

Community Foundation for Merseyside for example have partnered with Merseyside Police, Liverpool Echo and the Tutu Foundation UK to tackle anti-social behaviour among young people by creating the Merseyside Young Transformers Programme (MYT). MYT aims to provide grants to local groups and community leaders to provide diversionary and transformational activities for young people, especially those on the verge of crime, to create a safer, stronger Merseyside. The Community Foundation approached businesses, individuals, local authorities and MPS for their support. The Foundation’s work on MYT led to them contributing towards Home Office’s Tackling Gangs Action Programme and Tackling Knives Action Programme and also the Channel 4 Street Weapons Commission.

Oxfordshire Community Foundation have recently established a community bond for young people in the area, drawing in donors and businesses, and working with local delivery organisations, with a view to channelling money from across sectors from social investors into helping local youth.

The Outlook Fund aims to improve the lives of Cambridgeshire children that face difficulty and disadvantage, with a focus on the more than 400 Looked After Children. Outlook Fund grants will be made to charitable projects that offer extra activities and opportunities that can help disadvantaged children widen their experience, gain self confidence, and succeed at school.

The Outlook Fund has adopted a long term approach to fund raising. All money donated into the fund will be held as an endowed sum and on an annual basis a percentage of the fund (currently 5%) will be used to make grants to local groups that are working to improve the quality of the lives of Cambridgeshire children that face difficulty and disadvantage.

These are just a small selection of many more examples across the UK of community foundations doing their bit. Using web platforms such as localgiving.com, community foundations can also help raise funds from the public who increasingly want to support very local community-led projects even if overall giving to larger and more traditional causes may be slightly declining. The power of harnessing such third parties is about more than just money though, and is increasingly extending towards helping front line charities and organisations, including those that specialize in working with young people, to transition to more mixed funding models away from government grants or contracts alone.

One of the most useful things those of us involved in government can do at this difficult time is to help put youth organisations together with business angels perhaps from networks such as community foundations who can advise them as trustees or pro bono advisors on their strategies for survival and mixed income moving forwards. There are no shortage of opportunities for youth organisations that are ready to exploit them who have had the right strategic input and leadership who by pursuing them may allow you to achieve your policy goals: getting involved in youth intervention impact bonds, mutualisation, being part of consortia targeting vulnerable families with troubled youth in them, participating in community budgets, helping to shape the youth employment strategies of LEPs, partnering with welfare to work providers (including those working with offenders), harnessing initiatives such as somewhereto to provide multi-use spaces for young people to carry out their activities such as in commercial or meanwhile places even as traditional dedicated youth facilities are phased out. The role of businesses here should not be underestimated and is well documented and the appetite out there to help is huge to provide mentors, to help coordinate resources and advice such as through the Big Connect and Business Connectors Programme, and even to provide facilities. If you drew a timeline of a young vulnerable person’s life from before birth to their first job, you could probably find a business in the country interested in helping them at every stage. I recently visited one of the largest gardening centres in the country, Scotsdales in Cambridge, and saw a centre they had built from their profits and local donations for cancer suffers, which was on their land for a peppercorn rent and run mainly by volunteers with one professional coordinator. It was inspirational, and helped them get great goodwill as well as more visitors to their garden centre. But it made me wonder why you could not have similar facilities for youth and young people also backed by businesses on their land, which would also have the effect that positive role models for young people would also be around.

A second way to mix up the approach to youth services is to foster mixing between young people from different backgrounds – particularly socioeconomic backgrounds. I am so proud of having had a hand in developing the national citizen service for young people programme, which contrary perhaps to lines you may hear from government in my view is less about youth per se and more about social mixing. I will never forget the story of the two alumni who spoke about how their perceptions of hoodies and private school kids had been transformed and greater trust built from having been part of the same team for three months despite being from diametrically opposed social backgrounds. This is why there is potential for other future forms of national service for others going through big transitions in their lives, maybe not always ones led by government, in the transition from university to work, from work to unemployment and back, and from work to retirement – each transition creating an opportunity to mix people up and fill the void that sadly has opened up us our housing has become more segregated, or institutions from church to cricket less able to help connect across class lines, and as our society has become more stratified and less socially mobile. Whilst NCS is therefore no replacement for a proper youth strategy, it does not have to have a monopoly over the mixing of young people with each other and I wonder what other opportunities there might be to create links between the young people who would normally be clients of youth services and other young people who can both learn from them and be a support and positive peer group to them, opening up their social capital to help disaffected youth access job opportunities, learning experiences, and to just widen their horizons.

The third and final area for mixing, is between generations, between old and young. I will never forget a programme I watched last year, the Estate We Are in, in which on one estate it was clear that the older inhabitants mistrusted the hoodies on the streets because they did not know them, and did not realize they had nowhere to go, despite the young teenagers being fairly balanced people. I am sure you have experienced this before. Young people often tell me they resent how they are perceived by older people. Perhaps there is more we can do to change this by bringing both sides together perhaps around common activities. Such as when on NCS kids came up with the idea of visiting the elderly in retirement homes and befriending them. Or through schemes such as the Good Gym where young volunteers exercising in the community are coached by lonely elderly people who they drop by to see on their jogging trails. Activities such as time banking and skill sharing can also be a great way for the young and old to mix, swapping knowledge and skills. A social enterprise recently launched in Shoreditch called the Amazings seeks to get retired members of the community to share an amazing skill that others can come and pay to use or benefit from. All this can seem I am sure a million miles away from the day to day work of overseeing troubled youth, but I fear as long as we continue to deal with our elderly and our youth in completely parallel worlds we will suffer deepening mistrust and societal breakdown and youth services themselves will find limited support from an aging electorate, and prison services more.

These ideas around greater mixing are in themselves not new. In many ways the focus on raising the village harks back to age old principles around community, apprenticeship, and respect for old and young. The question is how this might affect our roles, and yours specifically as heads of local authority youth services. Let me suggest three ways in which a focus on mixing might affect the day job as leaders, consultants, and commissioners of youth policy locally.

Firstly, it might affect how we share information (in a sanitized form) and broker between different groups to draw in resources and initiatives to develop more mixed organisations and work roles. We have heard a lot about data transparency from central government but how many local business and other partner organisations regularly get data on where youth hotspots might be, and what the issues you face are which you could benefit from help in tackling. It takes courage perhaps in government to admit one needs that help and may be that one cannot do everything, but it can be worth it. How many local youth services could benefit from being put in touch with a community foundation, or business connector, or business mentors to help them work out their next step strategically in this new more austere world? And will we maybe see a return of the youth worker who is also a community worker and community organizer, able to be sustained from multiple funding streams and plugged in sufficiently to facilitate mixing across government and other sectors, across socioeconomic barriers, and generations?

Another fertile area is in consultation about developing policy and strategy, which may lead to local commissioning frameworks. I prefer to call this co-creation, which if done well can lead on to co-production. Because as we have learnt from experiments in participatory budgeting a good cross community consultation can sometimes have an even more impactful effect on supporting young people than the eventual commissioning process and delivery itself. If multiple departments locally, old and young, rich residents and poor ones, business and charities can work together to address issues relating to young people – hearing each others grievances and being invited to come up with the solutions together – we at least build understanding and participatory budgeting shows that people can end up being satisfied even when their ideas were not adopted and complain less at implementation stage because they felt part of a process and heard the reasons why not – often from other citizens. Too often we invite only the youth to certain consultations – maybe we should invite their village too.

And finally commissioning itself. Perhaps we need to find ways to commission less on hard youth outcomes, and more on outcomes relating to innovative ways of mixing youth, or harnessing a mix of resources to help youth, and on mixing young and old. I know from my brief time in government that commissioning can actually separate those who do the commissioning from those who are bidding – rightly for legal reasons. But I fear that such a separation can often lead to poor commissioning. Commissioners in my view should ideally have frequent exposure to the context in which they are commissioning. One way might be to colocate – even a day a week as has been trialled in healthcare by the likes of the Young Foundation – with non-government organisations who have complementary resources but who are unlikely to bid for contracts directly – such as local foundations or businesses: this stimulates contextual understanding on both sides. Jointly developed commissioning frameworks with such organisations probably stand a better chance of being better designed, and there is the added potential of matched resources too. One innovative way of changing the commissioning model comes from the places like Seattle led by the likes of Jim Diers and Cormac Russell in the UK, in which local government, businesses, and foundations created a local match pot for community groups – in this context ones perhaps wanting to work with youth – in which local people could unlock grants or funding as long as they matched as well either with money or pledged time (ten dollars equalling an hour). Bureaucracy was reduced because forms were pre-filled to help make it easier for residents to participate. Not only did this multiply the money available, but also gave the community real ownership because of their matched commitment – though it worked best when there were also local community organizers involved.

To sum up, it takes a village to raise a child. Maybe the future of youth services is now in raising villages that raise children. Perhaps only by having this kind of focus will we be able to truly address the many challenges we face alongside our young people in the coming decade of austerity without the kind of violence and instability now being witnessed around the world and this last summer. You are truly at the frontline of holding our society together and I again am genuinely grateful for the role you play and wish you all the best in the challenging but also noble task that lies ahead. But never forget, no matter how tough it gets, there are many villages out there who want to help you succeed. If you let them support you, you surely will.

After Hackgate – towards a more citizen-led media

From out of the wreckage caused by Hackgate, which has rocked Westminster, Fleet Street, and Scotland Yard alike, it is clear that a long-overdue programme of media reform must arise. What is unknown at this point, at the start of a process that will undoubtedly drag on for years, is how the relationship between citizens, the media, and public figures will change.

Because it has invariably been both too cosy, and too fear-driven, and above all too centralised. I personally experienced this during my time in government, my internship as I now call it, in developing and seeking to launch policies relating to the Big Society. The first time I came across it was when it became apparent that part of the reason that some journalists resisted the idea of Big Society was that it actually meant focussing less on what was going on in Whitehall or Parliament, where it is easier to pick up or blag your way to a story, and more on what is going on in real communities – breaking out of the bubble. The second was when a left wing journalist presented me with two potential stories she would run on me and essentially threatened me with running the worst of the two (for the record, relating to unfounded rumors about my ability to do my job), unless I gave her information which was eventually spun into the story that broke about my work life balance. That fear which all politicians feel at the hands of journalists where you have no recourse or way to correct the first story, led to much pain and difficulty for me and my young family, despite years of charitable service. The third was when I realized that the very business model of modem media itself now makes it almost impossible for new and innovative policy to be understood and piloted well, because resources are too constrained for journalists to get out into the country to find out what is going on and what is working. This is what I have previously called news by press release, where the same story is regurgitated from one news desk to another with lots of opinion and spin heaped upon it, not always sadly backed up by many facts. It too often stops the right ideas being turned into reality and breeds instead sadly cynicism and inertia.

So what now, now that we have arrived at the point when our politicians, media and increasingly even our judicial and policing system have suffered such a loss of trust? Well, we are likely to see increased regulation. I defer to Lord Mandelson on this who has already written articulately on how it needs tightening up. How can we have different regimes for television and broadcast media (which is incidentally more trusted than other forms) from print media which is essentially self/non/un-regulated? But as Mandelson also hints at, there is a role for technology, whether in more models such as iCorrect where people can correct mistaken articles written about them, to a place where media interviewees – whether celebrities and public figures or ordinary citizens – can upload recordings of interviews they have given so the public can compare how accurate articles are that were based on what has been recorded, to a site where individual journalists can be rated (who has the domain for ratemyjournalist.com?) based on how accurate, entertaining, and balanced their articles are (one may need to rate raters as well to avoid abuse). Beyond this there is a need for a different business model, one in which citizens actively help to generate news content, in partnership with professionals, and co-edit that content so the best filters up, and get rewarded financially or reputationally for their stories or receive donations or tips to encourage them to continue their citizen journalist careers. Twitter and blogging in a way is therefore just the start. Models such as blottr, with the right backing from us all, may represent a more sustainable, more humane, and dare I say it more Big Society way of doing media in the future.

UPDATE: of course politicians can be just as susceptible to spinning as well; when I left Labour politicians and their civil society representatives such as Peter Kyle claimed I worked less than a year in government, which is clearly not from the case from my original appointment and resignation letters and the PM’s acceptance letter of my resignation – which I am now putting into the public domain – showing I worked from the 18 May 2010 until the 1st of June 2011 at which point I switched to advising the Community Foundation Network

From advising Government to advising communities

Today the following statement was issued on the Cabinet Office website, which I’ve copied in here:

‘Lord Wei has announced he will stand down as the Government’s Adviser on Big Society to take up a new role with the Community Foundation Network driving practical development of Big Society ideas in communities.

‘Lord Wei has played a crucial role in developing the cross government programme of reform that is devolving power to citizens and communities and supporting them to make a difference. He remains a committed advocate of the Big Society and will continue to champion the cause of social action in the House of Lords.’

The Prime Minister added:

“Nat has worked incredibly hard over two years to help develop policies that support the Big Society. He has played an important role in delivering key initiatives like Community Organisers, National Citizen Service, and the Big Society Bank. I wish him every success in his new role with the Community Foundation Network.”

Lord Wei said:

“I look forward to taking on this new role where I will be getting out into communities and advising investors, organisations and community leaders in helping them to transfer power and resources from the centre to where it is really needed.”

“I will always be proud to have played a modest role in helping lay the foundations here on which the Big Society will be built in years to come. I want to thank everyone, but particularly the Prime Minister, for giving me this opportunity and for pursuing this vision with courage and determination. I look forward to helping in my own small way outside Government – because it is out there, in local communities, that the heavy lifting must now be done.”

It has been truly an honour to serve in Government, as well as before that for a number of years in opposition. But I am confident now that the policies that are now in place will serve as a great foundation for the Big Society in years to come. It has become clear to me in the last few months that there is much work to do outside of government to advise people, communities, and what I call civic entrepreneurs to help build the Big Society locally and make it easier for everyone to get involved.

I am really pleased to be working with the Community Foundation Network moving forwards, a fantastic movement, to develop some ideas in this regard (see below for some blurb on what they do). I’m also going to be active still in supporting the development of citizen-led giving and investing, and playing a part in helping the Chinese community here and in strengthening positive social, economic, and cultural ties between China and the UK. As ever I will continue to blog about Shoreditch, social reform, and the Big Society, and I will be communicating more about my plans here in the months to come. Thank you to everybody who has helped me and supported me up until now and I look forward to continuing to work with you to make our society stronger and bigger!

About the Community Foundation Network

Community Foundation Network represents the community foundation movement in the UK. Its aim is to help philanthropists create lasting value from their local giving through its network of 58 community foundations.

Community foundations are charities located across the UK dedicated to growing philanthropy, strengthening local communities, creating opportunities and tackling issues of disadvantage and exclusion. Community foundations manage funds donated by individuals and organisations, building endowments and acting as the vital link between donors and local needs.

97% of the population live in the area of benefit of a community foundation and CFN manages funds on behalf of the Office of Civil Society, Big Lottery Fund and Comic Relief as well as private philanthropists.

Last year community foundations invested £70m in 26,000 community based charities making the network the largest UK-wide independent funder of community based charitable activity.

For more information about the Community Foundation Network and my future role please contact: Stephen Hammersley or Jane Rawnsley on 020 7713 9326

www.communityfoundations.org.uk

For more information about Big Society and my former role, including all related press enquiries, please contact the Cabinet Office at 70 Whitehall.

Communities in the Big Society and the rise of the Urban Parish

One of the biggest debates in the coming years regarding the Big Society will be around what kinds of communities will develop and hopefully be strengthened within it, alongside the micro-community of the (extended) family. Much of the discussion centres on whether it will emphasise communities of interest (as expressed in “Apps” such as Meetup and in new and ancient tribes), or communities of place (as expressed in the recently launched civic “app”, Streetlife). But there is in my view a third kind of community – that of time-based, or temporal communities. These are communities that come together either intentionally or serendipitously, often as a one-off and to make a formal decision or declaration or take action at a moment in time. This might be either in a referendum, or general or local election, democratically, and will often involve a transfer or delegation of power. And there are countless “apps” for these as well, to poll and collect citizens opinions on various topics, as well as to mobilise people around events and activities at set times.

There are three observations to make here. First, I think the debate on which is more important is rather stale: we need all types, and people should have the chance to be part of as many communities away from our current centres of power as possible, both online and offline (indeed many communities are themselves hybrids of place, time, and interest – including those cited above). Second, it would seem that communities of interest have always been and are increasingly popular, and that time-based communities have declined, with communities of place in the middle and in some places weakening (fewer people know their neighbours names now than in decades past). Third, it seems time-based communities used to be stronger precisely because they were built on top of communities of interest and place: political parties, for example, have declined in my view because your local party was also a social institution providing you support and a network, in a defined place where people knew each other. When you came together to vote, your views had already been shaped through other communities of which you were a part, and as a result the “floating” voter was less pivotal.
 
In this context, it is fascinating to observe the race across London to create “community councils” or urban parishes, which have been possible for a number of years, but only now begun to get some real traction. Where I live, London Fields residents are busy discussing the possibility of setting up a local community council. Spearheaded by London Assembly member and local resident Andrew Boff, the group is determined to give residents “more influence over the things that matter”.
 
Outside of London, community councils (also known as neighbourhood, town, parish and village councils) are nothing new. Currently there are around 9,000 representing over 16 million people across England. But since the abolition of these councils in London in 1963, they have been absent in the capital. The Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act of 2007 ended that anomaly, allowing community governance to be established once again in London. Other groups around the city are sensing the potential that an old law coupled with new powers might bring. The process is relatively simple – raise a petition which gains the support of 10 per cent of the local electorate and then seek approval from the London borough council (who have only a few grounds to reject it).
 
Queen’s Park, in Paddington, is currently leading the race to become the first community to establish a council in London. Led by the Paddington Development Trust, the campaign has already reached its target for 10 per cent of the electorate’s signatures, but London Fields is close behind. There is also a campaign in the starting blocks for a parish council in Wapping, Tower Hamlets, which is fronted by local activist Geoff Juden. The motivation behind this one is that “authority for the designated area would be in the hands of the local parish council, therefore accountability would be brought to the local people.”
 
Potentially one of the most important tools the community council would own is a lever over the development of an area. Neighbourhood planning, in an area like London Fields where residents have previously felt powerless to fight against overbearing developers taking over properties, could be done in conjunction with a community council. This might then release funding to resource urban planners who write up residents’ views, as well as ensuring that the recommendations are put forward to the local authority with proper expertise. The community as whole could come together and determine the nature of the development that they want to see in the future, have real say over social housing issues, or choose to bring back a street market such as in Chatsworth Road in Homerton, Hackney. The ‘right to buy’ would also give the community council first refusal over an asset that was deemed to be of local value if it came onto the market. All of these and many more new powers are going to be there for the taking, if people can find ways of connecting and working through the issues.
 
Of course, in real life, community issues can be sticky and challenges and arise constantly. You’ve only got to attend a local meeting like the one where the London Fields Community Council was discussed to see how violently people can disagree. Some are instantly keen, others worry about the creation of simply another level of bureaucracy. Some people voice their concerns about perpetual nymbyism, others simply don’t see the point. And where will the geographic lines of the community be drawn? In rural areas this might be extremely straightforward – in a dense urban area like Shoreditch boundaries seems almost arbitrary. And as always, financing can be a contentious issue.
 
There are three main ways a community council could raise funds. First, the local council will have the opportunity to levy what’s called a ‘precept’ on top of residents’ council tax, which typically would be around £20 to £30 a year. Some residents in London Fields saw this as a small price to pay when compared with the commensurately large increase in local power, but admittedly, others saw the increase as tough to bear. The second way is for councils to get a share of the New Homes Bonus and Community Infrastructure Levy on future developments in the area. And the third is for councils to generate their own income through running community services or leasing buildings. There’s even a community council being set up in Tower Hamlets (called a ‘Caring Council’) who plan to finance by running their own business. Whichever way it’s done, the important point is that this money is to be invested back into the local community, and through the new legislation being brought, decisions will be made closer to home and every buck will have a bigger bang.
 
I think the success of these urban parishes, both in being established as well as in their operation, will depend most of all in how they manage to knit together and build upon existing and new communities of interest and place, as well as time – how they manage to attract and connect with people who are not just obsessed with local politics, but provide channels for communication between those engaged locally for example in sport or the environment on allotments, and individual housing estates and residential streets who want to do more than the local bureaucracy will currently allow them. If they do not, then they will just become another layer of Big Government. If they do, and I wish them every success in finding the kind of leaders needed who can help them achieve this, then they will become a really powerful but accountable enabler of the Big Society in years to come.

What do “Together” and “Collaborative Consumption” have in common?

Recently two books have been published that will have a significant impact on the next phase of the Big Society. They both point to enormous changes and trends taking place right now in the UK and around the world, despite coming from quite different perspectives, and offer in my view a sneak peak of what we are about to witness in the coming years.

Together: How Small Groups Achieve Big Things, is the result of three years of painstaking study by Henry Hemming, during which he sought through surveys, research and observation, to understand the nature of association and civil society in Britain today. He makes detailed and  entertaining commentaries on the at times eccentric, often historical, and now fast growing British love for the club, the Women’s Institute, as well as other more informal gatherings using technology. He compellingly draws out a few insights: that Big Society has always been a feature of our country’s landscape, that recently technology has led already in the past five years to a huge growth in associations (mainly through the power of group email that makes organising them easier), that most growth recently has tended to be in informal association in contrast to traditional ones (more sports and arts, rather than churches and Rotary clubs), and that having somewhere to meet up or gather is key and that the costs of doing so are mounting (take for example the recent business rate charges imposed by Camden council on the People’s Supermarket). He critiques Robert Putnam’s favouring of bridging versus bonding capital, arguing that bonded groups with rules that can sometimes exclude people, are so for a reason, and their rules give them an important distinctive character. My own reading of Putnam suggests that this is not the key distinction, that the “bonded” group to most be wary of is the one that excludes based on qualities that you are born with and cannot change, and that the “bridging” group does not, or where it does it still allows others to “enter” and take part, whilst preserving the rules that give it it’s unique flavour. A cricket club for example, which in Hemming’s definition would be a “bonded” group in my book could either be the sort that is “only available for those from a particular background” or a “bridging” kind, open to those from all kinds of backgrounds, but united by at least one thing in common: the love of cricket. This issue is however a small one when set against the general themes and insights which read like a non-political manifesto for Big Society – one I would highly recommend.

What’s Mine is Yours: the Rise of Collaborative Consumption by Rachel Botsman, another great read, would seem to take the completely opposite approach to that of Together. If Hemming’s world and picture of Britain is one that seems familiar and aligns with that sense that “we are already doing Big Society” then Botsman’s seems less so, but exciting nonetheless. Botsman highlights the dramatic shift that is taking place as more and more people seek to move away from hyper consumerism towards a more sustainable way of life fuelled by the internet and peer to peer business models in particular. She highlights hundreds of examples of people increasingly sharing rather than owning, taking control over the lives, and through the greater use of digital products and services reducing their negative impact on the environment because we now no longer need to travel so much and use so much packaging (for example to rent a video). She highlights four conditions that are needed for a collaborative consumption model to work: critical mass (enough people getting involved to create a sufficiently large menu of choices), idling capacity (an under-utilised asset whether physical such as garden space or immaterial such as time), belief in the commons (a set of self-governing rules as documented by the likes of Elinor Ostrom), and trust between strangers. The sheer range of new models emerging is bewildering but gives a sense of the Big Society that will emerge alongside that which exists already: “Swap trading, time banks, local exchange trading systems (LETS), bartering, social lending, peer-to-peer currencies, tool exchanges, land share, clothing swaps, toy sharing, shared workspaces, cohousing, coworking, CouchSurfing, car sharing, crowd funding, bike sharing, ride sharing, food co-ops, walking school buses, shared microcreches, peer-to-peer rental – are all examples of Collaborative Consumption.” To name but a few of the 5000 examples of “civic apps” or tech-driven platforms for collaborative consumption she has collected over the years (my current favourites are If we ran the world, AirBNB, and Etsy.

So two very different books. But they offer a similar set of conclusions from a Big Society perspective: 1) the shift towards a less monolithic one-sized-fits all world with citizens at the centre is happening already 2) technology is a key driver of this shift which makes digital inclusion vitally important so that nobody is left behind 3) blending real and virtual is key – you cannot replace face to face interaction and the web is at its best when it facilitates this 4) the way forward is to be more open and move away from closed groups in which outsiders and eccentrics might get persecuted (especially closed communities of place) 5) the Big Society will comprise a mix of old and new/unique and replicable. Government can help play a part to accelerate these trends, for example by making it easier for people to interact with their peers (e.g. making CRB checks less onerous, providing incentives for giving), or by giving communities greater powers to configure local spaces better for the things they want to do rather than based on top-down and less popular categories of activities (e.g. turning over publicly owned space to community use and/or ownership), or by reforming public services so that they can integrate better with both existing groups and harness their collective insights, as well as the new peer-to-peer ones that are now springing up (e.g. by enabling surplus public assets and space to be harnessed by those groups, providing data for groups to mash up for their own purposes, or by commissioning groups such as those involved in sport or arts etc to be rewarded for the positive outcomes they produce on health, crime reduction financially and otherwise). But the real actors in this old/new world are what I have previously called the civic entrepreneurs – citizens from public, private and social sector backgrounds who make it their calling to create platforms that make it easier for the rest of us to take part – whether “taking part” means getting involved in the local football club or book swap, or setting up and running a school. Time and time again in both books we hear tales of ordinary citizens who stepped forward to be civic pioneers, establishing and extending models and movements that enable other members of the public to join in. As this dramatic growth in civic association inexorably continues, they will be the ones who we must support and recognise, for it is they moving forwards who will be the builders of the Big Society.

Our Big Society: the next chapter begins

This week marks a watershed moment for the Big Society for several reasons. Firstly because as the PM affirmed on Monday, it is here to stay. Government remains committed to it not just because it is the sensible thing to do, but because it is the right thing to do to bring about a social and not just an economy recovery. Second, because despite its broad appeal across party lines it is now a battleground between those who favour the false (and expensive) comfort of statism and bureaucracy, and those who yearn for a better, more sustainable and community-anchored way of life in this country in which citizens have more control over their lives. Third, because a barrage of the key policies and legislative bills that underpin and enable it are now launching after months of planning which has taken up much of my time and that of countless others inside and outside government to refine over the last year – from the Big Society Bank and vision for social investment, to Community Organisers, to local funds and endowments for building social capital, to National Citizen Service and the focus on employee-owned mutuals. But this flurry of policy also marks a shift because from now on the baton will start to be handed over to us to share in the building of it, whether as individuals or in our groups, as representatives from the voluntary, business or local government – harnessing the new opportunities, tools, and information that government has started to release. Big Society, rightly, is leaving the confines of Whitehall and Parliament (though in truth, it never was confined to it in the first place).

This is the reason why I have rebalanced my own time, because from now on, Big Society is about more than what happens in government. We have an opportunity to cultivate it not just in Westminster, but in our communities, families, and workplaces, building upon the great work that has been done by others all over the land over many years past. It will not be easy, but I’m excited about this next phase, which will be forged in the struggle between the dying vested interests who know that their time is up, and born in the rise and rise of the civic entrepreneur, people who know that the future belongs to citizens and who make it their calling to make it easier as pioneers to build bridgeheads and platforms for others to follow the trails they blaze. My main focus moving forwards will be to help these citizens, these civic entrepreneurs, from the heart of government, across the land, from Shoreditch, and in my own family. To help them make the most of the opportunities, tools, and information that are now being released for the benefit of every community in ways that make it easy for the rest of us in turn to engage.

I saw a number of such civic entrepreneurs at work powerfully recently at a visit last week to TechHub in Shoreditch, one of the projects I plan to put more time into as a volunteer both online acting as a guest blogger on TechCrunch and in person on Fridays. TechHub hosts technology start ups and businesses, providing a community for them all and affordable space, and is a key part of the move to create a Silicon Valley movement in East London. There is also a real commitment among those working there to ensure that the benefits of their investment and time spills over into the wider community and society as well. If you look closely, tech entrepreneurs are choosing to also be civic entrepreneurs, builders of the Big Society, making it easier for others to get involved. Three examples highlighted this for me during my visit. The first was in a start-up called Housebites. This model, developed by a successful tech entrepreneur, enables citizens to advertise their dinner parties online, which has the effect of connecting people who would not otherwise meet. But more than this, their aim is also to encourage the parties to easily raise funds for local and other charities, making giving both easy and fun. The second start-up that stood out is called Squadify. This business, whose site is still in alpha though you can sign up to be invited when its beta starts, seeks to simply and take away the hassle of organising sports matches, whether football, or cricket, or many others old and new, and make it possible to source last minute teams and communicate with people who may be around or have the time and skill to get involved. Again the social benefits of the model is one of mixing people who would not otherwise associate with each other, but there are also health benefits as well since the technology means fewer matches will get cancelled at the last minute for lack of players. In many ways, the model takes power away from professional clubs since it allows citizens to self-organise fixtures, though it is also possible for sponsors and clubs to communicate with members using it as a tool, creating a symbiotic relationship. The third initiative that stood out was one designed to help train up kids from as young as twelve from council estates to become software developers with mentoring from leading technology firms. The companies concerned did not feel the state-sponsored or university-based way of training up developers alone was giving them the flow of talent they needed so they simply decided to get more directly involved in nurturing local talent earlier. What is really interesting about all these models is that they harness the power of collective action, to do more any one of them could do on our own, and seek to weave civic action into daily life – not as something to be outsourced expensively to politicians or bureaucrats, but as something fun, linked to something we would want to do anyway for our own or our own organisation’s benefit.

But it does not all have to be about technology. Civic entrepreneurs include social entrepreneurs who have found ways to help others replicate their models and fund them sustainably and resiliently, business people who make their business and facilities a means for citizens to take action and greater control over the lives, the community organiser who builds a local movement online and offline, the group who took over the pub and who wrote it up for others to learn from their experience, the large charity that realises its assets, brand, and balance sheet could be used as a tool to empower local citizens to help achieve their mission, the public sector worker who engages in creating a mutual and then creates an intermediary that helps others do the same, and the cultural leader and trendsetter who decides to use their influence to drive fashions that also benefit society. And as new opportunities presented by the shift in power from Whitehall to localities present themselves, exciting platforms become possible which we can only dream of today. Such as outpatient hotels in reformed NHS hospitals and mutuals that make it easier for relatives to care for their recovering loved ones using online booking tools, made possible because the provision of such services have been opened up through the Public Services Reform Bill. Such as out of the box toolkits that make it easy for communities to take control over and have the access to finance needed to manage their local libraries and facilities using powers and information made possible by the Localism Bill. Such as websites that help to plan school trips which take the hassle out of doing all the planning, linked to more streamlined CRB regulations. And many many more such platforms for action.

As the past months have shown, the way forward will continue to be challenging. But we have now embarked on the journey and there is no way back – history and an ageing population resulting in fewer tax payers are on our side – forcing us to find a different, more local, more empowering way of running our society. Big Society is too big for Big Government, that attitude which says government and the bureaucracy must do, fund, and support everything. Those who want to bring Big Society down must now contend with the fact that it is and always has been all around us, growing all over the country, presenting no one obvious target, and at work even within their own ranks. Once you start to find ways of doing things more locally, with others around you, with only the most essential support from outside – once you start to take more control – it is infectious, and hard to resist long term. There will of course continue to be attacks and cynicism, and I and others may have to bear the brunt of it. But my family and I are willing to endure it, since we have nothing to lose, and the sacrifice will be worth it if it leads to the real improvement we all deeply desire in the villages, towns, and housing estates that media and politicians alike have struggled for so long to transform through action from the centre alone.

So join the movement, lead it where you live, let us build those bridgeheads that make it easier for citizens to get involved whatever their constraints and backgrounds. Get in touch; I and many like me are here to help and encourage you. If you are building a platform for change harnessing the information, opportunities, and tools that are coming on stream, or want to find out how they can be harnessed for your platform, get in touch at GovAdviserBigSociety@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk. Together we can make it happen.