www.publicinvolvement.org.uk

With all the changes to the commissioning and delivery of health and social care, it is good to see a consortium of children's organisations getting together to engage the voluntary and community sector in these new ways of working. VCS Engage is an eighteen month project to equip the sector with the skills and knowledge they need to work with local authorities within the new Every Child Matters Agenda. A very well-attended launch event held at the end of March was addressed with evangelical zeal by Campbell Robb the new Director of the Office of the Third Sector. 
 
One of Us or One of Them?

He was previously director of public policy at NCVO who delighted the audience by getting thoroughly confused about whether he was One of Us or One of Them and never quite managed to get his pronouns right.  He is surely the personification of the government's commitment to getting the Third Sector to play a major role in this new world.

Social Enterprise as a Model for Children and Young People

Along with a representative of the Social Enterprise Coalition, I helped run a workshop looking at social enterprise as a model for delivering services for children and young people. I was there because for the last couple of months I have been carrying out research on behalf of VCS Engage to see if social enterprise has something particular to offer in this new market. The problem of course lies in defining what a social enterprise is and the more SEs (Social Enterprises) I talk to, the less clear it is to me what they are. 

Different, Modern, Dynamic and Enjoyable

They are enterprising and businesslike and they are not for private profit (although they must make a profit - or a surplus, depending on how you want to define it). Their objectives are to bring social or environmental benefit. They are hugely diverse in terms of size, legal structure, organisation and governance. Everybody who has decided that their organisation is a social enterprise likes being one and thinks it is a good thing. There seems to be something positive, modern and dynamic about them.

SE not only form of life in Third Sector Universe

However, the workshop was full of people who currently work for or run voluntary or community organisations which saw themselves as enterprising and focused on the public good. Their organisations too were diverse in terms of their legal and organisational structures and they seemed like a pretty positive, modern and dynamic bunch. They were struggling with exactly the same issues as the social enterprises in this new and challenging universe.

Questions for All

Will they be taken seriously by commissioners? How can they be accountable without becoming completely bogged down in regulation? How do they engage with users and the public? Can they compete with the Big Private Sector Boys and Girls? How do they fund the core costs of their business and avoid going bust? If they offer some sort of added value, how can they demonstrate it and does anyone really care? Is the new world simply going to be about commissioners getting the cheapest bang for their buck?

Towards Quality and Consistency in Governance - is there a role for Policy Governance®?

There is a lot of talk about social enterprise at the moment and there are certainly successful SEs out there delivering services.  But there are also a lot of very effective and efficient community and voluntary sector bodies out there, including some major charities. And I would hazard a guess that there are also some pretty badly run social enterprises, just as there are badly run charities and badly run community organisations. There is a risk that we are being distracted into a debate about which label is best rather than focusing on what actually happens within these organisations. What is needed is a systematic approach to questions of accountability and governance. What works? What doesn't work? Is there a way for commissioners and wider society to look at an organisation and be assured that it can deliver now and into the future? Tricky questions for all involved. Maybe there is a role for Policy Governance in here somewhere as a tried and tested method of improving performance and providing a robust model of accountability. If they are doing a good job and spending public money wisely then let them get on with it. If they need some help to bring them up to speed, then let's give it to them and then let them get on with it. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

The Moore Adamson Craig Partnership LLP offers a wide range of services to third sector organisations - research amongst practitioners and users using telephone, self-completion online survey or postal surveys, governance for third sector organisations using the Carver model of Policy Governance as well as assistance in developing new relationships with commissioners. The new business structures are discussed in Andrew Craig's paper Business Structures in Health and Social Care (Adobe PDF)

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