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- Author or Editor: James Rees x
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This important book is the first edited collection to provide an up to date and comprehensive overview of the third sector’s role in public service delivery. Exploring areas such as social enterprise, capacity building, volunteering and social value, the authors provide a platform for academic and policy debates on the topic. Drawing on research carried out at the ESRC funded Third Sector Research Centre, the book charts the historical development of the state-third sector relationship, and reviews the major debates and controversies accompanying recent shifts in that relationship. It is a valuable resource for social science academics and postgraduate students as well as policymakers and practitioners in the public and third sectors in fields such as criminal justice, health, housing and social care.
In the late 1990s, the growth of a stark national imbalance with ‘overheated’ housing markets was experienced in the South of England, as well as ‘low demand’ for housing in parts of the North. The policy response to the issue of low demand was to create a Housing Market Renewal (HMR) programme, whose central task was to restore sustainability to inner-urban-housing markets. Nine HMR Pathfinders were established after funding was announced in the 2002 Comprehensive Spending Review, and the policy was launched in the Sustainable Communities Plan. This chapter describes the extensive empirical research conducted around the HMR process in East Manchester between 2004 and 2008. Regeneration was aimed at East Manchester, which ‘read up’ to the overarching aims of Manchester City Council for the city as a whole. Hence, in terms of principles for the renewal of individual neighbourhoods, a key aim was the restructuring and rebalancing of skewed physical attributes of the housing market. The process of urban-housing-market restructuring enacted in East Manchester involved, inter alia, the creation of aspirational, market-orientated housing in neighbourhoods that were explicitly aimed at new incoming residents, with the intention of effecting a social transition. There is a transition in the type, form, and mixture of housing types; the balance of tenure; and the way security is provided and the neighbourhood managed.
The introduction sets out the themes of the book, in particular the recent historical and policy context in the UK. It sets out the book’s overall aim of providing a concise and up-to-date overview of the third sector’s role in England’s public services. It provides a detailed definition of the third sector, introducing some of the main theories of the voluntary sector. It goes on to outline the key policy context, particularly the important New Labour partnership era. It also scrutinizes the important state-sector relationship at the heart of public service delivery. Finally, it highlights the contents of the book.
This chapter focuses in greater detail on the crucial New Labour and Coalition government periods; comparing and contrasting the policy and practice of the two periods. It has two broad aims: to provide a historical overview of policy, practice and academic debates that have surrounded the often controversial role of the third sector in public service delivery; and to tease out underlying continuities and points of difference in the stances of these governments towards the sector. The analysis is framed by the welfare triangle developed by Adalbert Evers, with a consequent focus on the interfaces with the state, market and informal sectors. Whilst shifts in discourse and practice are detected, the chapter identifies an underlying continuation of trajectories initiated in the 1980s including movement towards market-based forms of provision, the reduction of the scale of the welfare state, and aspirations to harness the perceived positive contribution of the third sector.
The conclusion draws together the themes and questions of the book, highlighting the enduring nature of the tensions implicit in the service delivery relationship. It provides a review of where the third sector currently sits in the contemporary landscape of public service delivery, focuses on the dilemmas and tensions that service delivery brings to participating organisations, and highlights the key role of innovation and the search for new models of delivery that the third sector has taken part in. Finally it reviews the prospects for the third sector’s future role in service delivery, balancing reasons to be pessimistic and optimistic.
This edited collection provides a comprehensive overview of the third (or voluntary) sector role in the delivery of public services in the UK. It covers social enterprise, capacity building, volunteering and social value; as well as the sector’s role in specific fields including employment, health and social care, housing and criminal justice. It is the first book to review developments over the New Labour and Coalition period which saw a sustained expansion of the scale and scope of third sector delivery. In this period, the sector was required to respond to new policy challenges such as personalisation, market-based mechanisms of funding allocation and regulation, and an increased focus on rewarding outcomes (payment by results). Drawing on research at the ESRC-funded Third Sector Research Centre, University of Birmingham, the book also makes an analytical contribution in charting historical shifts in state, third sector, and market relationships, with a focus on the controversies associated with such shifts.
This edited collection provides a comprehensive overview of the third (or voluntary) sector role in the delivery of public services in the UK. It covers social enterprise, capacity building, volunteering and social value; as well as the sector’s role in specific fields including employment, health and social care, housing and criminal justice. It is the first book to review developments over the New Labour and Coalition period which saw a sustained expansion of the scale and scope of third sector delivery. In this period, the sector was required to respond to new policy challenges such as personalisation, market-based mechanisms of funding allocation and regulation, and an increased focus on rewarding outcomes (payment by results). Drawing on research at the ESRC-funded Third Sector Research Centre, University of Birmingham, the book also makes an analytical contribution in charting historical shifts in state, third sector, and market relationships, with a focus on the controversies associated with such shifts.
This edited collection provides a comprehensive overview of the third (or voluntary) sector role in the delivery of public services in the UK. It covers social enterprise, capacity building, volunteering and social value; as well as the sector’s role in specific fields including employment, health and social care, housing and criminal justice. It is the first book to review developments over the New Labour and Coalition period which saw a sustained expansion of the scale and scope of third sector delivery. In this period, the sector was required to respond to new policy challenges such as personalisation, market-based mechanisms of funding allocation and regulation, and an increased focus on rewarding outcomes (payment by results). Drawing on research at the ESRC-funded Third Sector Research Centre, University of Birmingham, the book also makes an analytical contribution in charting historical shifts in state, third sector, and market relationships, with a focus on the controversies associated with such shifts.
Conventionally we think of the welfare state in terms of the state: what it provides by way of welfare services, what it costs to provide them, and what they achieve. However, as the chapters in this book amply demonstrate, this is at best a narrow conception of welfare and of the services, policies and practices operating to promote it. This chapter looks beyond the state at the vast array of non-profit making organisations and services in the voluntary and community sector. It does not remove the state from the picture, however. The state is heavily involved and implicated in the way the voluntary and community sector has developed, the roles it plays and the way it operates. The relationship between the state and the voluntary and community sector remains an ongoing tension, where increasing concern over threats to the independence of the sector have been voiced in recent years.
After some introductory discussion of context and definition, the chapter looks in turn at data on the voluntary and community sector’s scale, scope and activities; gives an overview of its historical development in welfare services from the late Victorian era; then looks more closely at the sector’s experience from the New Labour governments through to Brexit. The chapter concludes by considering the main challenges facing the sector and, finally, its future prospects.
In the discussion we refer to the voluntary and community sector, but this presents readers unfamiliar with the field with two immediate problems: first, what do we mean by ‘voluntary and community’, and, second, what is implied by the idea of ‘sector’? The first problem is compounded by the existence of multiple alternative labels which are intended to cover more or less the same territory.
The third sector has a long history of delivering employment services alongside statutory and private sector providers, but the landscape of provision has changed with the introduction of prime-led supply chain contracting and payment by results. This chapter draws on data from a qualitative study of the Work Programme and findings from an evaluation of Work Choice, the two main programmes operating in the field to explore how third sector providers have responded to these changes. It highlights the varied strategies TSOs have employed to navigate reputational and financial risk, and to then re-orientate services to secure a position in the evolving field. The chapter underlines the diversity of providers within the field and challenges a normative approach to understanding third sector experiences in these forms of public service delivery.
