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- Author or Editor: James Rees x
- Poverty and Inequality x
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.
This paper aims to examine what the policy, practice and academic implications are of England becoming a container of diverse social policies as a result of the implementation of policies of localism. Through a case study of Greater Manchester (GM), it addresses the implications for the local voluntary sector. GM is a key example of an ambitious local public sector assemblage that is attempting complex, large-scale policy implementation in the context of greater devolution.
‘Neighbourhood’ was a key political and administrative concept for the New Labour administration and was the spatial focus for a proliferation of initiatives in the early period. Yet since 2006, the appeal and use of ‘neighbourhood’ have waned as evidence of the impact of neighbourhood interventions over the last decade has emerged, along with active re-scaling of policy for regeneration and economic development. This article seeks to draw out why ‘neighbourhood’ was important to the New Labour project, to examine why and how this changed over the course of the New Labour administration, and to explore new agendas emerging in policy for sub-national governance.
The relational processes and practices that create and sustain grassroots associations have received limited attention from researchers. This article addresses this gap, exploring collective leadership of grassroots associations through a ‘leadership-as-practice’ lens (; ). It adopts the concept of ‘bundles’ of leadership practice () to analyse data from a single ethnographic case study. Adopting this conceptual lens, we identify a set of ‘bundles’ of related practices – organising, engaging and accounting – that constitute the enduring reality of the grassroots association’s collective leadership.
This paper sets out to assess the state of the academic, and policy and practice, debate around leadership in the UK voluntary sector context. There has been a lack of sustained academic interest in the notion of leadership in the UK, and equally a lack of dialogue between academia, policy and practice. As a result, it is often far from clear whether there is any agreement about what leadership consists of, and the difference that ‘improved’ leadership might make. The paper considers what is meant by leadership in the voluntary sector, and considers three dominant approaches that have been used to frame leadership in debates within the sector. The three themes we identify in existing literature are person-centred approaches, process approaches, and debates that are concerned with issues of representativeness. In particular, it draws attention to the over-reliance on individual or person-centred accounts of leadership in the sector. The paper posits instead the promise of accounts that draw attention to collective notions of leadership, and the implications of a more widespread adoption of such frames for leadership development practice and research.
UK employment services are increasingly delivered by public, private and third sector organisations in quasi-markets that can be viewed as fields with actors (providers) competing for resources and position. The commissioning of the Work Programme produced an ‘episode of contention’ as fewer resources, shifting policy priorities and new contractual arrangements restructured relationships within the field. Drawing on empirical research the paper demonstrates how providers with different resources have navigated this period, employing strategies to manage challenger and incumbent roles and maintain their position in the field. The findings contribute to both field theory and our theoretical understanding of employment services.
Co-production is not a new concept but it is one with renewed prominence and reach in contemporary policy discourse. It refers to joint working between people or groups who have traditionally been separated into categories of user and producer. The article focuses on the coproduction of public services, offering theory-based and knowledge-based routes to evidencing co-production. It cites a range of ‘good enough’ methodologies which community organisations and small-scale service providers experimenting with co-production can use to assess the potential contribution, including appreciative inquiry, peer-to-peer learning and data sharing. These approaches have the potential to foster innovation and scale-out experimentation.
