Big Society's Big Mouth Powered by v

What’s the connection between the Big Society and the government’s vision for higher education, school leavers and graduate skills? The answer is a “green gap year” for students.

Imagine the energy of teenage volunteers able to complete community service, help with projects to address climate change and contribute towards sustainability. This could be delivered through a voluntary period of National Service by school leavers (and older students) before they start university.

Cameron and the Con-Lib coalition have highlighted the two-month National Citizen Service initiative as “a programme for 16-year-olds to give them a chance to develop the skills needed to be active and responsible citizens”, and a green gap year would extend this idea.

The US has blazed a trail in terms of linking service to higher education via the Service Learning programme, which – according to the Corporation for National and Community Service – “enhances the community through the service provided, but also has powerful learning consequences for the students”.

Many US presidents have promoted forms of national service – from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps to Bill Clinton’s 300,000-strong AmeriCorps – and the approach has gained further momentum in the post-9/11 era. As President Obama comments: “Now is exactly the time when we need more volunteerism.”

As far back as 1938, the American educator John Dewey argued that “all genuine education comes about through experience”. He contended that interaction between individuals and their surroundings can foster valuable reflection.

Today in the UK, many school leavers face the prospect of A-level success that will not translate into university places. So what could a fulfilling green gap year do for them?

First, it could help teenagers become more independent before they make the move to university – a “safe” first step away from home and toward independence. Second, it could provide real-world experience: life and study skills such as working with others, personal organisation and meeting deadlines. There are countless projects – environmental improvements, regeneration initiatives and health and welfare schemes – that could benefit from an injection of young blood.

A green gap year could also extend and give serious meaning to secondary school citizenship classes; represent a means to address the democratic deficit by re-connecting young voters with society; and perhaps form the basis of reflection for academic credit. Other potential benefits include harnessing the idealism and enthusiasm of youth and fostering cross-generational work, such as young people helping elderly neighbours and gaining knowledge and skills from them.

Such a workforce could accelerate the attack on global warming while undertaking purposeful “employment” in a time of recession: something that should impress employers pre- or post-graduation. The work of volunteers could strengthen communities, improve participants’ lives while transforming the lives of others, and help to engender mutuality. As the Prime Minister has observed, there is a desperate need to “create communities with oomph” and this mechanism could help turn the Big Society rhetoric into reality.

Specifically in terms of higher education, National Service could extend existing volunteering – with Brownies, sports clubs, mentoring and so on. It could also constitute a bridge to independent learning at university and offer breathing space, allowing individuals the chance to reflect on whether they really want to go to university (or not!). Furthermore, the UK would be following in the footsteps of Germany, France and Italy, which all have national programmes for long-term voluntary service undertaken by young people.

Of course, there are dangers: poor communities must not be further stigmatised or exploited as a free resource for student education, and neither must those on National Service displace paid employees. Similarly the service must be meaningful and not chain someone to a photocopier. Additionally, there is the risk of patronising the “needy” and inducing dependence on charity.

So what’s in it for the students?

My suggestion is that in exchange for, say, six months of community service, volunteers should receive an educational credit of £4,000 offset against their first-year university tuition fees. Such a payment could provide a welcome boost for individuals on low incomes, with funds provided by the proposed Big Society Bank (which is expected to be able to draw on at least £60 million garnered from dormant accounts). As Martin Luther King observed: “Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.”

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Last week Rory Stewart, Member of Parliament for Penrith and The Border was quoted on the Conservative Home blog as saying,

“The big society is not a replacement for everything; it is not a silver bullet or a panacea… we need a state where there are issues of expertise. For example, brain surgery is best left to the state, not a community.”

I’ll wait for everyone to take a deep sigh of relief before highlighting a couple of points that this raises for me.

That Rory Stewart feels it necessary to say this emphasises why I think the government has made a mistake by leaving the concept of the Big Society so vague; it has made its job of explaining the Big Society more difficult and risks increasing ridicule. By not delineating boundaries of the concept more clearly, the government leaves itself open to the cheap shots that the quote above invites.

When focusing their questions about, or ridicule of, the Big Society, most people focus on service provision. However, I think there is a second boundary that the government would do well to clarify; the democratic boundary. I’m going to briefly explore both.

The Big Society and Services

As Rory Stewart highlights, there are clearly areas of public service where technical expertise is needed and the Big Society has no role. At the other end of the scale, David Cameron has explicitly stated that there are public services which the Big Society can aspire to take over:

“For example, if neighbours want to take over the running of a post office, park or playground, we will help them.”

It is a big continuum between running a park and opening up someone’s skull to deal with a complex neurological condition. This continuum includes keeping under-occupied youths of the streets and out of trouble, delivering meals to vulnerable adults, via acting asarmchair auditors holding local and national government to account, right through torunning schools and local GP surgeries and possibly beyond.

The blog of the Government’s Big Society advisor, Nat Wei, is full of inspirational examples demonstrating that citizens can come together to solve relatively complex problems and identify innovative ways of working together. Citizen action, without state aid, is possible and desirable; it is what delivered us hospitals and schools for the poorest in society, and our first public libraries after all.

However, the brain surgery example suggests that there is a set of public services that only government can deliver, and that there is a separate set that the Big Society can take over. This fundamentally misunderstands the fact that different communities have very different capacities, knowledge and resources. It is one of the main reasons that there is so much suspicion about the Big Society; it is richer communities which will take advantage, while the poorest will see their services cut without being supported to build the capacity to take them over.

It seems to me that the government therefore needs to do two things in relation to delineating the boundaries of the Big Society. The first is to be much clearer about those public services it believes can only be delivered by government no matter what the circumstances. The second is to be much clearer about how it is going to take account of the capacities of different communities in order to judge whether or not support is required.

Democracy and the Big Society

One of the reasons that the government gives for its focus on the Big Society is that it will make public services more accountable. Their underlying assumption is that taking services out of the hands of national and local government will bring them closer to citizens. Having spent seven years developing ways of thinking about accountability, it isn’t at all self-evident to me that handing services over to communities automatically makes them more accountable; in some cases it will, and in others it won’t. Whether or not accountability is enhanced will be the result of the interaction of institutions, structures, and the representativeness of the group taking over the service, for example.

Accountability is only part of the picture though. Politics and the institutions of government exist to balance, within a clear democratic framework, the competing demands of different groups within society. There is nothing within the Big Society rubric that helps understand how communities might negotiate between competing demands. When does government step in over the boundary of the Big Society to sort out disagreements, and when does it not?

I’m not suggesting that we should be looking to government for permission to go where our energies take us. However, the government must take responsibility for ensuring that the minority don’t lose out to the majority, and that the powerful don’t gain at the expense of the weak.

For me the question of what the Big Society means and doesn’t mean gets more important as we head into the government’s second year. I recently asked what we could hold the Prime Minister accountable for as the Big Society develops. This question still stands; it would be a travesty if citizens were blamed not taking up the opportunities offered by the Big Society because government leaves the concept so vague that it can’t be held to account itself.

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Building the Big Society

Community based projects and local social enterprises have been run for many years. However, a malaise in local activism and increasing centralisation under the previous Government has led to the development of the Big Society approach. This has the potential to improve local services and take citizen power to the next level.

Much has been said over the last 18 months about the Big Society and what it means for the UK. Earlier this year, The Prime Minister described the Big Society as “giving people more power and control to improve their lives and communities”. This is a mantra which is difficult to argue against, regardless of your political standpoint.

However, rather than posturing, the Coalition is taking radical steps to make this a reality. This is being achieved by a multitude of new mechanisms and approaches.

To fund new projects, a Big Society Bank is being set up, with £400m worth of capital. This is being funded from a combination of money in dormant bank accounts and from financial institutions themselves. The Government described the Bank as “a cornerstone of the social investment market”, and it will be able to co-invest in projects and underwrite and guarantee investments.

Local people themselves will now have the tools to take over local assets and services which they believe can be run or utilised more effectively. Contained within the Localism Bill are two key elements to this.

The Community Right to Challenge allows social enterprises and not-for-profit organisations to approach local authorities to request to run a service they provide. If they can show that their bid will “promote or improve the social, economic or environmental well being of the authority’s area”, then the local authority must consider putting the service out to tender.

This will allow services to be provided by local businesses and charities, helping to encourage local innovation and leading to improvements in their quality and more dynamic local economies.

Similarly, local authorities must now keep a list of ‘community assets’. Nominations for the list can be made by members of the local community and these must be considered properly. Certain conditions will then apply to assets included on the list before they can be sold by the owners, including informing the local authority and providing a moratorium period during which interested groups can seek to prepare bids.

This will result in local communities having greater involvement in the way in which local assets, such as land and buildings, can be utilised for the benefit of the local area.

However, the key element to the success of the Big Society is engaging people now and for years to come in this approach. To do so, we need to encourage a greater sense of philanthropy and volunteering in our society.

A recent Cabinet Office Green Paper on Giving, contains a number of recommendations on the former, and the Chancellor confirmed in the Budget that the Gift Aid process will be simplified, helping charities across the country.

To encouraging volunteering, a National Citizen Service is being introduced initially for 10,000 young people aged 16. It is due to begin this summer and its aim is to give “teenagers the chance to learn new skills that will help them to make a positive contribution to their community”.

This is where organisations such as V Inspired come in. Their new Big Society’s Big Mouth campaign is an opportunity for young people to express views on the issues they care about and what areas of volunteering they would like to become involved with.

Young people are the future and I hope to see many of them make a positive contribution to the debate and to building a stronger, bigger society in the years to come.
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The Big Society in (in)action

You can't encourage volunteering by cutting the professionals who the volunteers depend on.

Never let it be said that at the new economics foundation we don’t practice what we preach. For few months, nef staff have been volunteering with disabled children’s riding lessons at Vauxhall City Farm. Researchers more used to writing papers on social capital, well-being and participation, have been leading ponies, and on occasions shovelling manure. There’s no doubt that we’re getting at least two of our Five Ways to Wellbeing.

However, we’re finding that being part of the Big Society has it’s frustrations as well as its satisfactions. Lessons have been cancelled this week for the second time in a row. Staff, volunteers are all standing by but the children haven’t shown up. Apparently the special school, can’t bring them down due to “staff shortages” – so the lessons which are paid for and the time and energy of the volunteers are all wasted. I wonder if this is an example of “efficiency savings”.

There’s a bigger truth buried in our frustration though. The state is not a constraint on the big society – it’s one of its most important foundations. While volunteers, and voluntary organisations are a hugely important resource who can make budgets for further and services deliver more, it takes strong, effective, well-resourced state services to get the best of them.
If budgets in public services are cut to the bare minimum, or below, the big society won’t be there to fill in the gaps. We’ll be standing around in the sun waiting for a bus full of children who never turn up.
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