BIG Lottery has launched a consultation through a discussion paper ‘Building capabilities for impact and legacy’. This paper implies that BIG will, in future, no longer directly support infrastructure work within the VCS, ie the provision of development and support services to the sector.

In the past BIG has provided such support through programmes like BASIS, which SUSTAiN was able to use to develop its successful and productive relationships with the local private sector and bring in CSR support and to raise standards for promotional activity, including the development of the current SUSTAiN Alert methodology.

BIG indicates that:

• It is not sustainable in the present situation to use limited lottery investment to maintain the current structure of the voluntary sector infrastructure bodies at local, national and regional level.
• There are diverse and equally valuable sources of support for the VCS from public, private and voluntary organisations and also within the untapped assets of people and communities in which VCS organisations are based.
• Where BIG Lottery does invest in VCS support and development, resources will be aimed at organisations which they already support or high quality organisations doing work in BIG’s priority areas and will be targeted at support for potential applicants to main investment programmes, in-grant support and end of grant support. The majority of such funding will go directly to frontline organisations to pay for a support and development provider of their choice.

In setting out its stall in this way BIG is potentially using its weight to shape the market, apparently questioning the need for local infrastructure organisations like SUSTAiN or questioning their efficiency or effectiveness. As it is now more directly controlled by the Cabinet Office, it may be offering a window on Government policy in the matter.

From our perspective, this is a disappointing development. We believe that, particularly in the present climate of diminishing funding and increased pressures on our deprived areas in particular, the sector needs strong local infrastructure organisations, able to support the building of capacity and the development of new strategies, able to provide effective local representation and to facilitate strong networking. In the past national funding from BIG and directly from the Government has complemented local funding and helped to achieve more, that door is now closing.

We are not fazed by the proposition of competing to provide support, through the principle that such infrastructure funding that there is will flow through organisations that can choose its support provider. We are used to a competitive environment, proud of our reputation and confident in our ability. We do believe, though, that such an environment will bring in predatory operators who are turnover rather than customer driven and who will not understand the local environment, to be a distraction for us all.

We are also disappointed that such funding as there is to build support and development activity will go to ‘organisations we already support or high quality organisations doing work in BIG’s priority areas’. Organisations that are already high quality need support and development investment less than those aspiring and committed to become high quality and those already supported need it less than those not supported.

It is clear, however, that the die is already cast. The consultation is apparently not looking at whether we agree with these new approaches that BIG has set out but rather at how they will be applied in practice. That is a further disappointment.

Nevertheless, at its recent meeting, your VCS Reference Group determined that it, on behalf of Solihull’s VCS, should consider the consultation questions and make a response and we advocate that you all contribute to this process.

The consultation documents can be found at on the BIG Lottery web site at http://www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/building_capabilities and, whether you reply directly or not, please send your thoughts to me at davep@solihull-sustain.org.uk and they will be assimilated into the Solihull response.

I have been an avid viewer of a sedate travelogue on BBC2, now in its third series, called ‘Great British Railway Journeys’. In it, arguably the best PM we never had, Michael Portillo, proves an affable and informative presenter as he follows Britain’s railways from place to place and examines the impact that the coming of the railway had. He uses the railway guide published annually in the Victorian era by George Bradshaw as a reference source and meets local historians wherever he pitches up.

The programme is on too early to watch live so I have watched each series using iPlayer. This week I have followed Michael  through East Anglia where he has expounded the massive explosion of the Norfolk turkey industry when the railway brought it a route to wider markets, the way that the arrival of the railway created the largest freight gateway to our islands on the estuary of the Orwell and Stour rivers at Felixstowe and Harwich and how Southend boomed by attracting daytrippers by rail after it built a pier so long it carried it own railway, still operating today, to take folk out to its end.

With the railway, came prosperity. Towns and villages not on the rail network shrank. Which brings us to the Government’s approval of HS2 and the battle lines drawn around it. Each week seemingly sees new missives in our local newspaper fired off from H T Harvey representing the pro lobby and Richard Lloyd for the campaign against the project. Is it the expensive project we cannot afford or the project investment we cannot afford not to make?

Personally, I come unequivocally into the latter camp. This project is vital, essential to the economic health of both the West Midlands region and the UK. We cannot afford to fall behind the rest of world in our ability to move people and goods about. Before the present Government scrapped the Regions, the West Midlands was eighth of the nine English regions in the economic league table, despite our location at the central hob of the national infrastructure. The connections that HS2 would bring could make a significant transformation to that position, generating employment and bringing inward investment.

It is argued that that there is no demand for HS2. I am old enough to recall when there was no demand for the M1 and the M5. I remember being driven from Worcester to Ross on the M5 and M50 in the mid sixties, before the M5 extended north of Longbridge or south of Tewkesbury. We pretty much had the two lanes to ourselves all the way. Look at them now. As ‘Great Railway Journeys’ shows, infrastructure creates its own demand.

Now, we need to get people and goods back onto the railways. Rail is comfortably the most fuel efficient means of travel and in the era of climate change and global warming, we need to improve fuel efficiency. The Birmingham to Euston line is relatively saturated. It could take longer trains but few more trains and will not take freight slowing up the works. The Snow Hill to Marylebone has seen massive growth in passenger numbers since in reopened in 1993. It has always struggled to compete with the Euston line for speed but has won favour through reliability, which would be affected significantly by a growth in freight. A new, faster line would generate capacity for freight on these older tracks.

Given that most of the Euston line opened in 1838 when it was served by the Curzon Street terminus of the London and Birmingham Railway Company, now planned for re-use by HS2, and Snow Hill was connected to London by the Great Western Railway in 1852, it is perhaps no shock that these are routes that have exhausted their limitations. Like a tired early central heating system in a home, you can only keep it going for so many decades before you need a more modern solution.

However, to come back to where we started, and take a local perspective, the nearest station to my home is Dorridge. Around 1850, the Great Western Railway wanted to build the line across the Umberslade estate, but there was local resistance. George Fredrick Muntz of Umberslade Hall, MP for Birmingham, finally agreed to the railway, provided a station was provided on the estate for his convenience. The station was built, in the middle of nowhere, down the hill from Knowle, and called Knowle Station.

The railway offered the opportunity for homes to be built by those eager to commute into Birmingham’s commercial district and Dorridge came into being, setting the foundations for what is a relatively prosperous part of our borough today.

If the Solihull of the second quarter of this century has an economic heartbeat that radiates from Bickenhill with a rejuvenated NEC, an expanded international airport, a high speed rail connection to the north and to the south and vibrant surrounding business parks then our town will be competitive. And on that competitiveness the long term wellbeing of our community and its people will depend.

As in 1850, local resistance is understandable, but must be overcome for the greater good.

A short and simple Blog entry to start 2012. Please read the New Year message of Steve Wyler from Locality, which can be found at http://locality.org.uk/comment/years-resolution-expose-incompetence-failing-communities/.

It tells of the roots of the Legal Aid Service and the Citizens Advice Bureau and other advice work, a full 120 years ago, through the work of Frank Tillyard. However, it also how a national charity with no track record has undercut a Birmingham based specialist in the money advice field which has an excellent reputation.

It could happen anywhere, including here. One of our top priorities for 2012 will be to work with the VCS Reference Group and with our Partners to connect our local sector with the strategies that can keep local voluntary action in the hands of local organisations, run by local people who understand the local need.

The novelist, TV Exec and journalist, Daisy Goodwin, published a provoking poem in her Sunday Times column a fortnight ago that bears reproduction here, after some reflections, for it set me on a quest to find out more.

Its background lay back in 1720s London, where children were dying with an alarming frequency, especially the offspring of the poor. A staggering 74 per cent of all children born in the capital were dead before they were five years old.

A successful merchant, who had spent years in the colonies, returned to London and was appalled to find a host of abandoned children lying dead and dying in the street and determined that he would do something about it. He met a lot of opposition, for many of these ‘foundlings’ were presumed to be the result of immorality and it was thought that intervention would only encourage wantonness, illegitimacy and prostitution.

Yet Thomas Coram was a determined man and in 1741 the first children were admitted to ‘The Foundling Hospital’ (Hospital in a wider ‘hospitality’ sense of the word, not a place for the ill), taken there by their mothers as an alternative to being abandoned in the street. It was the custom of the Foundling that a mother would leave a unique ‘token’ with the child for identification purposes, in case she should ever have the means to return and collect the child, even years later, and take responsibility for it again.

The poem in question was written by such a mother, faced with the heart wrenching necessity to leave her child and is a key exhibit in The Foundling Museum today:

Hard is my Lot in deep Distress
To have no help where Most should find.
Sure Nature meant her sacred Laws
Should men as strong as Women bind.
Regardless he, unable I,
To keep this image of my Heart.
Tis vile to Murder! hard to Starve
And Death almost to me to part.
If Fortune should her favours give
That I in Better plight may Live,
I’d try to have my boy again
And train him up the best of Men.

The Foundling Hospital was a strictly not for profit operation and it had major support from big players, not least William Hogarth and George Frederic Handel. Its legacy lives on today, not just through the museum. The Thomas Coram Foundation for Children turned over £8.3M in charity funds last year and reflecting that the plight and blighted lives of some children remains a priority in our society and can be as poignant and tear jerking as the story above. Their approach has changed radically over the years but an emphasis has remained on pioneering change for the benefit of children.

A willingness to change and adapt and improve, and a recognition that the interests of the client group are paramount, may well be the secret to the longevity of this charity. Not many organisations have clocked up almost three hundred years of making a huge difference to a host of lives. They have faced tough times, made it through and gone on stronger. An encouraging thought in the challenging times we all face today. What it takes is the grit and determination trailblazed by Thomas Coram.

How many people face the same hopelessness as that mother. How many are dependent upon having a charity or community group to turn to, run by people who will not accept the status quo and are determined to change things for the better.

As we face a challenging New Year, we could do worse than recall the grit, determination and trailblazing spirit of Thomas Coram, and the willingness to get stuck in, to improve and to adapt for survival and growth, that have left his Foundation the strong force it is still today, almost 300 years on.

Our sector is built on such spirit, taking hope into desperation (even if times are no longer as desperate as they were in Thomas Coram’s time). Long may it be so. A prosperous 2012 to all.

Dave Pinwell, CEO

The pension age is rising and the economy is shrinking. In these tough times, there are numerous over 60s who in receipt of final salary pensions who continue to work at least until their DWP pension kicks in, The jobs market is so much less ageist than it was a decade ago as the experience of the mature worker is better valued. The end result, our youngster are being squeezed out of the employment market.

Youth unemployment has rocketed, at both ends of the education spectrum. Those leaving college with degrees and massive debts are waiting in the job centres shoulder to shoulder with the unqualified. Young people find themselves in the classic ‘Catch 22’ situation, employers want to take on people with experience, with no job that experience cannot be acquired.

At the same time, there is a feeling out there that young people do not help themselves. Eleanor Mills in the Sunday Times a fortnight ago dedicated her column to exhorting young people to be more willing to graft and work unsocial hours. She pointed out how many jobs remain unfilled because no-one wants them, how predominantly it is foreign workers who are willing to service the hospitality industry or to work in the fields.

She touched a nerve that filled the next edition’s letters with general support column when she suggested that many an illustrious career has been launched by making tea. Our ‘X Factor’ generation, though, expects it on a plate, instant success, straight in as a full blown ‘suit’.

We need a new deal with our younger people (and the ‘New Deals’ successive governments come up with do not cut it). They need to be more willing to kick off with lower steps on ladders and we need to find ways of making those steps available, or we will end up with a disenfranchised generation.

This week’s official opening of our new Volunteer Centre reminds us of the important role that volunteering can play in giving young people work experience and steps onto the employment ladder. However, two things need to happen, young people themselves need to understand the value of volunteering to them and the volunteering opportunities need to be there.

That will be the hard bit. Young volunteers are a drain on capacity. They need supervision and mentoring. It takes time. But, if our sector is serious about building social capital, trustee boards will need to rise to the challenge, and find innovative ways of finding space for investing in our youngsters alongside their other work.

Dave Pinwell, CEO

Last week, June Mole and I from SUSTAiN were privileged to join a party of residents from North Solihull and a few council officers on a trip to the Beacon Project in Falmouth and a sister project in nearby Redruth. It was a very long way at over 500 miles for the round trip, but particularly valuable and inspiring.

We do not associate Cornish resorts with ‘sink estates’, yet here but a few miles from glorious beaches and tourist honey pots, we visited two areas that had suffered badly with economic depression before a community led regeneration effort had commenced.

With fabulous views over the enormous harbour on which Falmouth’ s past success was founded to the windswept cliffs beyond, was an estate which hit rock bottom in the 1990s. No-one wanted to live there. For those who did the quality of life was desperate. Illness and social disorder prevailed hand in hand.

Then a few people, led by a couple of health workers, tiring of the disproportionate amount of the their time the estate demanded, decided to do something about it. Over about the next five years:

• The overall crime rate had dropped by 50%,
• Affordable central heating and external cladding had been installed in over 60% of the properties,
• Childhood asthma rates decreased 40% and schooldays lost reduced,
• Child Protection Registrations had dropped by 42%,
• Post-natal depression was down by 70%,
• Breast feeding rates increased by 30%,
• The educational attainment of 10-11 year old boys – i.e., level 4, key stage 2 – was up by 100%,
• The level of teenage pregnancies was decimated,
• Unemployment rate fell by 71% amongst both males and females.

It was all achieved because some strong leaders emerged amongst the community and statutory agencies were willing to work in partnership with them. The residents were allowed to determine the priorities, a community spirit was developed, a level of pride restored.

Today, walking around the estate, yes, some of the housing stock is a bit tired, but there was fresh paint, there were colourful gardens, there was no prevailing atmosphere of depression, as there would have been fifteen years ago.

These are the results we want in our regeneration area and that is why some of those involved in our own community development work went to learn from this Cornish exemplar. The residents who made the trip came back inspired by their new friends in Falmouth and brought back with them a glimmer of new hope for the future.

Hazel Stuteley, one of the pioneers of this work, who has visited Solihull several times to support and inspire change here says:

‘Truly sustainable regeneration does not happen in boardrooms, but is all about people and relationships.’

The Falmouth and Redruth experience tells us that change demands a common vision and a partnership quest, but must be led by what the local people want.

If the riots and looting in the streets weren’t bad enough, there were two items in my Sunday paper this week that also depressed me.

Firstly there was a front page column explaining that some Councils were planning to use the Localism Bill to ban smoking in parks lest children see adults smoking.

Three things struck me as wrong about this:

• this is not what the Localism Bill is for.
• this is the Nanny State gone mad, the last thing we want to do is drive smoking underground, prohibition never works.
• there are far more urgent matters for Councils to spend their precious time and money on.

Which brings me to the second matter from this Sunday’s paper, a series of case studies in the glossy mag about professionals who had lost it all and were now or have recently been homeless:

• a female entrepreneur who the bank pulled the rug from, who ‘was given a mattress on the floor by a woman she hardly knew’ in place of the executive home she lost.
• a former stockbroker, homeless for three years, who found a bed at a YMCA.
• a chap who sleeps rough and keeps his shaver, suit and tie in a station locker and smartens up there every morning before going to the office, wondering when he will pay off his debts.

Is this where our current economic plight has led us? Young people riting and looting and people with ability, enthusiasm and a sound work ethic allowed to drop through the cracks.

I am delighted to have not yet  heard of moves to ban smoking in Solihull parks, may that remain the case. And we live in a borough where there is positive cross agency working to address homelessness, and give it an appropriate level of priority.

We need to do everything that we all can to ensure the horrors experienced in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Wolverhampton and elsewhere in the UK dont spread to anywhere in Solihull and the victims of recession and cuts are minimised and supported.

In the current climate it will probably get worse before it gets better.
Dave Pinwell, CEO of Colebridge Trust & SUSTAiN

Carnage in Oslo, massacre on Utoeya, the untimely demise of Amy Winehouse, a weekend of shocks, when ‘Breaking News’ dominated the twenty four hour channels.A young, discontented man goes berserk with a shocking cost in the lives of other young people and a young, discontented woman loses a long battle with substance abuse. In each case it was, with no doubt, choices made and paths taken some years ago that led to these particular dreadful cul de sacs.

No doubt there were others on the road who turned back, with the help  and support of others. Equally without doubt is that roads to nowhere are being followed by many more today, for there is discontent amongst young people all around us. The anti-social behaviour of a minority of young people, the drug taking and drinking of others, appalling behaviour on our streets in the early morning, especially near night clubs, we note it all and we shake our heads. Some more mature citizens unfairly tar all young people with this same brush.

However, what do we do about it all? Our young people are ill served by our
society. They want to socialise together, but, especially those with little
money, find nowhere to do so but public spaces. They have issues and concerns,
but especially those with strained family relationships or dysfunctional homes
find it challenging to access advice.

This why it is so great a disappointment that the Government has failed to green light Solihull’s. MyPlace project. Here was a project that was viable with a strong business plan, which is not going ahead merely because the programme could not be accelerated by six to eight months. This is why it is of such concern that expenditure to support young people is being reduced nationally.

We want more interventions in young lives before they go off the rails. We need better advice services for the future generation. We must find them better places to go and things to do.

There are plans and aspirations in Solihull. We aspire to regroup and rescue something from the MyPlace project. There are plans to develop youthvolunteering on the back of the new Volunteering Centres. There are intentions to explore how school premises might be used in a more versatile manner for the benefit of our communities outside school hours.

No organisation can meet this need alone. As a Voluntary and Community Sector we should be looking to agree a common vision and working together to make it happen.

A hundred little differences can make one big step change.

Peter Drucker, the man known as the ‘Father of modern management & marketing’, one wrote:

“The best nonprofits devote a great deal of thought to defining their organization’s mission. They avoid sweeping statements full of good intentions and focus, instead, on objectives that have clear-cut implications for the work their members perform—staff and volunteers both.

The Salvation Army’s goal, for example, is to turn society’s rejects into citizens – and they do it very well.

The Girl Guides & Scouts help youngsters become confident, capable young people who respect themselves and other people.

Nonprofits start and end with the community – in other words – the “customer”; they do not, as businesses and the public sector tend to do, start with the inside, that is, with the organisation or with some variation of financial return.”

He wrote that in 1989.

What he was refering to was the devotion that many Voluntary & Community organisation put into making things better (aka “delivering positive outcomes”) for their service users. In business speak, its called excellent Customer Service – something all corporate organisations talk about but very few do well. Voluntary & Community groups seldom talk about it; they just do it.

The 2011  Queens Award for Voluntary Service have recently been announced with a number being awarded to organisations in the West Midlands.

2012 is the 10^th anniversary of the Award, The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, as well as the Olympics, so interest in volunteering will be at its highest.

If you know of a group that may be deserving of an award in 2012, nominations are now being taken.

For information about this year’s winners and how to  nominate a group for next year please visit:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/UKgovernment/Honoursawardsandmedals/TheQueensAwardforVoluntaryService/index.htm

Let’s make 2012 the year Solihull voluntary groups and volunteers get the national recognition they deserve!