The paper below was agreed by ministers at their steering group meeting on Tuesday 30^th October and forms the basis for the review. Work is now in hand to set up the working groups as described in the paper. Further details of the working groups will be posted on the web-site in due course.

Cross Cutting Review of the role of the Voluntary Sector in service delivery

This paper sketches out the objectives, scope and possible outputs of the voluntary sector review. It also makes proposals for managing the review.

The review will work closely with some of the other crosscutting reviews, particularly the reviews of children at risk and the public sector labour market. There are also important links with other pieces of work in Whitehall – notably the Performance and Innovation Unit’s (PIU) review of the legal and regulatory framework for the voluntary sector, and the Regional Co-ordination Unit’s (RCU) review on how to make regeneration and community funding more accessible. 

Terms of Reference

3.Ministers have agreed the following Terms of Reference for the review:

“To examine the relationship between the voluntary sector and the Government in service delivery, taking account of the key role that the sector can play in strengthening civil society and building capacity in local communities. The review will do this by:

i. Mapping the extent and the variety of means by which the voluntary sector is already involved in overseeing and delivering services;

ii. Examining best practice in effective partnership between the voluntary sector and the public sector, suggesting practical ways in which the principles in the Compact can be applied in the delivery of services;

iii. Drawing common lessons to guide the public sector in working in partnership with the voluntary sector;

iv.  Establishing whether and how barriers to voluntary sector involvement, and lack of capacity, might be overcome to promote successful partnership with the public sector and how the Government might be able to assist to that end.”

Timing

4.       The review is due to be completed in early 2002.

Scope

5.       These terms of reference are quite broad. For the review to have maximum impact, and given the timescale, it has been agreed to structure the review around five themes, and to set up working groups to support these:

i.            Service delivery     How can we maximise the potential benefits that the voluntary and community sector can bring to service delivery to generate better quality outcomes? It will be useful to pull together existing evaluation evidence on specific service areas, both to learn from areas where the sector has been heavily involved in delivery for some time eg. housing, regeneration, social care, and health, and to explore areas where provision is more recent and where there may be potential for growth – eg. elements of the New Deal for employment; New Deal for Communities; Sure Start.

ii.            Social and Community enterprise:     Understanding the role that social and community entrepreneurs can play in developing new service areas; developing new approaches to service delivery and stimulating new employment opportunities – especially for hard to reach groups including black and minority ethnic communities. And in promoting community involvement in the development, delivery and accountability of local services.

iii.            Capacity:     Understanding the potential constraints faced by the sector  - for example, limited infrastructure and/ or workforce skills - which constrain the sector’s ability to deliver. Are there specific groups – for example, BMEs – who are underrepresented by the voluntary / community sector?

iv.            Structures:     Understanding the mechanics of how Central and Local Government interact with the voluntary and community sector including funding flows, performance management and accountability. Is the interface overly complicated, does it disadvantage smaller groups, should it be more flexible to reflect different circumstances? There is also some feeling that issues around funding need to be thought through more clearly. For example, how to take adequate account of risk where the sector is developing highly innovative approaches to deliver services to hard to reach client groups. And ensuring the benefits of voluntary and community sector involvement are fully factored into any process of competitive bidding for service delivery (eg. ability to deliver higher quality outcomes because of specialist knowledge/ experience).

v.            Developing the Compact:     The Compact has been widely welcomed by the sector, although they are concerned that is not fully adhered to across government. How can we build on the Compact to encourage more effective partnership working between Government and the sector? What are the levers and incentives that can be used to facilitate this?

Areas for detailed work

6.       To support the overall objectives of the review and help to further define its scope, more detailed work will be needed to:

• Map how funds currently flow from Central and Local Government (and other local agencies eg. health authorities) to the voluntary and community sector to support service delivery. This will need to be disaggregated by service area ( eg. health, housing, education, regeneration, welfare to work), size and type of voluntary organisation and include information on sources of funding and how this is spent. Ideally, we also need a regional breakdown.

• Bringing  together existing material on how to work / contract with the voluntary and community sector to support and promote their strengths, including an assessment of what does/ doesn’t work in the sector where there is a long history of voluntary sector involvement, and in some of the newer areas  (eg. Sure Start, Neighbourhood Renewal, New Deal etc.,). For the new policy areas it will also be important to recognise some of the difficult issues of trying to deliver policy in a different way - for example, the need to allow more time for projects to be up and running;

• Consider different approaches to monitoring the outputs and outcomes of public services delivered by the voluntary sector – assess what works. Whether/ how funding might be linked to issues such as service quality and user involvement. How to deal with new, potentially high risk initiatives;

• Consider how best to build on the existing Compact to maximise the benefits of voluntary and community sector involvement in service delivery, including by removing barriers to participation and by building capacity where necessary. 

Outputs

7.            Specific outputs from the review are likely to include:

• Clarity about how and where the Government and Voluntary and Community sectors can work in partnership to deliver higher quality public services;

• Clarity about the role that social entrepreneurs can play in helping to take forward policy goals – in particular by developing new approaches to service delivery that actively engage local communities to target their needs effectively, including by generating new employment opportunities;

• Proposals for how to build on the existing Compact to promote effective partnership working including how to incentivise widespread implementation of best practice;

• Proposals for how to address any barriers to voluntary and community sector involvement in service delivery, including how to overcome possible lack of capacity in the sector.

• Proposals for how Government should approach its financial and performance management relationship with different parts of the sector in order to support and encourage high quality outcomes, and not compromise the sectors ability to deliver.

Management of the cross-cutting review

8.       

 

Susanne Rauprich (the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services);

David Robinson (Community Links)

Krishna Sarda (Council for Ethnic Minority Organisations)

Stuart Etherington (National Council for Voluntary Organisations)

Stephen Bubb (Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations)

Bryan Dutton, Leonard Cheshire. 

Judith Armitt, (Local Government Association; Chief Executive, Medway LA).

 

 

Ministerial Steering Group

9.            The Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Paul Boateng, is chairing the review. The Ministerial group will include nominated ministers from the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), Department of Health (DoH), Home Office, Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR), Lord Chancellor’s |Department (LCD), Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Her Majesty’s Treasury (HMT), the Cabinet Office (CO) and PIU.  The first Ministerial meeting was held on 30 October.

10.        Paul Boateng has already held one breakfast meeting that discussed the parameters of the review with the voluntary and community sector. There is likely to be a second in December.

8^th November 2001