Bill Payne, Chief Executive of MHP, looks at what the ‘Big Society’ will mean for charities, third sector organisations and their vulnerable customers.

MHP is a big charity with 80,000 customers, 38,000 tenants and many recipients of care and support who are vulnerable and in need of quality services that are costly to provide. It appears none of us is really clear what David Cameron will end up with from his Big Society idea. In addition, this Big Society relaunch will coincide with massive cuts in public spending and this does raise the possibility that the two will become inextricably linked.

When those cuts are defined more explicitly in the spending round we will all start to measure what the quantitative impact is likely to be. We will be able to check whether it was the pessimists or the optimists who were the most accurate pundits. We will have to manage what comes down the line as best we can and will do our best when this happens. What we do need to think about, in my view, is how we will judge the qualitative impact on people as these changes happen, and in the longer term, the real price of cutting the cost of services to the vulnerable.

I believe there is still great merit in the ideas regarding citizenship as a measure of what you do developed by David Clapham, Professor of Housing at Cardiff University, with the Chartered Institute of Housing in the mid-90s.

This work suggested that when you carry out an activity, or even say something, you should benchmark the impact that you have against three elements:

• What about the rights and respect offered to people (including their self-respect) and the recognition given to them?
• Are you having an impact on their skill and ability?
• Are you changing their willingness and intention to work with you in future?

This works just as well for groups as much as for individuals and a simple check as to whether the impact on these three factors is positive, negative or neutral should help in our analysis of what comes down the line from the Big Society.

In addition, there are other serious considerations. Is charitable and third sector involvement expected to be done for free in providing those services that are currently commissioned and paid for by local and national government? If so our contribution will be scaled down, not increased. Will we be expected to find volunteers to do the jobs that we pay for at the moment, and how many of my 2,350 paid staff could be replaced by them to deliver highly regulated services with onerous legal duties of care?

If some of the most vulnerable in society are going to be looked after for less money how long before the three citizenship measures applied to both the recipients and givers of support have a negative score against each? What impact will that have on our society as a whole?

The challenge for government, and us, will be to supplement what is needed as a fair and reasonable basic level of support with additional engagement by the wider community. How will this come together as we enter the age of austerity?

We are willing to do our bit, and leadership from government has to engage with our willingness to put our customers first. The Big Society will need more work and explaining before we can test it against the CIH citizenship challenge. Getting more people to volunteer is nearly always a great idea, but it does contradict the instinct to behave like that old Yorkshire saying – ‘If tha’ does owt for nowt always do it for tha’ sen’, in other words – ‘If you do anything for nothing always do for yourself’.

Note: Bill Payne was President of the CIH 1995-96 and commissioned the CIH research referred to above to generate a debate on the subject for his year of office.