We don't like community groups much do we!

We don't like community groups much do we?

How else was it possible for the then third sector to grow 200% in 10 years under New Labour and yet small and medium sized charities ended up getting smaller at the same time?

This has to be a central concern for the Comunity Sector Coalition and all of its members - the continual failure to pass reources, voice and power down within the wider sector, let alone in society.

If the Voluntary & Community Sector (VCS) can't even set a good example why should government or anyone else take it remotely seriously

We also don't like community groups much because in the upper echelons of the VCS the great and the good keep trying to talk down to groups, suggesting interventions that are inappropriate and technocratic

Spot a community group, one that hasn't run away, and then lecture them about how poor their governance is, where's the business proposition, on and on with the sustained and continuous attack based on an assumption of superiority and then...

follow up by the inevitable sales pitch: why don't they pay money to go on a capacity building course to build up skills and confidence

Community groups are constantly faced by the assumption from above that they are are somehow not doing it properly and urgently need to have their skills boosted - where do you go with that?

The result would seem to be that they absent themselves from both government and those parts of the voluntary sector that seek to sweep into communities, grab contracts, do minimal consultation and exit

We'll see more of this predatory behaviour, if big society continues to lose its way because the only way larger nationals can now surive is to try to pick up work locally, which means a head on conflict of interest with indigenous groups

Community groups faced with a compact document that isn't about them, shun it.

Community groups faced with an LSP that meets privately in a hiden corner of the town hall ignore it.

Community groups basically are far too busy to be bothered with anything that is not immediately relevent

And what is it with this enterprise model all the time? Not every one is a failure if they haven't swallowed an MBA for breakfast

Instead of exhorting community groups to become Alan Sugar Apprentice clones (there is a very good reason why increasingly less people say they trust the voluntary sector after all) the winner takes all culture that dominated the ChangeUp capacitybuilders era needs to be seen for what it is - meaningless for most of the sector most of the time

Still we have the assumption of enterprise good; community sector bad - when surely it was a naive belief in enterprise that brough our banks to their knees and hence the enusing mess in the first place - why would we want to revisit that way of operating on our community groups? Perhaps they don't want to do a pyramid selling version of community assets thank you very much

Big Society and its ideologues understood the failure and venality of recent years which is why it is able to frame cuts in the following way - see page 7 below

http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/426258/support-stronger-civil-society.pdf

But it is not entirely clear whether the new coalition has more regard for community groups than the previous lot.

Logically the focus on civil society organisations is all but identical. But the nascent localism bill fails to locate the sector last time I noticed and given that we've all been here before and seen big rhetoric fail to fire, the alarm bells are ringing rather loudly about the lack of substance behind how Big Society actually works, i.e. maybe it doesn't.

Big Society seems to have inherited New Labour's magical thinking about social enterprise, not noticing that social entreprenurs are every bit as grant dependent as their voluntary sector competitors (note that comunity groups never had much money anyway)

http://www.tsrc.ac.uk/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=MqmKeY9Ciss%3d&tabid=749

If you don't like community groups then the first thing you might want to do is change them into something you do like that reflects your ideological prejudices but by doing so mutual failure is guranteed.

For that reason CSC's call for a new settlement that puts the sector at the centre of the VCS via our unleashing the potential doc also on the website,

http://www.communitysectorcoalition.org.uk/policy/our-policy-position

is the way we think we need to go

Community groups first not last!

And strictly on their own terms otherwise why would they bother to show up at all?