Volunteering - Think Local Act Personal

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Directors of Adult Services (ADASS), Shared. Lives Plus and the ..... networks. How we work with, engage and support soc
Volunteering:

unlocking the real wealth of people and communities

Author: Catherine Wilton on behalf of Think Local Act Personal, In Control, CSV, ADASS and SCIE

Acknowledgements Many thanks to Sarah Carr (SCIE), Alex Fox (Shared Lives Plus), Martin Routledge (TLAP and In Control), Duncan Tree (CSV), Jo Cleary (ADASS) and Shahana Ramsden (TLAP) for their helpful contributions.

Photography credits: Front left cover image appears courtesy of Mary Turner. Front right cover image appears courtesy of Andrew Fox for City Can Cycle.

This document has been produced in association with:

July 2012

Volunteering: unlocking the real wealth of people and communities 1

Foreword Volunteering is often seen as a ‘nice’ add-on to the ‘real’ work of professionals and experts. This game-changing paper shows that people’s voluntary and unpaid contributions are crucial to the care and support that others may need, to make choices and exercise control over their lives. A service which draws on a team of volunteers might have a better chance of affordably meeting an individual’s support needs. But where everyone touched by an organisation’s work is seen as having the potential to make a valuable contribution, there is a real chance of helping that individual to live a good life. Examples drawn from key members of the Think Local Act Personal’s partnership and beyond illustrate that creating new opportunities for people who use services to contribute to those around them can have a deep impact, not only upon those service users but also upon professionals and members of the wider community. In recent years, timebanking has become increasingly recognised, alongside more ‘traditional’ volunteering approaches, as another effective way of embedding reciprocity in a community. Many lesser-known but equally effective approaches are now taking root and take a similar ‘assets’ approach to the people with whom they interact. This means recognising people’s gifts, skills and potential, not just their needs and it goes to the heart of making personalisation real. Increasingly, the goal of services should not only be to develop personally-tailored packages of support, but also to help people find new ways to shape communities in which they feel they are valued and belong.

Alex Fox, Chief Executive Officer, Shared Lives Plus

“Real wealth grows in communities where people are better able to see one another's capacities and can discover practical ways to look out for each other.” In Control www.in-control.org.uk

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Background and purpose In its strategic vision for volunteering, the Department of Health made a commitment to developing information for the social care sector to illustrate how volunteering is having an impact and how it is being effectively promoted and supported locally. This paper delivers on the commitment and Think Local Act Personal has produced this report for social care organisations, in collaboration with some of its partners – In Control, Community Service Volunteers (CSV), the Association of Directors of Adult Services (ADASS), Shared Lives Plus and the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE). It describes how the sector is working with people and families to deliver personalisation and to grow and nurture strong, inclusive communities. It includes examples from the Building Community Capacity learning network and elsewhere to promote the benefits of co-production, volunteering and participation as an intrinsic part of social care transformation.



The importance of thinking beyond services and outside health and social care when creating opportunities for volunteering and community connections



The role of co-production in enabling people to make a contribution to their community



The importance of placing equality and inclusion at the forefront when creating volunteering opportunities



That it takes time and effort to invite and nurture voluntarism and there is a role for local authorities and providers in capacity building, market shaping and harnessing local energy and ideas



That the return on effort and investment are worth it.

The examples emphasise:



The benefits of taking a strategic approach to participation

Volunteering: unlocking the real wealth of people and communities 3

Introduction The Social Care White paper, ‘Caring for our future: reforming care and support’ stresses the value of supportive communities and community connections to improve health and wellbeing. It states the Government's intention to encourage people to contribute to their communities and ‘give a helping hand’ to others, including through peer support. Its strategic vision for volunteering, ‘Social action for health and well-being: building co-operative communities,’1 talks of ways to encourage and promote more volunteering, through strong leadership, partnership working, commissioning for social value and creating good volunteering experiences that are open to all. Taken alongside the Government’s ‘Big Society’ agenda,2 the ‘Giving’ White paper3 and new ‘Community Rights’4 which are coming on-stream as part of the implementation of the Localism Act, it is clear that there is a strong government support for individual selfhelp, volunteering and community action. It is widely acknowledged that these are not new concepts – town halls, providers and userled organisations, understand the value of voluntarism and have been working with, and investing in community groups and the third sector for a long time. Many providers of social care and voluntary sector organisations have been at the forefront of transforming care and support services through personcentred practice and co-production.

There is a strong tradition of social action in local communities irrespective of government policy. However, the Think Local Act Personal (TLAP) partnership, representing over 30 major organisations committed to social care transformation, does agree that there is a need for continued development. This should build on the excellent practice that is going on across the country, so it achieves inclusive, welcoming and supportive communities in which everyone is enabled to participate as a full and equal citizen. TLAP recognises the difficulties that reduced funding can bring, but there is strong evidence that focusing on communities and the contributions that people can make can result in better health and wellbeing outcomes, more efficient use of resources and financial savings.

1 www.dh.gov.uk/health/2011/10/strategic-vision-for-volunteering/ 2 Cabinet Office (2010). Building the Big Society. Coalition policy paper www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/default/files/resources/building-big-society_0.pdf 3 www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/giving-white-paper 4 http://communityrights.communities.gov.uk/

‘The fact that social needs continue to rise is not due to a failure to consult or conduct opinion research. It is due to a failure to ask people for their help and to use the skills they have. This is the forgotten engine of change that makes the difference between systems working and failing. Instead, people are defined entirely by their needs and so those needs become the only asset they have.’ New Economics Foundation Co-production: A manifesto for growing the core economy, 2008.

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The partnership agreement, which initiated Think Local Act Personal, talked about connecting people together, putting community capacity at the heart of joined-up prevention strategies, and encouraging more niche and community-based support. Coproduction and participation also lie at the heart of TLAP’s ‘Making it Real: Marking progress towards personalised, community

based support,’ which sets out what people who use care and support say that they would expect to see and experience if personalisation is happening in practice and working well in an organisation. These statements from three of the themes of Making it Real demonstrate that voluntarism and community are essential elements of getting personalisation right:

Information and advice – ‘I know where to get information about what is going on in my community.’ Organisations doing well in this area are investing in initiatives such as community navigator schemes and independent advice and brokerage. They recognise that inclusive local groups, involving volunteers drawn from the local community, are often better placed than statutory services to know what’s going on and to let others know about it.

Flexible, integrated care and support – ‘I have care and support that is directed by me and responsive to my needs.’ Commissioners demonstrating progress against this statement understand that shaping the social care market to encourage community and voluntary organisations and micro-social enterprise is vital. Providers working towards this goal are embracing the benefits of coproducing with people and their families and are linking people to community supports.

Risk enablement – ‘I feel that my community is a safe place to live and local people look out for me and each other.’ An essential element here involves creating the conditions to enable good-neighbourliness to flourish – through community development, supporting reciprocal schemes such as timebanking and by adding conditions like participation and inclusion to commissioning and grant-giving criteria.

This issue is wider than simply encouraging volunteering. It is certainly not about leaving people and communities to fend for themselves or getting volunteers to do the work of paid staff in order to save money (although there is strong evidence that building social capital is worth the financial investment). Volunteering should not be about replacing professional staff or services or ‘making’ people do unpaid jobs

they are not ready or able to do. It is also important to stress that this it is not about asking carers to do more either. It is about nurturing and supporting the ‘core economy’5 of family and community, enabling all to have an opportunity to contribute, hold a stake in society and to influence the decisions that are made locally in the planning, commissioning and delivery of public services.

5 For more information on the ‘core economy’ see www.neweconomics.org/publications/co-production

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Think Local Act Personal’s Building Community Capacity workstream has been encouraging providers and commissioners of social care to think about action in four key areas in order to achieve this:

• Building social support networks – because social networks are associated with reduced illness and death rates, can protect against dementia and promote good mental health.



Encouraging membership of groups – because participating in a group cuts your chance of dying in the next year by half; there is evidence that peer support gives a huge social return on investment; and because voluntary groups rooted in the community are well-placed to develop personalised support.



Nurturing an inclusive community – because a whole community focus can improve things for all – reduced crime, cleaner streets, increased educational attainment; and because making the most of local facilities uses resources efficiently and contributes to their economic viability.

• Enabling everyone to make a contributionBecause ‘giving’ is associated with positive health and wellbeing, reduced mortality rates and also provides a huge amount of social value (between £2 and £8 for every pound spent on volunteers); and because co-producing reform with commissioners, providers, people who use services and communities in making key decisions about local services gives you a much better chance of getting decisions right.6

6 All these references, and more, which help to build a business case for investing in community approaches, can be found on the Building Community Capacity website at www.thinklocalactpersonal.org.uk/BCC/ EvidenceAndEvaluation/whatworks and in our joint publication with Research in Practice for Adults www.thinklocalactpersonal.org.uk/BCC/EvidenceAndEvaluation/whatworks/?parent=8934&child=9280

“Family, neighbourhood, community are the Core Economy. The Core Economy produces love and caring, coming to each other’s rescue, democracy and social justice. It is time now to invest in rebuilding the Core Economy.” Edgar S. Kahn, Civil rights lawyer, social innovator and founder of Timebanking

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Think Local Act Personal has produced a series of tools and resources to help councils, providers and local communities think about these four aspects of active and supportive communities: Are we there yet? A planning tool and checklist for building community connections7 This tool sets out a vision of what a ‘gold standard’ in building community connections and networks might look like. It includes a checklist of statements that individuals and communities might be saying if there was strong social capital in a local area and shows how to make the important links between social capital, Think Local Act Personal and the health and wellbeing agenda as a whole.

Does it work? A guide to evaluating community capacity initiatives8 This guide shows how to evaluate initiatives for their impact on social capital and community capacity. It emphasises the importance of involving local people in evaluation, demonstrating that the process of evaluation can be capacity-building in itself. The Building Community Capacity website This comprehensive resource has sections on evidence, evaluation, over 50 case studies, and access to the learning network. www.thinklocalactpersonal.org.uk/BCC

How the sector is delivering There is some excellent practice across the country, and the Building Community Capacity learning network continues to collect and share case studies of what works and to explore how to make co-production and participation part of the core business of public services. The examples below demonstrate how the sector is already delivering on the aspirations in the White Paper to encourage community action. They capture some of the essential elements and aim to encourage further innovation and progress in making personalisation real.

A strategic approach to building social capital Experience from across the country is making it clear that placing the involvement of local people and the building of social capital at the heart of a clear and strong local strategic

approach to health and wellbeing is an important element of making substantial progress. Health and Wellbeing Boards offer a huge opportunity to move strategies and priorities in health, social care and public health in an entirely new direction, with crosscutting action promoted through Local Strategic Partnerships.

7 Miller C et al (2011) www.thinklocalactpersonal.org.uk/BCC/EvidenceAndEvaluation/AreWeThereYet/ 8 Wilton C et al (2011). www.thinklocalactpersonal.org.uk/_library/Resources/BCC/Does_it_work.pdf

Volunteering: unlocking the real wealth of people and communities 7

Leeds City Council, NHS Airedale, Bradford and Leeds and the Leeds Initiative (Leeds LSP) has developed a charter for the local Ageing Well, called ‘The Time of Our Lives’. It sets out a vision in which all older people have ‘the opportunity to feel valued in their community and to live healthy, fulfilling lives with adequate access to, and choice and control over, any support that they may need.’ Organisations across the city are being asked to sign up to the charter which includes a number of pledges relating to co-production, social capital and the assets, skills and gifts of older people. The council and local NHS are also undertaking development work with organisations across Leeds to embed the principles. The charter asks organisations to pledge to:

• •

Value older people and the knowledge, skills and experience that they can contribute.



Promote ways that older people can gain and retain friendships in Leeds and highlight the networks of support available in their local communities.



Hear the voices of older people and work in partnership with them to develop accessible services which will meet their needs and address any disabling barriers they may face.



Focus on older people within their communities when considering their needs and wishes, rather than thinking of them solely within organisational boundaries.

Promote active citizenship by providing different opportunities for older people to become involved in their communities and contribute to society for as long as they wish, for example through working, intergenerational work, lifelong learning or volunteering.

Thinking beyond services Whilst many agree that an ‘asset’ approach is the best way for public services to work, there is no getting away from the fact that the current social care assessment process works on a deficit model and can encourage

dependency not active citizenship. In Control in collaboration with Shared Lives Plus, Community Catalysts and Inclusive Neighbourhoods have published a report on the ‘front end’ problems of social care9 – exploring the impact of assessment processes on an individual’s independence and to their

9 www.in-control.org.uk/media/113561/redesigning%20the% 20front%20end%20of%20social%20care%20final.pdf

“We are learning to engage with people as active citizens and community members, where the majority of the care and support is offered up by families, friends and local networks. How we work with, engage and support social capital is a first order question for commissioners across the public sector as we transform the model of public service delivery. We cannot afford not to make this a core part of our business.” Richard Jones, Executive Director Adult and Community Services, Lancashire County Council

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Several councils, including Derby City and Middlesborough, are piloting Local Area Co-ordination. This approach, which originated in Western Australia, involves local coordinators working on the ground with individuals, families and communities to help people find ‘non-service’ ways of living a good life. Co-ordinators support people to contribute to their communities, strengthen the capacity of communities to welcome and include people, identify gaps in services and support organisations to work better together.

relationships with their family and community. Some councils are trying to move away from this through making sure that self-directed support planning includes discussion about community support and volunteering opportunities.

Thinking beyond the boundaries of health and social care Many social care organisations are looking beyond the immediate boundaries of adult services and encouraging people to form

10 www.jrf.org.uk/publications/older-peoples-experiences-support

groups and participate in community life wherever their interest lies. The key to success is starting with what people and communities are interested in rather than just focusing on what the organisations want. One response to tackling social isolation might involve tendering for a befriending service. There are great examples of schemes like this and they have found to be extremely cost-effective. However, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s ‘Not a One Way Street’10 looked at the opportunities for building mutuality and reciprocity into support for older people with high support needs.

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United Response supported John to set up his own community recycling scheme. He was already recycling glass and bottles for his housemates and taking them to the nearby recycling centre and they wanted to find a way for John to get more engaged with his community. They helped him to come up with a plan, to design and deliver flyers in his street and arrange collection from his neighbours. Before long the scheme was a great success. The neighbours are finding it extremely helpful and has got to know people so much better. He’s now been given a Small Sparks grant in order to get equipment to make it easier.

Case studies demonstrated the effectiveness of arrangements designed to enable those involved to give as well as receive support. Projects that focus on enjoyable activities that people want to do rather than themed around their need or medical condition are proving to be successful. Taking a whole community rather than a targeted approach, and using local amenities has additional benefits for community cohesion and wellbeing and has a commercial benefit for local facilities.

Putting co-production at the heart of social care transformation There is a growing appreciation that coproduction is an essential element of social care transformation and that engaging and involving local citizens in a spirit of genuine partnership leads to better services. Some people will not want to play a traditional volunteering role or consider themselves a

Buckinghamshire County Council funded a voluntary group to set up a Pub Lunch Club scheme that encourages older people in rural areas to meet up once a month in a local pub. A dozen such clubs have set-up over the past year with each made up of between of 20 and 50 members. The groups have been found to be self-sustaining after a short amount of initial input from a coordinator. As well as helping club members make new friends and build stronger social networks, the project also has the positive side effect of supporting the local pubs, valued community assets.

“From the experience of Rushey Green Time bank, I am absolutely convinced that co-production and reciprocity are transformational. Without sounding flippant and arrogant – and we all do our best to serve our fellow humans – I believe that many professionals (including some in the voluntary sector) have to undo the way they have been trained, think, and have traditionally interacted with their customers. It doesn't mean that they have to ditch empathy and compassion, but they need to turn passive 'service users' into co-producers.” Philippe Granger, Rushey Green Timebank

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‘volunteer’ but will have an extremely valuable contribution to make through their ideas and experience. People articulate their ideas about ‘giving’ differently.11 Co-production makes the most of the unique assets and insights that local people have as citizens, community members or from their experience of using

services and gives them new and diverse ways of making a contribution. SCIE’s paper, ‘The Big Society and innovation in care and support for adults’ reports the views of people and organisations across social care who participated in two SCIE expert seminars in 2010.

The London Borough of Lambeth is piloting new approaches to Community-led Commissioning at neighbourhood level. The work was initiated as part of its Co-operative Council Commission report ‘Sharing Power: A new settlement between citizens and the state,’ and is being led by a community consortium. The objective is to develop the practical business models for community-led commissioning. Two areas of work have emerged from this process – the first is around identifying opportunities for the community and council to work together as partners in shaping and designing services together. The second is the emerging proposals around co-operative libraries, which provide a community-led approach to the design and delivery of this universal service. Libraries within this model are seen within a holistic concept, where safe spaces are provided for all to enjoy. The physical presence of the library building provides the platform or ‘community hub’ where wider preventive actions can be designed within neighbourhoods. Communities have identified a range of engagement levels that they would like to explore with the council. These opportunities range from influencing to direct management of public resources. The Council is now working with these communities to design a flexible approach to the needs of communities which include making available funding to communities for them to commission capacity building services tailored to their needs and aspirations. This project raises fundamental issues for the Council in terms of its existing commissioning and procurement, the resources it holds and how it manages them. Public sector officers and commissioners are required to work in partnership with community-led organisations to develop new priorities and investment plans. The model goes beyond the consultative by recognising the unique position and insights of the community.

11 See www.ivr.org.uk/images/stories/Institute-of-Volunteering-Research/Migrated-Resources/Documents/A/an_exclusive_contstruct.pdf

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Birmingham City Council was one of the first councils to pilot Making it Real. It established a Service User-led Quality Board to look at quality assurance in services. Made up of 12 service users and carers, the board’s initial piece of work was to look at minimum standards for first assessments, including whether the social worker arrived on time, treated clients respectfully during the assessment, and informed them what would happen next. Social workers now leave a questionnaire with clients at the end of the assessment which gives them the opportunity to express whether they were satisfied with the service they received. “This gives people a voice,” says Melanie Gray, Performance Management Officer in the council’s Adults and Communities Directorate. “It is a way of directly capturing from users and carers how good they think the quality of that interaction has been. It costs nothing to treat people with dignity and respect, to not use jargon, and listen to what they want.” Board co-Chair Janis Deakin, agrees: “Social care was very tokenistic when I became disabled in the 1980s. Over the years that barrier has been broken down. Now, I hope, we are part of a group that has a qualification – and that is knowing and understanding what disability is and what the needs are.”

The key messages include a need for culture change towards person-centred, co-productive approaches; collaborative working between agencies; and the importance of focussing on social capital and the role of volunteers.12,13 The NESTA Co-Production catalogue is a very helpful resource which brings together examples of collaborative public services in action, particularly in health and social care.14

Ensuring equality of opportunity and inclusion in volunteering In their Five Ways to Wellbeing,15 the New Economics Foundation highlight evidence that reciprocity and ‘giving back’ to others promote well-being for people of all ages. Active participation in social and community life has been strongly associated with happiness and

life satisfaction and offering support to others has even been shown to be associated with reduced mortality rates. Volunteering can also be a route into employment and community integration. However, as shown by the 200809 Citizenship Survey,16 disabled people and people with a long-term limiting illness are less likely participate in volunteering than the rest of the population. Local and central Government have an opportunity to promote access into volunteering for older and disabled people by adding criteria around access and inclusion to grant giving. At a national level, this could be done through the Health and Social Care Volunteering Fund mentioned in the White Paper or through other national funding. CSV runs a number of supported volunteering projects for people with learning disabilities across the UK, involving local part-time volunteers and full-time volunteers from the UK and abroad.

12 SCIE Research Briefing 31 on co-production and adult social care transformation www.scie.org.uk/publications/briefings/briefing31/ 13 www.scie.org.uk/publications/misc/bigsocietyinnovation.pdf 14 www.nesta.org.uk/library/documents/pphcat.pdf 15 http://neweconomics.org/projects/five-ways-well-being 16 www.communities.gov.uk/documents/statistics/pdf/1547056.pdf

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The Access to Volunteering programme, set up by the former Office of the Third Sector, provided grant funding aimed at increasing the involvement of disabled people in volunteering. The programme was very successful, supporting 7,000 disabled volunteers in three pilot regions, 67% of whom were new to volunteering. 25 of the 28 organisations who participated in the evaluation said that they would continue to support disabled volunteers.

Now in its twelfth year, Essex Supported Volunteering recruits local community volunteers to enable young people and adults with a learning disability in Basildon, Brentwood and Castlepoint/Rochford to become more independent. They are given individualised support so they can successfully access appropriate volunteering opportunities, community facilities and life skills such as travel training. The programme has wide-reaching benefits by enabling disabled people to play a role in supporting others, becoming the givers not receivers of care. CSV’s Retired and Senior Volunteering Programme supports over 15,000 older people to contribute to their community through a range of volunteering opportunities. Projects are organised and led by volunteers and opportunities with RSVP are as diverse as the volunteers themselves. For example, CSV Grandmentors is an innovative project in Islington, Hackney and Camden that harnesses the energy and experience of older volunteers to support young people to find work, stay on in education or take up training. Many of the young people they support don't have positive adult role models, others lack direction, some have been in trouble with the police and others have been homeless. Grandmentors visit a young person regularly and help them work towards goals such as finding an apprenticeship or getting on to a college course. ‘City Can Cycle’ project in Brierley Hill, West Midlands is run by RSVP organiser John Lane. John collects and refurbishes unwanted bicycles, then donates them to his local community. Local publicity has led to an influx of cycles and allowed him to make donations for example to a fourteen year old boy whose original bike had been stolen and to the younger members of a local family, victims of domestic violence presently in sheltered accommodation. As John says: “We never turn a bike away. So our big challenge now is to find storage and work space.”

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Investing time to nurture participation and unlock innovation There is a role for councils, providers and front-line staff in stimulating, managing and shaping local opportunities for participation. Local community groups and individuals with good ideas may need some support, a ‘listening’ ear and partners who are flexible enough to make things happen. This could be about investing in community development, outreach and local partnerships or more formal support mechanisms. Commissioning practices which enable small providers and third sector groups to enter the market will be increasingly crucial in health and social care, particularly given the current

Public Services (Social Value) Act 201217 which requires public authorities to have regard to economic, social and environmental wellbeing in connection with public services contracts. In the London Borough of Lambeth, a team of council ‘entrepreneurs’ help organisations get up and running and develop local third sector markets. Other organisations are commissioning Community Catalysts,18 a social enterprise owned by Shared Lives Plus,19 to stimulate and support local enterprises. Very small community organisations often operate ‘under the radar’ but are a vital part of the local support infrastructure, particularly for people who feel marginalised by mainstream, generic providers. On an individual level, volunteers need an invitation, a welcome and to be thanked for their contribution. Offering to paying expenses

South Gloucestershire, supported by the Local Government Association, is working to build capacity in order to tackle the issue of loneliness and social isolation. The council is holding a series of events involving a wider range of stakeholders to explore what’s working and not working in relation to community capacity and social networks. The workshops are aiming to shape the market for community-based support, engaging small as well as large voluntary sector groups and statutory services and getting them to think about their ‘offer’ around building local support networks. The work will result in a co-produced strategy to tackle isolation and will be evaluated by a peer review.

17 www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/3/enacted and www.socialenterprise.org.uk/uploads/files/2012/03/public_services_act_2012_a_brief_guide_web_version_final.pdf 18 See www. CommunityCatalysts.co.uk 19 See www.SharedLivesPlus.org.uk

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The Community Fundholding model being developed by In Control is a way for local commissioning bodies to develop devolved decision-making through communities. A lead ‘group’ like a community association or voluntary group acting for the community agrees to use a devolved community budget flexibly to achieve a set of agreed outcomes. The approach builds on the learning from self-directed support and enables commissioners and communities to share power and resources, opening up space for new, innovative ways of achieving policy goals. It has been designed to encourage as many people as possible to contribute.20

and providing training and support are critical to retaining volunteers. Volunteering England has a Good Practice bank for information about ways to support and manage volunteering.21 There are new, innovative methods of thanking people for their contribution, such as timebanking. The ‘Small Sparks’ initiative is proof that unlocking ideas for community participation does not have to cost much. The idea, which

originated in Seattle, is to give small grants of between £50 and £500 to local people in order to do something fun and beneficial in the local community. In Wigan, a young man, with the support of his mum and dad, used the money to print a flyer advertising a sponsored cycle ride. 200 people came. £7,000 was raised for Wigan Scope. Joe became well known in the neighbourhood for his part in the ride.

Spice is a social enterprise that develops timebanking systems that invite community members not to be passive recipients of community services, but to help actively deliver them. For every active hour that a community member 'gives' to the community organisation is an hour which can be used to access community events, trips and services. The results are dramatic, levels of active engagement rapidly increase, negative social problems decrease and the negative cycles of dependency and inactivity begin to unravel.22

In Wigan, a young man, with the support of his mum and dad, used the money to print a flyer advertising a sponsored cycle ride. 200 people came. £7,000 was raised for Wigan Scope. Joe became well known in the neighbourhood for his part in the ride. In West Sussex some people had found it difficult to open a bank account. They decided to find out their rights and tell others. They used the Small Sparks money to buy display materials and got the agreement of a local bank to set up a stall and explain “Easy Steps to Banking”.23

20 www.in-control.org.uk/what-we-do/building-stronger-communities/community-fund-holding.aspx 21 www.volunteering.org.uk/goodpractice 22 www.justaddspice.org/our-work.html 23 Source In Control www.in-control.org.uk/media/55724/in%20control%20first%20phase%20report%202003-2005.pdf

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Keeping the faith – knowing it’s worth it



Support groups like the Expert Patient Programme promote health and save money – £6.09 social return per £1 spent

In these times of national and local financial difficulties, it is more important than ever that the strong case for investing in developing participation and volunteering is made. Spending on community development and promoting participation can produce strong value for money returns in a very short space of time. The benefits are also beyond health and social care – Neighbourhood Watch can reduce crime by up to a quarter; over 50s sports groups increase use of local facilities , environmental ‘rescue’ volunteers contribute to cleaner, greener neighbourhoods; ‘Speed Watch’ volunteers help reduce traffic speed, and supporting street parties and community events like carnivals promotes community cohesion.



A social return on investment study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found a return of between £2 and £8 for every pound spent on volunteers



Research undertaken by the New Economics Foundation found that investing £1 in community development delivers £3 of social value



Europe-wide research using the ‘Volunteer Investment Value Audit’ (VIVA) method showed returns of between 1.3 and 13.5 to one on the financial investment.24

Some examples of the financial and social return on investment in volunteering include:

• Peer support in mental health can save bed days and reduce hospital re-admissions by 50% compared with traditional care. A Leeds Survivor-Led Crisis Service saves £28,000 each year compared with traditional care.25

The Health Empowerment Leverage Project (HELP) worked in three local authority areas: Smiths Wood, North Solihull; Townstal in Dartmouth, Devon; and Putney Vale in Wandsworth, London over an 18-month period to promote participation and community involvement and better collaboration between agencies. The effects of the pilot projects over 18 months were that local communities and service agencies together created a range of new or extended local developments such as: increased volunteering, wider social networks, better awareness and cooperation between community groups, legal and benefits advice, sessions on weight management and smoking cessation, sports activities, a safe cycling club, improving woodlands and dancing. Using GP practice-level data the project group estimates that the financial savings per neighbourhood over three years will be £655,162, against an investment in setting up the project of £145,500. HELP received Department of Health funding for their pilots and now recommend that Health and Wellbeing Boards and Local Strategic Partnerships commission this kind of activity. They claim that investment in the 20% most disadvantaged neighbourhoods in a typical local authority or Clinical Commissioning Groups would produce a health saving of £4,242,726 over three years – just over £1.41m a year. Using this form of community development in the 20% most disadvantaged neighbourhoods in England would save the public purse £330m a year.26

24 For more details, see the Building Community Capacity website www.thinklocalactpersonal.org.uk/BCC/EvidenceAndEvaluation/ whatworks/EconomicCase/ 25 www.together-uk.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2011/11/livedexperienceleaflet.pdf 26 Health Empowerment Leverage Project (HELP) November 2011 www.healthempowermentgroup.org.uk/files/project_papers/DH_ report_Nov_2011.pdf

16 Volunteering: unlocking the real wealth of people and communities

Professor Martin Knapp of the London School of Economics and Political Science found that investing in projects that aim to increase social capital have the potential to improve quality of life for individuals and communities and can save money. Professor Knapp found that:



Befriending schemes cost around £80 per older person but could save around £35 in the first year of the scheme alone with probable extra savings - POPPs pilots showed that quality of life improvements as a result of better mental health could be valued at £300 per person per year



The average cost per member of a timebank is £450 but results in savings of over £1,300 per member



Community navigators cost under £300 per person but result in savings of £900 per person in the first year.27

There is also a clear and strong case for investment in community development being made by several of the Building Community Capacity project partners.

The Voluntary Organisations Disability Group has also produced a paper showing the tremendous added value and potential for reduced cost of using third sector organisations to deliver on local priorities.

27 www.thinklocalactpersonal.org.uk/BCC/EvidenceAndEvaluation/whatworks/

Volunteering: unlocking the real wealth of people and communities 17

KeyRing facilitate Living Support Networks across the country. A network is made up of 10 ordinary homes. People who need support live in nine of them and a Community Living Volunteer lives in the tenth. The members all help each other out and the volunteer supports members to explore what’s going on in their neighbourhood and get involved. KeyRing have calculated that their model can equate to around 25% sustainable savings over alternative models. For example, the former Care Services Efficiency Delivery programme studied a network in a market town that had an annual running cost of £38,090. They calcaluated that alternative support would have cost £55,430, a net saving of £17,340 or 31%. KingRing networks also improve individuals’ social life and confidence, enabling members to be more resilient in terms of living independently in the community. MacIntyre has a contract with Derbyshire Council to move away from traditional day centre provision and towards services that promote independence. People using the day services said that they wanted a larger number of smaller local facilities that helped them learn and develop skills to make them employable. MacIntyre has created six smaller hubs to replace the two day centres, providing activities and learning opportunities for between 20 and 30 individuals each. The new hubs are much more integrated and engaged with the local community. People who are supported have been able to go and work/volunteer in the local community, including at Chesterfield Football Club. MacIntyre have also been able to make efficiency savings of £100,000 a year wich have been reinvested in the service. These have come from a variety of sources including through personalised contracts and by redefining staffing roles and structures. Reinvesting money has provided an added incentive to work as efficiently as possible. VODG ‘Gain without Pain’28

Conclusion Think Local Act Personal welcomes the emphasis on voluntarism and participation in the White Paper but recognises that many councils and their partners are focussed on the increasingly difficult task of balancing budgets. Reduced funding for health and social care makes reform more difficult but even more important. There are many good examples of how councils, providers, third sector organisations and communities are already delivering on the Government’s aspirations, despite financial difficulties. Such changes

often result from doing things differently not spending more. Organisations whose culture and commissioning practices are geared towards building community connections and participation will benefit from more engaged citizens, happier and healthier communities and better, more efficient services.

28 www.vodg.org.uk/uploads/Gain_without_Pain_Finalprintedversion.pdf

Think Local, Act Personal is a sector-wide commitment to moving forward with personalisation and community-based support, endorsed by organisations comprising representatives from across the social care sector including local government, health, private, independent and community organisations. For a full list of partners visit www.thinklocalactpersonal.org.uk