Neighbourhood

Research | C-of-E churches responses to need

/ Andy Turner / Leave a comment

I’m studying Church of England (C-of-E) churches responses to need. The C-of-E is unusual, on the one-hand present across England in ‘every community’, active in neighbourhoods, managing volunteers, delivering projects and services. Its stated mission even includes to transform unjust structures of society. On the other-hand, it has a unique place at the heart of UK legislature, its bishops in the House of Lords. The C-of-E is distinctive!

After years of working with churches in disadvantaged communities (ongoing community work on housing estates, or with Church Urban Fund and more recently with Church Action on Poverty and St Martin in the Fields), I want to learn more about the response of C-of-E churches to need. I’m looking at a context of social change – we could talk about ‘deficit reduction‘ or more broadly, austerity – cuts to public services and increased need. What are C-of-E churches doing and how do they do it?

To help understand the responses of C-of-E churches to need, I’m using a theoretical framework developed by sociologist David Howe*. Howe building on original work by Burrell and Morgan (1979) wrote about four ‘types’ of intervention or responses to need used by social workers. I found his model a useful reference point. Here are Howe’s four types:

  • Fixers help individuals in need adapt to a changing context and envionment. Fixers use their experience and knowledge to help a person get back on track, dealing with complex issues. Examples include: Food bank, winter night shelter and money advice services.
  • Seekers after Meaning focus on understanding the perspective and experience of the person in need. This about using individual client centred approaches. Examples include: Counselling support, debt counselling and listening projects.
  • Raisers of Consciousness tackle wider inequality in society. Here individuals confront their own complex issues gaining control of their life. This approach recognises society must change. Examples include Asset Based Community Development, Community Organising and Poverty & Truth commissions.
  • Revolutionaries work to shift society, via a radical and political critique. Here, collective anger might lead to collegiate responses, campaigning and political engagement. Examples include direct action, protest, campaigns and lobbying.

Howe had his critics, however, I think his model is useful in framing responses to need.

Which ‘type’ best fits your churches response to need? More than one type maybe? Which is the dominant type? Where do you place your church activity on the doodle below? (Click on the doodle for a bigger view.)

Where would you place your churches general response to need?

My research is developing case studies focusing on four C-of-E churches, one for each of those four types. So, each church responds to need differently, and in varied contexts. It’s not a comparative study or looking to evaluate activity – I want to understand how churches do what they do. I will spend between 5 to 10 weeks with each, helping out with activity as a participant and interviewing some of those involved. Can you help?

If you are interested and want to learn more about this study and how to participate in the research, please be in touch (contact details on the illustration above). We can then go from there.

My study is independent, not commissioned by any organisation and has ethical approval by Goldsmiths University of London. All information provided by participants is confidential.

I’ll use this space to post updates and insights about the research.

Howe, D. (2008) “An Introduction to Social Work Theory”, Oxford: Routledge

Burrell, G; Morgan, G. (1979). “Sociological Paradigms and Organisational Analysis: Elements of the Sociology of Corporate Life”. London: Heinemann

 

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Consultation: Avoid the con’

/ Andy Turner / Leave a comment

The last few weeks I found myself on an estate facilitating a community consultation. It raised various challenges. Here are five insights:

1. Find the corporate memory

Here estate residents are frustrated at staff turnover in local authority departments. The churn of staff coming and goings generates an ‘institutional amnesia’ with new staff ‘forgetting’ decisions, key papers, documents, reports and findings from even recent consultations. Findings of previous consultations are ‘forgotten’. They forget they ever conducted consultations!

This is ‘institutional dementia’, where insight is lost, ignored or impossible to retrieve. This erodes confidence in local government and agency.

Dig around and find all the previous research and consultations you can. Bring it all together, on a website or at meetings. Find a way to summarise the research and recover the memory from previous studies.

2. Highlight uncoordinated plans 

Duplication happens all the time.  Councils commission, re-commission, inadvertently duplicating work going on in the office next door or down the corridor.

Competition between council departments hardly helps. This uncoordinated approach generates perceptions the local authority is unaware of work its doing.

Spot and challenge the lack of coordination and duplication. Highlight opportunities to collaborate between department and agency – finding ways to save cash.

3. Be clear it isn’t a stitch up

Residents talked about private contractors running consultations on behalf of the local authority. For residents, the contractors were ‘going through the motions’ – with no intentions of digging deep, finding reality and then producing recommendations informed by the findings. In fact the contractors and local authority had their plans.

The conflict of interest raises questions about the integrity of the consultation and the research findings. What is going on? What is the funders agenda?

Consultation is a great opportunity to promote the people, department and researchers – affirming the process and all those involved and invited to participate. It’s a moment to say options are open and this isn’t a stitch up. If you’re clear with the research funder the consultation isn’t a stitch up.

4. Find the Shops

You’d be surprised how much the ‘market place’, the centre of a community gets missed off conultations. Newsagents, grocers and adjacent bus stops have a big footfall.

I once surveyed an estate, inviting residents to return completed forms to the local supermarket, where the completed form became a £1 off discount coupon! The survey received a 38% return rate.

Your parade of shops is central to the community – get in there and spend time asking questions and listening to people.

5. Work with the funder on what comes next.

It’s important what happens to the findings once a consultation is completed. Consultation creates expectations amongst participants and disappointment and resentment when outcomes don’t turn out as anticipated.

How do you manage expectation?

Any confidence in an excellent consultation process turns to cynicism when the findings are forgotten, or the process is duplicated a week, month or year later. So, what’s the plan? It’s worth talking this through with the council department, agency or funder.

We could talk about using a local café as a base for people to find you. Or the importance of door to door, or consulting people outside of office hours and getting a feel for the estate early or late. More for next time!

Shut up or move in?

/ Andy Turner / Leave a comment

Back in 2009 I wrote a piece about Owen who ran a community project focused on litter picking, clearing flats, refurbishing homes and recycling furniture.

The project was held together by recovering addicts, who volunteered at the project. While it felt chaotic the outcomes were impressive – huge areas of land blighted by rubbish cleared up, by an organisation committed to involving those most excluded from society. It was brave, bold and ambitious, and preposterous!

Spend any time with Owen and the stories soon start to fly. Dog eared photo albums are dug out featuring filthy infested flats inhabited by haunted figures, each subsequently transformed in part by contact with an astonishing collective of kind, generous volunteers. On the estates workers in fluroscent jackets became common place, while the well-healed, well-to-do queue up for Saturday morning photo-calls; you can understand people wanting a slice of the action, and a guaranteed picture in the paper.

Owen and the project went on to be nominated for various gongs with visits to Highgrove and the Palace. Yet despite the interest, accolades and appearances, the modest funding to keep everything afloat was non-existent. Local supporters were bankrolling the project from private loans, while unemployed volunteers didn’t claim their benefits as they were volunteering with the project and no longer seeking a job. People found their vocation. It was with Owen.

Despite delivering outstanding work, the organisation lurched from one funding crisis to the next. It wasn’t sustainable. The project closed back in 2011 leaving Owen to go on and set up new initiatives.

Despite warm words about the significance of local projects to bring change,  despite the billions spent on research that affirms their critical role in building ‘resilient neighbourhoods’, despite the hours of training and ‘capacity building’ poured into the sector by local ‘council for voluntary service’ and similar organisations, these neighbourhood projects are now threatened by closure. Despite gushing rhetoric from successive governments, each have preceded over an erosion of their status with local authorities, opportunity for funding sliced and cuts to their own budgets. The impact is felt most on small projects and their capacity to work with those most excluded. Since 2011 many have followed Owen and shut down.

Nip back and revisit Owens project and you’ll probably be overwhelmed by the value placed on people written off, both in the brilliant service provided, and the way the team operate. You’d be shocked at the willingness of staff to empathise with the heart break many volunteers experienced, and their flexibility to react to extremes – accommodating difficult behaviour, affirming vulnerable humans. At times we’d be exhausted by the chaos pervading the organisation, frequently reacting to messy situations and circumstances. Getting work done – but at what cost to volunteers and staff?

Yet the problem for Owen isn’t the violent behaviour of a volunteer or destructive person using the service. Its the distance between their activity and the budget holder, the commissioner or policy maker.

Tucked away in a fourth floor office they are busy juggling agendas, making decisions about where dwindling resources maybe allocated, based on the quality of written information provided and targets met. The noisy, chaotic organisation that cannot fill in a form correctly or use the right spelling just fuels a perception of risk. ‘Risk is not good.’ The smaller, chaotic community group that delivers results brilliantly, but struggles to communicate, market, brand and present itself or explain its work, feels doomed. Never mind these organisations are loved locally, work with people and transform lives by the shed load.

Correct the geography – locate decision makers in offices adjacent to our Owen. Prioritise time to sniff out the work – the vulnerability of the volunteers and those calling in, needing help, see the anarchy, feel the chaos. And watch alchemists like Owen and his team doing their work with the most marginalised. Maybe then by being in the neighbourhood, and with a little imagination, projects like Owen’s will remain open, there work understood and supported. Maybe.