Kate Bowgett's blog

In today's Third Sector Jonathan Sedgwick, deputy chief executive for policy and strategy at the UK Border Agency, is pushing the proposed scheme to fast track citizenship for people who volunteer.

He outlines some of the ways he sees it working, and reassures the voluntary sector that they have a chance to shape the way the programme develops:

"We are keen that the voluntary sector has its say on this scheme," he says. "I would encourage volunteering groups to play a positive role in determining the shape of the policy by getting involved now, at the consultation stage."

All well and good, except I've just been looking at the consultation around the proposed changes to citizenship.

Now it could be that I'm just being very dim (after all I'm only a Volunteer Manager, not a civil servant), but reading through the whole thing, I can't actually see any (official!) way of us commenting on the active citizenship part of the proposals.  The consultation is in the form of a set of questions that you can respond to; however there isn't really a question about the active citizenship proposals.  

They ask "Do you think that the current Nationality Checking Service model can be successfully built upon to provide a 'check and send' service for Earned Citizenship? If no, why not?", but that's asking about the National Checking Service's ability to rubber stamp that people have been volunteering, not about the issues around that volunteering happening in the first place.  

The economic downturn would seem to have created boom time for volunteering. Volunteer Centres are reporting record numbers of volunteer enquiries, and the government has just put millions into a scheme using volunteering as a step toward employability for the long term unemployed.

But unless the sector is careful, this slump could have real risks for volunteer management, and the way volunteering is perceived.

Volunteering and volunteer management have transformed since the last time we were in a recession. Organisations involve volunteers much more professionally, using the gift of time more effectively, and ensuring that volunteering is a positive experience where both organisation and volunteer benefit.

However this step change could well come to a grinding halt as credit crunch sets in, and as the spectre of job substitution rears its ugly head. Money is scarce on the ground for everyone, and as organisations face cutbacks, one solution is to replace our paid staff with volunteers.

Funding bodies push us to reduce our overheads to the absolute minimum, arguing that as the ‘Voluntary' sector shouldn't more of our workers be just that?

As funding starts to dry up its easy to see why panicked organisations look at making staff cuts and relying on volunteers to take up the slack. Many would argue that job substitution is a pragmatic solution to a loss of funding.

Faced with having to close down and organisation, or withdraw funding, isn't it just the lesser of two evils? But what do we loose if we make this compromise? The practice of replacing paid staff with volunteers does not show up our sector in a particularly good light, and does little to persuade the public at large that volunteering is a positive thing to do.

A common argument people use for not volunteering is that organisations exploit volunteers.It becomes harder to argue against this if volunteers are being used purely to save on staff costs.

 As the new Equality Bill makes it's way through parliament, Tim Boswell, Conservative MP for Daventry, has proposed that it should be extended to cover volunteers. Boswell's new clause states that, with the exception of matters related to pay, "all rights of employees under this act are deemed to extend to persons who work as volunteers without remuneration; and all duties of employees and their employers to avoid discrimination are deemed to extend to volunteers working without remuneration".

 If this goes through it would potentially have quite a big impact on volunteer involving organisations, particularly smaller ones with less formal systems in place. Over the course of my career I have seen quite a lot of cases of blatant discrimination, and a big part of me would welcome a move to give volunteers the right to challenge this. However I do also worry that without the resources to develop, and manage appropriate policies, procedures and practice, many organisations are going to seriously struggle.

If Tim Boswell's amendment was accepted, would it be a positive step forward to making volunteering accessible to everyone, or would it create a burden for organisations making volunteer involvement to bureaucratic and formal?

There's an article in today's Guardian about the proposed compulsory youth 'volunteering' scheme.

"David Blunkett, the former home ­secretary, is to draw up plans for the prime minister to make all teenagers take part in voluntary work, according to officials.

Blunkett is expected to chair an ­advisory panel on how to make the under-19s complete 50 hours of ­community ­service, something Gordon Brown has said he wants to make a manifesto commitment."

Dianne Abbott MP has put down an early day motion on volunteering, which:

"...notes that currently those volunteering more than 16 hours per week are not entitled to jobseeker's allowance; believes this is causing a trade off between gaining valuable skills and work experience and having access to financial support; and calls on the Government to allow people to work an unlimited number of hours on a voluntary basis and still claim jobseeker's allowance."

Whilst it's great to see an MP who wants to make volunteering more accessible, Ms Abbott has made the same mistake as Steven Bubb from Acevo did a couple of months ago, and assumed that there are the same restrictions on volunteering and claiming benefits, as there are on education and paid work.

In fact the rules state that someone on Job Seekers Allowance can volunteer as much as they want to as long as they are still 'actively seeking work'. The 16 hour rule in relation to volunteering, is nothing but a commonly held myth. It is worrying that this myth is so pervasive that it is held to be fact by Dianne Abbott, all the MPs who have signed the EDM, and the Director of ACEVO. It looks like a major programme of education on what the actual rules are is needed.

AVM have written to Dianne Abbott, and the MPs who signed the motion.

The letter follows below (click 'read more').  We'll keep you posted about whether we get any replies.

Volunteering England this week highlighted that the number of people looking for opportunities to volunteer has increased in recent months. In research for the Institute for Volunteering Research on the role of Volunteer Centres in supporting and developing the link between volunteering and increased employability, the overwhelming majority of centres had seen an increase in enquiries in the last six months, and YouthNet, the home of volunteering website do-it.org.uk, saw applications rise by 115% between 2007 and 2008. 

Has this translated to organisations getting more enquiries themselves?

Third Sector reports that the government has announced that the £6.5 million pounds earmarked in ithe Third Sector Action Plan to offer volunteer opportunities to people who are long term unemployed will go to BTCV (British Trust for Conservation Volunteers) as a prime contacter, with CSV, V, and Volunteering England as subcontractors. According to the article

" Job centres will give people who have been unemployed for more than six months a volunteering freephone number for Doncaster-based BTCV. The organisation then has five days to consult with its subcontractors on the opportunities that are available before coming up with an offer."

BTCV may seem a surprising choice as a lead body in the partnership, given that they only deal with a very specific type of volunteering, but they have delivered welfare to work programmes for the DWP in the past. It will be interesting to see how the partnership develops.

 You can read the full article here: http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/News/DailyBulletin/897421/Volunteering-char...

Volunteering England have issued a briefing sheet, outlining some of the issues around the proposed clause in the new Citizenship and Immigration Bill which would mean people who volunteer can fast-track their citizenship applications.

Volunteering England have more information in an article, "Government 'active citizenship' proposals" in their policy watch section:

Whilst attempting to bring together a myriad of immigration legislation, the Bill does however introduce an additional process for those seeking citizenship.

The "activity" element of the Bill highlights the Government's "responsibilities" agenda and develops the concept of "active citizenship" as a way for a migrant to speed up their application. It is designed to encourage and reward those migrants who volunteer within their local communities, making conscious efforts to integrate themselves locally.

Third Sector have reported that Stephen Bubb from Acevo, the chief executive's body, has put forward a report to James Purnell, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, examining how the third sector could help to alleviate unemployment problems. The report contains nine key ideas, one of which, is apparently that "unemployed people should be able to claim benefits while volunteering with charities". Obviously this suggestion comes as a bit of a surprise, because unemployed people already ARE allowed to claim benefits whilst volunteering. People who are recieving JSA must be actively seeking work whilst volunteering, so occasionally problems arise if people want to volunteer full time, but the vast majority of volunteer roles are part time, so there should be no problem at all.

Because I am a lowly Volunteer Manager, and not a Chief Executive, I'm not an ACEVO member, and can't access any of the reports on their site. So it's possible that Third Sector have got the wrong end of the stick. There is certainly a lot more that JobCentre Plus could be doing to support volunteering. For example, its still comon for their staff to miss-advise people about volunteering and benefits. So it's possible that Mr Bubb may have been suggesting a change in culture, rather than a change in rules. However, it is worrying that this article has appeared, because it's helping to perpetuate the myth that you might lose your benefits if you volunteer, a myth which creates a major barrier to many people offering time.

You can read the Third Sector article here:

http://tinyurl.com/dcg9mz

And read the actual rules around benefits and volunteering here:

Job Centre Plus (PDF)

There is an article in Third Sector about something that came out of Volunteering England's 'summitt' on the future of volunteering:

"Charities should consider drawing up a coordinated strategy to attract more volunteers, key volunteering figures have been told. Caroline Diehl, chief executive of the Media Trust, which works to improve the relationship between the not-for-profit sector and the media, told a meeting of volunteering leaders in London this week that a more streamlined approach to communication could help groups to promote their work and recruit higher numbers of volunteers.

"Volunteering organisations are trying to do different things and give out different messages," said Diehl. "But perhaps they need to work out a unanimous strategy for communicating their work to the public and attracting more volunteers, instead of this potentially confusing, piecemeal approach."

I don't know what other members feel, but I'm a bit worried about this approach. I don't think a one size fits all approach to marketing volunteering works, because a broad campaign cannot explain the massive diversity of VIOs and volunteer roles, so it creates unrealistic expectations. Plus their have been generic campaigns before, and they didn't work. I was working in a Volunteer Centre when Timebank launched, and about 80% of the initial requests were impossible - along the 'I want to do counselling but only for one evening a year, and I've got no time to do any training' line.

There was an interesting (and fairly lengthy!) discussion about volunteering as part of the House of Lords debate on passing the new Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill. Clause 39 of the Bill would mean that anyone who volunteered could fast track their citizenship application. The Lords raised a lot of concerns about how immigrants would find appropriate roles, what the cost to volunteer involving organisations would be, whether CRB checks could be carried out on immigrants, who would decide what was and wasn't volunteering, and the ethics of incentivising volunteering and almost making it 'compulsory'.

Online Parliamentary Publications

Lord Brett claims that none of these are concerns for the 'design group' (who include apparently include Volunteering England and representatives from large charities), and that anyone who knows about Volunteer Management would not see these as potential problems - do we agree?

James Purnell issued a ministerial statement on Monday on the government's plans to get people who are long term unemployed back into work. Unsurprisingly volunteering is mentioned but, at least the way I read it, he seems to have made the assumption that most volunteering will be full time. 

Obviously this is far from true, very few people volunteering are doing so full time.  I've come up against this assumption a couple of times with governmenty peeps, and I'm wondering what effect this has on government plans around volunteering?  Do they see the CSV full time model as the norm, and is effecting their plans and strategies?

Liam Byrne expands (slightly!) on the scheme Purnell mentions. It's right at the end again!

The CRB have just published research saying that nine out of ten people say that anyone working or volunteering with vulnerable groups should be checked.  They say that this 'shatters the myth' that CRB checks put people off volunteering.  I've not read the full research report yet, so I don't know what their sample size was, or how they chose them.  However,  it does strike me that just because people believe checks should be in place, doesn't necessarily mean that having to be checked themselves isn't putting them off offering time.

Apparently the Government has launched a £3m volunteering fund in a bid to improve interaction between the generations. Further details from Third Sector magazine.

According to Third Sector magazine senior journalists are going to compile a guide on how to pitch stories about volunteering to the media.