The voluntary sector needs a clear vision for the future of our society
At a conference on "welfare to work", I attended a seminar delivered by The Wise Group about their Routes Out of Prison project. They recruit ex-prisoners to be life coaches who work with current inmates before their release. The aim is to help them prepare an action plan for housing, debt, benefits, addiction, training, education and work experience.
The chief executive, Laurie Russell, told us they employ ex-prisoners because they are able to engage with current prisoners in a way that people who haven't experienced life on the inside can't. In a very real way, they "talk the talk", and are living examples that the project works.
Their success rate is 20%, which doesn't sound very high, but when you compare it to a re-offending rate among ex-prisoners of 70%, it fares well.
The figure that caught the attention of delegates, however, was the cost. The Wise Project costs £2,000 per prisoner, while somebody who is reconvicted costs the state around £80,000.
Russell was accompanied by one of the project's life coaches. He asked us to imagine a scenario in which we found we were suffering from an illness, and the doctor offered us two solutions: one costs £80,000 and has a success rate of 30%, the other £2,000 with a success rate of 20%. Surely a no-brainer.
But his thought experiment left out an even cheaper option: avoid becoming ill in the first place. It occurred to me that the life coaches don't only have experience of being in prison, they also know how they ended up there in the first place. So why, I asked, isn't The Wise Group being funded to work with people who are at risk of offending?
It seems to me that in the same way it's sensible to eat well and exercise if you don't want to become ill, we should be investing now in solutions to social problems that will create a stronger society in the future. Of course, there is great work going on up and down the country, but at the same time, for example, the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services (NCVYS) has found that three-quarters of voluntary youth organisations have seen their income drop in the last year.
These are organisations that enable younger people to use their spare time productively, developing new skills and broadening their experience. Surely this is the sector we should be investing in as a country at a time of rising unemployment?
The problem is, governments are simply unable to think long-term, as their sights are clearly set on the next election. But if they really wish to make our society a better place, as they purport to do, they have to think in terms of 50 years rather than five.
The voluntary and community sector is currently engaged in an internal debate, coupled with the inevitable hand-wringing, about where we go next. Funding is falling rapidly, the private sector is expanding its involvement in our traditional territory, and the future is unclear. So I have a suggestion.
It's time we worked out how to have this conversation with government. We need to galvanise the support of communities and each other, speak with one voice and deliver a clear message: it's time to stop tinkering. Organisations of all sizes now know it makes sense to put in place a strategic plan for at least five years, and large corporate organisations often look ahead 50 or 100 years. How, then, do we accept our country being run with no plan at all?
Some will respond that every political party publishes a manifesto before a general election. Apart from the fact they are often ignored once a party forms a government, they are not very detailed as plans go, and hardly strategic. In any case, they only last as long as the government does.
What we require is a vision of the society we want and a credible plan to take us there. It must be informed by us all, shaped by experts, based on sound evidence and, wherever possible, tested before it is fully implemented. The role of our elected representatives should be to ensure the machinery of government at all levels sticks to the plan, bringing it to our attention when something isn't working or the path is strayed from.
Of course, this is not something many politicians want to hear, so we need to work hard to ensure they cannot ignore the message. Not only will it pay off in the long term, but in the short term it might remind people why not-for-profit organisations arose in the first place: to make all our lives better.
This is my second contribution to The Guardian's Voluntary Sector Network blog...