Whitehall rigidity and the failure of the Big Society ‘project’

Cameron has committed to spending £450m on plans to tackle the ‘responsibility deficit’ in chaotic families, which he blames for the summer’s riots. The programme includes funding for an army of intervention workers with the aim of assigning one worker to replace the multiplicity of agencies currently involved with problem families.

Sounds like a very good idea, but reading the Public Administration Select Committee report on the Big Society I’m very pessimistic about the potential for cross-cutting work to be achieved under this, or any other government. Eighteen months into the implementation of the Big Society ‘project’ the report concludes that, ‘We have received little evidence to suggest that there is a coherent Big Society policy agenda which is understood by Whitehall’.

I put the word project into inverted commas because, although it’s consistently referred to as such, it’s not a project: it has no specific outcomes, no timetable for implementation and nothing by which success can be measured. It’s not a project; it’s a philosophy, and a confused one at that.

There’s still an overwhelming feeling that what the Big Society means is that if the state stops providing, then out of necessity and desperation someone else will step in to fill the gap and this, claims the report, leaves civil servants with no logical framework to understand what it is they are trying to achieve.

The report places heavy emphasis on the rigidity and silo mentality of Whitehall departments as a barrier to commissioning public services from third sector organisations.

It gives an excellent example of the homelessness charity Emmaus, which works with its clients to address the wide range of social issues that contribute to homelessness.

Emmaus can prove that it saves the tax payer £13.5m each year across a number of government departments including the cabinet office, the DWP, departments of health, housing and communities and local government. Representatives of Emmaus met in September with the ministers responsible for these departments to explain the burden of multiple finding streams and to make clear the need to work under a single contract to deliver their services. While the ministers acknowledged their need the report concluded that, ‘So far, departments can envisage offering separate contracts through the Work Programme or through programmes operated by the Home Office or the Department for Communities and Local Government’.

Having worked to fund drugs projects in the past I recall the head banging on the table that we used to do over the whether it was a health or a crime problem. Funding was channelled through crime reduction but the measureable outcomes are nearly all health-related as the focus of the service naturally focuses the support given to individuals. This does not please those with the cash to commission. Just how you prove that because you reduce person A’s addiction you prevent person B’s house being burgled remains a mystery to me.

The select committee report concludes: ‘We regard the challenge to government presented by charities such as Emmaus as a litmus test of the government’s Big Society project. We believe that joint funds, managed by local authorities and financed by separate departments, may be the answer. We expect the Cabinet Office to lead decisively on this matter.’

One of the major recommendations of the report states: ‘To bring in charities and voluntary groups to deliver public services, the government must take steps to address the barriers they experience in the contracting and commissioning system, which means developing a plan to address roles, tasks, responsibilities and skills in Whitehall departments.’

And this is exactly what’s going to be needed if Cameron wants to reduce the ‘responsibility deficit’ with the use of cross-cutting family intervention workers. So far the Big Society seems to mean ‘You’re all in this together’: it’s about time the government joined in.