From impact to relationships: Voluntary sector organisations in a changing environment

There is a growing interest and understanding of the value of human relationships in reducing inequalities. In Greater Manchester there has been an increasing awareness of the growth in inequalities. This was brought into particular focus when, in 2007, the Audit Commission published their findings of a two year study into health inequalities in Greater Manchester (Audit Commission, 2007). The study demonstrated that, despite significant spending in healthcare services, health inequalities had risen across the city, with many in deprived communities experiencing increasing deterioration in their health. A key recommendation in this report was the need to engage with community organisations that had reach into more disengaged communities, in order to develop more preventative approaches. This report stimulated a debate on how community institutions with strong relationships can transform the productivity of state services and has driven much of the thinking on public service reform in the city since this time, especially as austerity has created stresses on existing systems.

However developing models still see relationships as a precursor to formal state intervention rather than as a valid outcome in themselves. The overall context of this research is one of changing relationships between state and citizens, services and users, and individuals and neighbourhoods - changes that have been in the making for almost a decade, but have now been accelerated by the policy response to the 2009 recession and to high public debt. Organisations, individuals and neighbourhoods have been forced to find new ways of working. Voluntary organisations which had, prior to the recession, developed key roles in public service delivery, have since been particularly vulnerable to public service cuts, despite growing demand for a range of health and social care services due to widening health inequalities and an ageing population. And organisations that are smaller, largely volunteer-run and operating at grassroots level have proven remarkably resilient.

Increasingly, voluntary organisations which thrived during the decade before recession are recognising the need to adopt a heightened focus on preventing dependency on services and empowering users to meet their own needs, as well as offering them meaningful ways of re-engaging with the community. In addition there have been shifts to volunteer-led activity and social action rather than professionally delivered services. Our experience is that these approaches are often more successful when a voluntary organisation has a level of trust with a community that allows it to address issues that may be stigmatised (i.e. mental health, poverty).

In a separate programme of research, GMCVO is currently investigating how commissioning arrangements can incentivise behaviours which might strengthen relationships with communities, users and beneficiaries. This includes work to support public sector commissioners to develop changed delivery cultures and grow more of a community focus in the organisations they resource. The proposed studentship will take this work further still, by conducting an in-depth qualitative investigation into the nature of the everyday interactions and relational practices which operate between service providers on the ground - including volunteers - and their users in this challenging context of organisational change.

This project looks at different sets of relationships that exist in voluntary organisations in order to determine to what extent relationships influence how the organisation delivers its work, how different sets of relationships influence each other and what this means for the ability of the organisation to support service users in becoming aware of their own assets, becoming participants in society and living fulfilling lives.