In a written ministerial statement to Parliament on 29 October 2014, Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary at the time, announced the preferred bidders in a competition to outsource 21 offender ...rehabilitation contracts in England and Wales. These contracts, estimated to be worth anywhere between £5 billion and £20 billion in total over 10 years, form a core component of the UK Coalition government and subsequently, the majority Conservative government’s ‘Transforming Rehabilitation’ strategy (Ministry of Justice, 2013d) designed to open up probation services to a diverse range of providers, release resources and improve rehabilitation outcomes. The accompanying press release suggests that
An extensive support infrastructure lies behind much service delivery in the third sector, provided through a complex and diverse range of umbrella bodies fulfilling different functions and ...representing different alliances of third sector organisations at national, regional and local levels. This chapter examines this contested field to ask what role is played by these bodies, and how this changes over time in response to wider contextual and policy developments in the move away from a well-resourced and accommodating environment for the third sector. The chapter charts the debates surrounding these changes, and concludes with an assessment of how key assumptions about the role of capacity building are changing, both in terms of how it is organised, and what it is for. It is suggested that this amounts to the emergence of a more explicitly 'positional' approach to capacity building in an increasingly competitive environment for third sector organisations.
Successive UK governments have sought to promote the role of the voluntary sector in criminal justice, a field traditionally dominated by public sector provision. A new wave of reform launched by the ...Conservative-led Coalition government sought to outsource probation services and introduce a 'payment by results' model to reward success in reducing reoffending rates. A new market for rehabilitation services has thus been under construction, based on 'prime' contractors and supply chains of sub-contracted providers. How would voluntary sector organisations fare in such a market? This chapter provides a review of these developments, offering an in-depth examination of the voluntary sector's position in an unsettled criminal justice field at a crucial early stage of market shaping. The chapter assesses the attempts by voluntary sector advocates, and voluntary sector organisations themselves, to establish and maintain a viable footing in the emerging landscape of criminal justice.
This thesis aims to add to the qualitative understanding of the nature of community based voluntary action. It does so through a close investigation of the organisation and impact of community-based ...voluntary sector projects which seek to tackle disadvantage in rural areas. This exploration illustrates some of the challenges faced by community groups, and supporting voluntary sector agencies, as they aim to address different forms of disadvantage. The thesis examines the contextual background in which community-based projects operate. This includes debates over the nature, extent and measurement of disadvantage in rural areas, but also the increasing interest amongst policy-makers and practitioners towards community-based approaches to tackling disadvantage. This is argued to amount to a 'community turn' in public policy. The empirical research undertaken for the thesis involved a collaborative link with a non-academic voluntary organisation, the Durham Rural Community Council. Research took the form of an intensive and extended ethnographic interaction with several case study projects operating in different rural areas of County Durham. Analysis of the case studies highlights three qualitative dimensions of the dynamic process of organising community-based voluntary action. Firstly projects operate within a semi-enclosed, and deeply contested 'field' in which individuals, groups and organisations act as differentially-positioned and insecurely-resourced participants in pursuit of scarce resources to preserve or advance their position. Increasingly at stake in this 'field' is how resources are allocated over time, and how long it should take to make a difference' in relation to disadvantage. The temporality associated with community-based projects thus forms an illuminating second dimension examined in the thesis. Finally, the scale at which projects are organised provides a third dimension explored through the case studies, illustrating the challenge in rural areas of remaining 'close' to users and participants whilst generating a viable scale of activities over large areas with dispersed populations.
This thesis aims to add to the qualitative understanding of the nature of community based voluntary action. It does so through a close investigation of the organisation and impact of community-based ...voluntary sector projects which seek to tackle disadvantage in rural areas. This exploration illustrates some of the challenges faced by community groups, and supporting voluntary sector agencies, as they aim to address different forms of disadvantage. The thesis examines the contextual background in which community-based projects operate. This includes debates over the nature, extent and measurement of disadvantage in rural areas, but also the increasing interest amongst policy-makers and practitioners towards community-based approaches to tackling disadvantage. This is argued to amount to a 'community turn' in public policy. The empirical research undertaken for the thesis involved a collaborative link with a non-academic voluntary organisation, the Durham Rural Community Council. Research took the form of an intensive and extended ethnographic interaction with several case study projects operating in different rural areas of County Durham. Analysis of the case studies highlights three qualitative dimensions of the dynamic process of organising community-based voluntary action. Firstly projects operate within a semi-enclosed, and deeply contested 'field' in which individuals, groups and organisations act as differentially-positioned and insecurely-resourced participants in pursuit of scarce resources to preserve or advance their position. Increasingly at stake in this 'field' is how resources are allocated over time, and how long it should take to make a difference' in relation to disadvantage. The temporality associated with community-based projects thus forms an illuminating second dimension examined in the thesis. Finally, the scale at which projects are organised provides a third dimension explored through the case studies, illustrating the challenge in rural areas of remaining 'close' to users and participants whilst generating a viable scale of activities over large areas with dispersed populations.
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