Big Society mapping event

Today I spoke on the Big Society in Redbridge from a faith perspective at the Big Society Mapping Event which I have been involved in organising together with the local authority. The event has developed out of meetings between the ecumenical borough deans and the local authority and was held at Holy Trinity Barkingside.
In my presentation I said:

The ideas that underpin the Government’s vision of a ‘Big Society’ – strong families, strong communities, strong relationships through the encouragement of social responsibility – are familiar to all faith groups. "If we're searching for the big society, [religion] is where we will find it," wrote Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, in his recent article in the edition of the New Statesman guest edited by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

He had two reasons for making that statement. First, he quoted new research by the Harvard sociologist Robert Puttnam, showing that places of worship still bring people together in "mutual responsibility": “The evidence shows that religious people - defined by regular attendance at a place of worship - actually do make better neighbours.”

Second, he argued that: “Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good... There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighbourliness.”

The truth of this can be demonstrated through research commissioned by the Cinnamon Network; a group of over 40 Chief Executive Officers of faith-based charities developing responses to the Government's Big Society agenda. Their research reveals that churches and their congregations contribute significant time as well as monies to their communities.

The 284 churches involved in the sample delivered a total of 439,000 hours of volunteer service in the last 12 months, which equates to 1,925 per church on average. These churches contributed £1,234,000 to finance social action work, or £7,568 per church, spent on an average of 3.3 projects. Projecting these figures against population and church going for the UK gives an estimate of 72 million hours of volunteering for Church-led initiatives over 12 months. When you add in other faith groups too that figure would be substantially more.

Equivalent figures could no doubt be replicated in Redbridge yet we do not have such figures to hand specifically for this borough. This event provides an opportunity to begin mapping the voluntary service contribution of faith groups to this borough and that will be the main focus of our discussion groups today. We know, however, that if properly mapped the voluntary service contribution of faith groups to this borough will involve the provision of buildings for a wide range of community activities and services combined with the delivery of a wide range of community activities and services.

Once we have a better map of the voluntary service contribution of faith groups to this borough, then two further possibilities can come into play. First, our buildings could be considered for the delivery of Council services and/or the services of other Government agencies. It makes no sense for precious local authority finances to be used on new builds when existing community buildings may have spare capacity? Use of existing community buildings, such as those we own, locates Council services firmly in the local community and provides support to the voluntary and community sector through rental income. That is a win win situation.

Second, faith groups, the wider voluntary and community sector and the local authority can then together take an informed look at the range of existing provision in the borough, signpost to existing services more effectively, identify gaps in provision, and work together to develop new services which meet real local needs.

Therefore, the work that we are beginning here today has real potential, not simply to recognise the real and actual contribution that faith groups make in our borough, but for developing a strategy in this borough that engages the voluntary and community sector, including the faith groups, as fully as possible in the development of the Big Society in Redbridge.

Finally, though, we also need to say that our response to the Big Society is that of a critical friend. We have many questions to ask about the direction of travel both here in the borough and nationally. The Archbishop of Canterbury articulated some of these issues in the editorial which he wrote for the edition of the New Statesman that I mentioned earlier.

He wrote that:

“If civil society organisations are going to have to pick up responsibilities shed by government, the crucial questions are these. First, what services must have cast-iron guarantees of nationwide standards, parity and continuity? (Look at what is happening to youth services, surely a strategic priority).
Second, how, therefore, does national government underwrite these strategic "absolutes" so as to make sure that, even in a straitened financial climate, there is a continuing investment in the long term, a continuing response to what most would see as root issues: child poverty, poor literacy, the deficit in access to educational excellence, sustainable infrastructure in poorer communities (rural as well as urban), and so on? What is too important to be left to even the most resourceful localism?”

Our role as faith groups is, I believe, to ask these questions at the same time as we play our part in expanding the Big Society within Redbridge."

We also heard from John Powell, Director of Adult Services and Housing in the London Borough of Redbridge and Tasnim Iqbal, Redbridge CVS and Chair of the Big Society Working Group for the borough. In small groups we discussed what kind of services and facilities faith groups in the borough currently provide and ways of working more closely with the local authority.
The event's aim was to gain an overview of the types of services and facilities that faith groups in the borough currently provide and how faith groups and the Council can work together to develop new opportunities. There was general surprise at the wide range of activities and services delivered by faith groups in the borough while issues of housing and homelessness were identified as the most pressing issue curently where new initiatives are required.

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