In our church clusters we then discussed what we could contribute to the Big Society in Redbridge in future, what will we want to question about the Big Society in Redbridge in future, and how will we do that.
In my introductory remarks I said the following:
Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, has said that "If we're searching for the big society, [religion] is where we will find it."
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 100 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
We don’t have equivalent figures for Redbridge but we do know on the basis of the Big Society Mapping Event that was organised last year with Redbridge Council that a wide range of services are currently delivered by faith groups including:
· Services/facilities for children – toddler groups and crèche facilities; uniformed organisations; support for parents;
· Services/facilities for young people – detatched youth work; football clubs; drug and alcohol projects;
· Service/facilities for adults – ESOL classes; healthy living classes;
· Services/facilities for elderly – day centres; nursing homes; inter-generational projects;
· Other services/facilities – counselling and bereavement services; confidence building; book and art classes; fitness classes; and Neighbourhood Watch.
We also have an agreed database where a fuller and more detailed picture of faith-based contributions to the Big Society can be gathered – that is the database maintained by Redbridge CVS – and you have all been given a copy of the form to use for entering details of your voluntary and community services.
Once we have this better map of the voluntary service contribution of faith groups to this borough then, as well as our contribution to the Big Society being better recognised, 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.
An example of that occurring has already happened in the borough since the meeting as the increased numbers of homeless people in the borough was a major topic of discussion at the Mapping Event and since then the churches in the borough has started the new Night Shelter based at the Salvation Army in Ilford.
Our response to the Big Society should be that of a critical friend able to ask many questions about the direction of travel both here in the borough and nationally. The Archbishop of Canterbury articulated some of these issues last year in the edition of the New Statesman which he edited.
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.
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