When we set up Treebeard Trust in 2011, we adopted the traditional foundation model: invest the assets for financial return and give away the income to charitable causes. We had a vague sense there was something unsatisfactory about this – such a small part of our assets actually deployed to support our mission – but we didn’t articulate it and certainly didn’t see that there was anything we could do about it.
Then we discovered social investment. It was one of those lightbulb moments, where a solution appears before you’ve actually identified the problem, and we leapt at the opportunity. Initially our target was to allocate 20 per cent of our assets in impact investments (we prefer the term ‘impact’ to ‘social’), with the expectation that it would take us five years to get there. As things stand currently, I think we’ll get there in under three.
We thought it would be a challenge to identify attractive opportunities, but in fact the problem has been the opposite: managing the deal flow. We made our first investment in July 2015 and we’re now up to over twenty, covering a broad spectrum of social issues and asset classes (equity, property, debt etc).
We’re excited by both the social impact they create and the financial returns they should deliver. Regarding the latter, we don’t feel we’ve compromised on our financial objectives one iota – in the current environment of zero interest rates and inflated asset prices, we suspect that the average mainstream investment portfolio carries far more risk than is generally appreciated.
More fundamentally, it has radically transformed how we operate. We no longer think of grant-making and investment as separate functions. In fact, we have outlawed the ‘G’ word altogether. It has a ring of patronage about it, a malodorous whiff of munificence. Instead, every cheque we write is an investment.
That’s not to say we don’t still provide funding to charities with no expectation of financial return, but we now refer to this as ‘impact-only investment’.
All of our investments are now subject to an evaluation framework based on their social impact and their financial risk and return profile. In the case of impact-only investments, there is 100 per cent probability that we lose all our money, and we budget 5 per cent of the trust’s assets for these investments – in line with our historic grants budget.
We allocate another 5 per cent to ‘impact first’ investments, where we expect to get our money back, but are willing to accept below market returns and/or above average risk in return for a compelling social impact.
The rest of the portfolio covers a broad spectrum of liquid and illiquid, equity and debt, high risk and low risk investments. With some, the social impact is explicit and powerful, with others it is limited or hard to discern. But in all cases it is at least evaluated, and to the extent that we can enhance the positive impact of the trust’s assets, without compromising its financial stability, we will continue to do so.
We’ve travelled a long way quite quickly, but we’re still a long way from the destination. The system is broken. A world in which individuals and corporations devote themselves to narrow, parochial goals in the expectation that the public and charitable sectors will clean up whatever mess is left in their wake is not sustainable.
Government finances are stretched to the brink of insolvency and charities, reliant on a donation-based funding model, are wholly ill-equipped to fill the gap. History teaches us that human beings are wonderfully resourceful when their backs are against the wall, and we believe we are witnessing just such a moment.
By breaking down the barrier between philanthropy and commerce, social impact investment has the potential to transform modern capitalism and unleash it as a force for good.
Find out more about how trusts, foundations and charities with investable assets can make social investments via the GET INFORMED – Social investment for boards campaign, launched by Big Society Capital.
Barnaby Wiener is a Trustee with the Treebeard Trust.
Please note, the cross-posting of this blog does not represent endorsement or necessarily reflect the view of Barrow Cadbury Trust. The blog is cross-posted with the aim of contributing to the conversation on social investment.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a common and serious health issue. It affects millions of people and carries an economic and social cost of £15 billion a year nationally. People who have sustained a traumatic brain injury have a greater likelihood of mental ill health and of offending, as well as suffering from many other life difficulties.
Barrow Cadbury Trust and Centre for Mental Health recently organised a roundtable for experts from the West Midlands, hosted by the University of Birmingham, to discuss the implications of recent research about TBI and how support might be improved in the West Midlands region.
Addressing TBI in an effective (and efficient) way requires collective action across public services. No agency or sector can deal with it alone. We need a comprehensive approach that includes prevention, early identification and effective support from early childhood and throughout life.
West Midlands Devolution
The West Midlands devolution deal presents a unique opportunity to take a ‘whole place’ approach to TBI. The Combined Authority has already prioritised mental health and youth justice as cross-sector issues it aims to address across the region. Developing an effective response to TBI would contribute to both and to the overall wellbeing of the population.
Preventing head injuries is challenging but action to reduce risk would include measures to tackle domestic violence (the cumulative impact of physical abuse has been noted as a significant problem for women in prison), to promote positive parenting and to tackle bullying in schools. These also have a major impact on emotional wellbeing and future life chances. Improved support for children with ADHD and autism spectrum disorders can also reduce the heightened risk of TBI in these groups of young people. All of these actions should also reduce health inequalities by addressing the greater risks among people in the most deprived and marginalised communities in the West Midlands.
For those who do sustain head injuries, and particularly those who have experienced multiple traumas, identification is vital to ensure that effective support is offered and adjustments are made to reflect their vulnerability. Schools, hospitals, police stations and prisons can all ask simple questions to screen for head injuries. This can help them to ensure they offer support where it is needed, for example to manage a child’s behaviour in school and avoid excluding a young person whose behaviour results from a head injury where some additional support might be of benefit.
TBI and the Criminal Justice System
It is estimated that up to 60% of prisoners have sustained head injuries. It is therefore vital that the whole of the criminal justice system works with an awareness of TBI and an ability to respond effectively. Liaison and diversion teams, for example, can screen for TBI alongside other vulnerabilities. Prisons can offer all of their staff (including not just prison officers but education and other workers) training about TBI as part of becoming an enabling environment. Specialist linkworkers in prisons have also been found to provide effective support to individuals with TBI. And for people leaving prison, robust support is essential to help them to adjust to life outside and cope with the demands and difficulties they will face.
There are a number of initiatives already in place to build upon: HMP Drake Hall provides all staff with training in working with trauma and supports women prisoners who have experienced abuse and violence. The Geese Theatre Company provides ‘safe spaces’ for prisoners to explore their emotional wellbeing and what would help them to get back in control of their lives. And there are specialist services for offenders in the community, including for women, that offer peer support and help with health issues, that could provide more bespoke support for those with head injuries.
The significance of TBI is only beginning to be understood. But it is now clear that joint action that brings together local authorities, NHS organisations, schools, the criminal justice system and voluntary and community bodies (among others) will be essential to develop an effective response. From public health teams including TBI in local needs assessments and Health and Wellbeing Strategies to schools providing extra support to children who have sustained head injuries, we can bring about a bigger focus on prevention and early help. And by working across the justice system, we can enable some of the most vulnerable and prolific offenders to get their lives back on track.
In four weeks’ time, amid the pageantry of ceremonial Washington, the 45th president of the United States will be sworn into office. A man who won that office on, among many other horrors, a promise to ‘ban’ (albeit temporarily) Muslims from entering the US.
He may be rolling back on that offensive policy now the Oval Office looms in vision, but the point is telling. Fear of Islam remains real and potent across the west, even a decade and a half on from 9/11.
In Europe the ‘refugee crisis’ and a series of terror attacks over the past two years have flared tensions. Last night’s appalling incident in Berlin has already sparked a torrent of racist remarks on social media, following early reports that the driver may have been from Pakistan. It seems almost inevitable that public discourse will soon return to the sensitive topic of whether Islam is compatible with ‘western’ values.
In recent weeks Chancellor Merkel has joined the chorus of politicians floating support for a burqa ban, showing it is not just ‘populists’ focusing on the issue.
This week Policy Network’s contributors seek to go beyond simplistic rhetoric and policies, concluding it’s time to rethink the way we use terms such as ethnicity, identity, culture and race. Our contributors probe the integration debate – focusing on cases in Britain, France and Germany – to consider the effectiveness of different responses to public concern. These range from policymaking to acts of symbolism and how politicians choose to react to fear.
These pieces are part of our ongoing project on immigration and integration supported by the Barrow Cadbury Fund and follow a successful recent seminar in London: ‘Inclusive integration: how can progressives promote social cohesion in divisive times?’, the audio of which is now available.
Director of Communications at British Future, Steve Ballinger writes about The Home Affairs Select Committee Immigration Inquiry launched today and how his organisation hopes the decision makers listen to the public’s views on immigration.
Today at Westminster the Home Affairs Select Committee launches a new Inquiry into developing a consensus on an effective immigration policy. British Future is pleased to be working with the Committee on this Inquiry.
The Committee will conduct a series of regional meetings across the UK, meeting with a cross-section of the public to hear their views, starting in early 2017.
Accompanying the Home Affairs Select Committee hearings in each region is a ‘National Conversation,’ coordinated by British Future. This project will consult the public through a series of citizens’ panels in every nation and region of Britain, together with online surveys and in-depth opinion polling, feeding the results into the Home Affairs Select Committee Inquiry to provide a more detailed picture of public attitudes to immigration in Britain and the common ground on which people can agree.
The National Conversation aims to find out what the public thinks about who we admit to the UK and how we make immigration work for local communities, new arrivals to Britain, employers and workers. We want to know what the public thinks about integration and how best to make sure that newcomers become successful members of local communities.
British Future’s research over the last five years into public attitudes to immigration and integration has consistently found that the majority holds balanced views on immigration, which polarised public debates often fail to reflect. When they are engaged properly, people have constructive contributions to make to the immigration debate and there is considerable potential to find common ground. That is why this Inquiry is so important.
We want decision makers to hear the public’s views and to be informed by them in their policy making. Our collaboration with the Home Affairs Select Committee will provide an opportunity to do this.
The Inquiry launches today and we look forward to working with the Home Affairs Select Committee.
It is impossible to do justice to a post-referendum analysis or to go beyond the ‘known knowns’ in a short piece, but for the purpose of this blog there are several key features we need to think about when developing a strategic approach to the coming several years. The bloody nose given to the political establishment needs attention. Firstly, although the salient political hook for the Leave Campaign was migration, this was in reality a proxy for being ‘left behind’ by globalisation. People were sick and tired of being told they benefited from migration when they knew very well that they didn’t or didn’t much. Most of us who lead charities do and that leads us straight into the heart of a paradox. We want to heal the very thing we are part of creating. Or put another way we want to ‘fix’ what’s wrong with other people. Put like that it sounds pretty top down.
Secondly, it’s not as simple a binary as it first appears. Lots of the prosperous south voted Leave, Liverpool voted Remain and let’s not even start to unpick the four countries question! 52%/48% is half and half more or less and the voting patterns show not whole areas of the countr(ies) voting one way but most areas voting relatively evenly. So the divisions are not between places but within them. Even within families. Not to say there is no North/South issue, of course there is. But as charities we are going to have to think much harder about how to be effective, for example, in place based work and what funders sometimes call ‘cold spots’.
Thirdly, and from a practical point of view very importantly for our sector, many of the EU funding streams such as the European Social Fund map right onto the strongest Leave areas. What are the implications of that for the work of our social sector? I suggest bravery in refocusing should be on our agenda.
Immediately after the referendum we saw a spike in xenophobic and race hate crime. The good news is that shortly before the referendum British Future polling showed that 67% of eligible voters thought that EU citizens already in the UK should be given permanent leave to remain in the event of a ‘leave’ vote. Shortly after the Referendum in repeat polling we saw that figure go up slightly. So we can deduce that the majority of Leavers do not endorse this kind of behaviour. But we were perhaps complacent too soon. Yes, the spike has abated but not returned to previous levels.
So the community sector should certainly have a role in ‘holding the line’ in a context where some people now feel they have a licence to abuse. And we have to walk to the bit of a tightrope where we recognise people’s concerns, recognise they are not born of racism but also draw a line at what we might call ‘decency’. There is a threshold beyond which it’s not okay to go. Remainers and Leavers both.
Over the past eight years or so, we and several other foundations have been working together on public attitudes to migration, integration and British identity. We set up British Future, a new organisation working solely on the issue of opening up dialogue and trying to build a narrative aimed at the ‘persuadable and anxious middle’. We now have a considerable body of evidence which suggests that about a quarter of British society is actively hostile to migration and about a quarter actively supportive of it. That half of the population is unlikely to change their views. The other half are what are called the ‘anxious’ or ‘persuadable’ middle. About half of those are economic sceptics – typically blue collar workers who are worried about job security, their children’s futures, wage stagnation and access to housing and public services. The other half are cultural sceptics, worried that ‘this doesn’t feel like my country any more’ or ‘when I get on the bus I cannot hear any English spoken’. Opening a dialogue with these two groups needs differentiated approaches. And what we have found, among many other things, is that listening is more important than lecturing. If you give people a diet of facts and evidence, it is not only ineffective, it is counter-productive. We need much more of this more open dialogue because migration isn’t going away any time soon.
What makes people feel powerful, autonomous, in control? This is a key question for our sector because the Leave Campaign’s greatest success was the slogan ‘Take back control’. What are we going to offer people so that they feel they are getting that? The only possible answer to that is ‘bottom up’ not ‘top down’ – communities organising and delivering their own visions. There’s a lot of noise in our sector about enabling voice but it is a difficult thing to do well and is often more neglected than pursued. And we would do well to hear in mind the disability movement slogan ‘Nothing about us without us’.
A lot of the best work welcoming newcomers has come from the faith communities and we would be wise to build on that. In fact we would be wise to build on existing infrastructure in general because new initiatives take years to mature. So we should be seeking and brokering alliances at the local level, while at the same time promoting good bridge building work on a national scale. Last year we and others convened a meeting of funders to listen to key leaders in the migration sector about the refugee emergency. What they told us was that the unprecedented outpouring of good will in this country would waste, evaporate and even sour if not harnessed. So we set up a new, pooled fund for refugee and migrant welcoming work at the very local level. It is managed for us by the UK Community Fund and so far is going very well. Its focus is on the welcome given rather than the welcome received.
I have been convening and chairing a series of meetings with foundations in the UK and in Europe on the implications of the Brexit vote. Some of the practical things to emerge are concerns about European Social Fund for example. One of my reflections on that is – who is going to lobby for poorer people and communities when it comes to divvying up the UK cake? The universities, the farmers and the scientific communities are all working their socks off on this already and have capacity to act. I suggest this is one of our own sector’s responsibilities.
And finally, a word or two about putting our own houses in order, or as the young people would say, checking our privilege. Much of the charity sector still reflects our patrician roots. Certainly the charities of any size are suffering declining public trust such that we are less trusted now than the supermarkets. I think that illustrates that we are part of the problem unless we consciously, deliberately and purposefully make it otherwise. So for me part of what the Leave vote told me was to increase transparency and accountability and to beware of parachuting into other peoples’ realities without consulting them.
Of course there is good, solid community-building work in lots and lots of places. But it is not unusual for different communities to be building their own social capital in parallel universes. Where in the past we have thought of that in terms of race and ethnicity, particularly in some of the northern cities, should we now be turning our attention to broader bridge building and shared endeavours? The Sustainable Development Goals do now offer a framework for this and I urge you all to take a good and considered look at them. With the strapline ‘leave no one behind’ the major change from the Millenium Development Goals is an insistence that these goals are not only about the global south, they are about all people everywhere. We have to start decreasing the gap in equalities in every place, not just between richer and poorer nations, if we are to heal the divisions which have been so sharply revealed.
Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) are here to stay. The new Prime Minister Theresa May was responsible for their introduction in November 2012 and views them as an important part of her legacy as Home Secretary. The Labour Party has now said that it supports them. Even if any new government did want to change the model, the next wave of PCCs will be elected on the day that has been set by Parliament for the next General Election in May 2020. Even critics of PCCs recognise that the big question is how to improve the model rather than go back to the pre-2012 position.
One important reason for the consolidation of the PCC model is that the sky has not fallen in. There is no evidence that PCCs are systematically ‘politicising policing’, which was the great fear prior to their introduction. However, I want to argue not just that PCCs have ‘done no harm’, but rather that they have been a quiet success story.
First, they have considerably strengthened the accountability of the police service to the public. It is my view that the old police authorities lacked the focus and legitimacy to hold chief officers’ ‘feet to the fire’. Although there is no clear way of measuring the distribution of power in the police service, it is clear to me that the introduction of a new ‘big beast’ into the local policing jungle has made chief constables much more accountable than they once were. Second, they have increased public engagement. It was said at the time of the old police authorities that one received as little as a letter a week from members of the public. Any PCC will tell you that their correspondence is of a different order of magnitude.
As a number of the blogs published on the Police Foundation website written by PCCs demonstrate (see links below), having a single point of contact and a directly elected politician with a powerful public voice has increased public participation in policing debates that used to happen behind closed doors.
Third, PCCs have unlocked innovation in policing policy. Having a full time public official focused on public safety, armed with commissioning budgets and considerable ‘soft power’, has led to new ways of doing things. It is this topic which is explored in more detail in the ‘Reducing crime through innovation: the role of PCCs’ briefing, where we seek to understand the scope and drivers of innovation since 2012, as well as the challenges that remain.
And PCCs do face considerable challenges. Demand on the police has changed considerably since the PCC model was developed, with a fall in traditional volume crime and the rise in reported ‘high harm’ offences, often committed in private spaces and increasingly enabled via the internet. This requires a major re-think about policing priorities and operating models. Moreover, the increased complexity of police work means there is a pressing need for the connectivity – between the police locally and other public services – and between police forces as a network to deal with serious crime and deliver specialist capabilities. That will require further changes to both local and national governance, as well as new models of delivery. We hope that the discussion in the briefing will help illuminate some of the ways in which these challenges might be met.
Read guest blogs by five Police and Crime Commissioners on the Police Foundation website:
- Stop and Search- getting it right, Paddy Tipping, Notts PCC
- Sexual assault and the night time economy – small ideas make a difference, Vera Baird, Northumbria PCC
- Reducing crime through innovation: the role of PCCs, Jane Kennedy, Merseyside PCC
- How can PCCs better support innovative working within their communities?, Angus Macpherson, PCC for Wiltshire & Swindon
- Driving positive change – the PCC role is about more than holding the police to account, Katy Bourne, PCC for Sussex
Josie Warden, Research Assistant in the Economy, Enterprise and Manufacturing team at the RSA blogs about the potential for its Economic Inclusion Roadshows to engage with those facing economic exclusion. This blog was originally posted on the RSA website.
The Roadshow is a series of half-day workshops across the country engaging people who have a higher likelihood of facing economic exclusion in their lives. This includes people from disadvantaged areas, those in insecure employment, disabled people, young people and children, and people from black and ethnic minority (BAME) backgrounds. The workshops will create space for deliberative discussion, and draw upon diverse views to shape the future of a citizens’ economy.
It might not have been the result that surprised you on the morning of 24 June so much as the realisation that, whichever side of the fence you sat on, approximately half of the country were on the other side, and you probably didn’t see it coming. The dire quality of debate which surrounded the EU referendum barely scratched the surface of complex and important perspectives, and demonstrated clearly that, as a nation, we are neither very good at listening to each other nor at appreciating how things look from another point of view.
We need to listen better.
Our politicians may be heralding the dawn of a country that works for everyone, but they certainly aren’t hearing from everyone as they set about making it. Now is indeed a time to do things differently and, as the RSA’s Inclusive Growth Commission points out, doing things differently is about being inclusive. It cannot be only about hearing those who shout loudest.
Deliberative processes are about listening to others in order to be heard and understood yourself in turn. Inclusion, plurality of perspective and empathy are core to good deliberative processes, and good outcomes for the communities involved.
For the Citizens’ Economic Council we recognise that this means listening to the way our economy is experienced by different people within our communities, and by different communities within our country. Facilitating this wider dialogue is therefore built into the very design of our Citizens’ Economic Council programme itself. The programme’s core strands of council deliberations, outreach ‘Inclusion Roadshow’ workshops, open submissions for policy and online economics toolkit are have been created to enable a wide range of the public to get involved in the programme and help shape its outcomes.
About the Inclusion Roadshow
The Citizens’ Economic Council itself will be made up of a diverse sample of the population selected to reflect the diversity of the UK. But with 50-60 people on the Council and a population of over 76 million we are aware that there are important perspectives that we need to bring before the Council itself, and to engage with across the country.
To address this we are running a number of workshops across the UK to bring different voices to the debate, particularly those of people who may find it harder to be involved in the council because of its structure, the time commitment involved, or are from harder to reach groups.
We’re taking two different approaches to these workshops:
Place based experiences
The RSA’s City Growth Commission and now the follow on Inclusive Growth Commission demonstrates how important it is that all areas of the country are involved in, and benefit from, economic development.
Brexit highlighted just how different our experiences of the economy are depending on where in the country we live. Whilst the council itself will draw people from across the country, we wanted to find out more about the experiences of living in areas facing particular economic challenges:
- Starting in Port Talbot, Wales, we’ll be deliberating with residents and exploring their experiences of the local and national economy, particularly in light of the impact of deindustrialisation.
- We’ll also be running similar workshops in Clacton-on-Sea, one of England’s most deprived seaside coastal areas, in inner city Birmingham, as well as in Glasgow, Scotland as part of this work.
Personal experiences
We recognise that many of us have privileges and power in our day-to-day lives that we often take for granted – and which other groups and individuals do not have. Very often, who we are and how we identify affects how we experience the economy.
We’re working closely with organisations who represent people all over the country in order to hear about a wide range of individuals’ experiences:
- In Oldham we’ll be hearing from Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi women about their experiences of the economy in everyday life. This workshop will be run in partnership with inclusive innovation organisation Doing Social and local organisation Coppice Neighbourhood Group who work closely with the community and who will support with translation.
- We’re engaging with Unison’s care workers panel to hear about their experience of low-paid and insecure work, and to understand more about the way our economy currently values care work.
- GCSE and A-level students from London will have the opportunity to share their ideas about the future of the city’s economy with Fiona Twycross, Chair of the London Assembly’s Economy Committee. We’re being supported by The Access Project and UK Youth to convene GCSE and A-level students, from schools with higher than average percentage of students on free school meals for this event.
- We’ll be introducing the Citizens’ Economic Council to Year 8 students at RSA Academy in Tipton, and finding out how they understand and feel the effects of the economy.
- To explore disabled people’s day to day experiences of the economy we will be working with Disability Action in Islington and FRSA Tamsin Curno to hold a forum theatre workshop. This is part of a wider programme they are running using forum theatre as a way to understand and challenge the experiences of being disabled in the UK today.
Next Steps
The experiences and stories gathered from each workshop will help to inform and shape the deliberations of the Citizens’ Economic Council; and participants on the Economic Inclusion Roadshow will be offered the opportunity to participate in the Citizens’ Economic Council itself.
The Citizens’ Economic Council is setting out to increase the ability of all citizens to influence policy debate. However, there is already an imbalance of opportunity and disadvantage that many people face in being able to have their say about the economy – whether that’s because of who they are, where they live, or the socio-economic exclusions they face, so in the pursuit of this aim it is vital that we hear these different perspectives. We look forward to engaging beyond those voices that are often the loudest; to use deliberation as a means for everyone to engage in shaping the future of our economy.
Follow the Citizens’ Economic Council and get involved in the conversation on Twitter @citizenseconomy
Find out more about the Citizens’ Economic Council
For ten years, the Barrow Cadbury Trust has supported more than 40 research, demonstration and policy projects focused on improving outcomes for young adults involved in crime. These projects have included research on the distinct needs of young adults (e.g. by exploring neurodevelopment and brain injury among young people in custody), ethnicity (such as a study on the impact of Islamophobia on criminal justice decision-making) and gender (including looking at the distinct needs of young adult women in prison). A major focus of the programme has been on improving criminal justice practice, such as projects to support probation and sentencers to take account of developmental maturity and not just chronological age, and trialing innovative approaches to policing.
This growing body of evidence forms the basis of the ‘Transition to Adulthood’ (T2A) campaign, which promotes a more effective approach to young adults aged 18-25 at all stages of the T2A Pathway – a framework mapping 10 stages of the criminal justice process, from point of arrest to resettlement from custody, where a young adult specific intervention can be delivered that is distinct from the system as it relates to both children and older adults. In England and Wales this has contributed to significant policy and practice reforms. Currently, the House of Commons Justice Select Committee is concluding a major inquiry on Young Adult Offenders, to which T2A has provided extensive written and oral evidence. Across England and Wales a growing number of Police and Crime Commissioners, probation services and prisons are developing specific young adult services and interventions to better meet the needs of this group. T2A’s own pilots have shown that by taking such an approach, re-conviction rates are reduced, and positive outcomes in areas such as employment and health are achieved.
One area of focus for T2A for the next few years will be on the courts. There have been many positive developments that have affected the courts in recent years. In 2012, the Sentencing Council for England and Wales introduced for the first time a new mitigating factor in sentencing guidelines for adult offenders ‘age and/or lack of maturity’. In 2013, ‘maturity’ was included as a new factor in culpability considerations in the Crown Prosecution Service Code of Conduct. In 2015, the Ministry of Justice announced that the National Probation Service would be required to produce a maturity assessment for all young adults age 18-24 pre-sentence. This context provided fertile ground for a study in 2015, conducted for T2A by the Centre for Justice Innovation, examining the feasibility of establishing a young adult specific criminal court.
A young adult court would adapt the ‘procedural fairness’ principles of youth settings, which would include elements such as specialist listing arrangements so that it would only see 18-25 year olds, would likely take place in a youth court building or setting, and sentencing would be conducted by ‘youth ticketed’ magistrates. Other elements could include more integrated family involvement, more focused pre-sentence court assessment and the availability of specialist young adult disposals. ‘Procedural fairness’ adaptations of this kind, where trialed elsewhere, have shown positive impacts on reducing re-conviction rates, even where the sentence awarded does not differ. Research has shown that a defendant who understands the court process and believes the court has treated them fairly is far more likely to subsequently comply with the sentence given, even if they disagree with the decision.
Since early 2016, CJI has led a major new T2A initiative funded by Barrow Cadbury Trust to establish a network of young adult courts, an idea that has the backing of central government and the court services. Following a call for expressions of interest to court areas to take part in a local feasibility study, far more areas than expected sought to develop a pilot with many bids led by Police and Crime Commissioners. This level of interest illustrated the real desire among court professionals to develop the feasibility study into a pilot. From their point of view, not only was this approach ideologically right, but it tied in with broader policy agendas, such as improving outcomes for groups with the highest recall and breach rates (where young adults lead the way), efficiency savings (which could be achieved by focused, specialist listings), and utilising empty youth courts and specialist magistrates (both of which are currently under worked following the welcome 70% fall in five years in the number of children entering the criminal courts).
Ultimately, five sites have been selected, and are now working intensively with CJI to complete local needs analyses and feasibility, leading to an options paper for each site at the end of 2016. These will set out how the sites can move forward to become operational. Once live, each court would manage around 2,000 young adults per year, and an independent academic evaluation will monitor re-conviction outcomes with support from the Ministry of Justice’s Justice Data Lab. Aside from support locally from CJI and the costs of the evaluation, the sites will be operating entirely within existing resources.
We hope that by demonstrating a significant reduction in re-conviction rates, young adult specific criminal courts will become part of mainstream practice, and that many other areas will seek to develop models to suit local need, adding further to a growing momentum for the T2A agenda.
In 2014, in the world of unsecured personal credit, there were few offering credit to those people on low incomes, and who have to take credit and pay it back each week or fortnight; people who can’t get credit from their banks or building society.
Most of those providers charged what most of us would consider to be high interest rates, high fees and inflated prices for the items, which would keep people from ever being able to escape their clutches.
There had to be a better way. So in August 2014, we got funding to get an independent company to run a series of consumer focus groups. They asked users of this type of credit when they used it, why they used it, what they used it for, and how they felt about it.
From what we heard, Fair for You was born. Two years later, we’ve capital and loan finance from four social funders, are fully authorised as a lender by the FCA, and have been trading since December 2015.
Our second Social Impact report has just being released and makes surprising reading.
For instance, we heard that an average loan of just £300 can directly improve customers’ ability to pay their rent (over half of people surveyed said this was the case, rising to two-thirds of lone parents). And that a loan of this size can directly improve the health and wellbeing of our customer’s children’s (one third felt this was the case – rising to 51% of lone parents).
Isn’t that amazing, given the comparatively small size of the loan?
However, a cursory view of Trustpilot will show you that among the 300 people who have so far posted reviews, pricing is only part of the reason that Fair for You has such an impact. It is the whole design of the solution that works for them.
Why? Because, without being too technical about it, we’ve combined structured credit with some of the key benefits of unstructured credit.
Our loans are for items for the home – we don’t do cash loans – and the customer chooses the item they want from our ‘digital high street’. The loan is then structured to purchase that item.
It’s also structured because the loan is clear to the customer, structured repayments on a schedule. They agree to pay an amount of their choosing, over a period they choose – weekly, monthly, fortnightly or four weekly, over any period from 12 weeks to 24 months.
So, if the customer wants to pay £10 a week over 37 weeks, then that’s the loan that we agree; and they are kept up-to-date on their repayments, via text, posted statements and monthly on-line updates.
The benefits of flexibility are that the customer can overpay at any time, and many customers choose to do so. For some it allows them to clear the credit earlier, and for others it allows themselves to miss a payment when facing a difficult week. All clearly get the fact that they don’t pay so much interest if they overpay.
However, the biggest difference is in the assessment of credit. We recognise that many households have low and fluctuating income, such as zero-hours contracts, so we set low repayments and allowing overpayment for when the money’s there. We’re also understanding of past credit problems, so we look instead at a customer’s management of credit over recent years.
It will be interesting to monitor the impact on the financial wellbeing of the households using Fair for You. Our Social Impact report estimates that within 3 years, the majority of customers having switched from using high cost credit regularly to using Fair for You, will no longer have a Poverty Premium in their household.
In the past few years considerable funding has been spent on financial education. For a fraction of this cost, the long term benefit to the households of having access to good financial products may far outweigh being continually taught how to avoid the most aggressive mutations of high cost credit providers.
Better product design, delivered in a more socially responsible manner, may well provide answers in a post-banking crisis world that has seen our society so polarised by their exposure to poverty.
Social sector leadership is an issue that’s close to my heart. I’ve worked with some exceptional individuals during my career: passionate and empathetic, thoughtful and strategic, collaborative, outward looking, with vision and foresight. They’ve not just been effective; they’ve been an inspiration to me. These qualities are found across the 163,000 organisations that make up the sector but not consistently so. Some of those heading up organisations lack the sort of insightful, collaborative and ‘generous’ leadership that feels so necessary when organisations should be collaborating, rather than competing, in the interests of their beneficiaries. Understandably, the response of some leaders is to retreat in the face of the huge external challenges whilst a tiny few – a small fraction of the total – act in a way that brings discredit on the sector as a whole and the values it stands for.
We have often neglected to invest in developing the next generation of leaders with such investment perhaps regarded as an indulgence. The fragmented nature of the sector – with many smaller charities and a limited number of larger ones – creates conditions in which we just hope and pray for good people rather than identifying and developing them. And this happens at a time when the social sector plays an increasingly important part in the fabric of society and yet faces some of its biggest strategic challenges. We have huge potential to be forces for good if only we can address this deficit.
This was the context for a ‘retreat’ held six months ago in Windsor. The gathering was convened by Sally Bacon from the Clore Duffield Foundation (a pioneer in this field), Sara Llewellin from the Barrow Cadbury Trust and myself from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s UK Branch (another early supporter of Clore Social Leadership) with the support of Shaks Ghosh from Clore Social itself. We were joined by colleagues from thirteen other funders, from the sector’s major umbrella bodies and from government. It was an opportunity for challenge and critical assessment. The big question was how we, as sector “stewards”, could ensure that it was well led and governed now and in the future.
A sense of urgency hung over our discussions and a number of observations emerged: there is no ‘market place’ where organisations can find affordable and accessible leadership education (and no sign-posting to what exists); for a variety of reasons, demand from the sector itself appears weak (whether driven by short-termism or lack of resource). We felt strongly the need to support charities in their work. This is not just to reclaim their place in the affections of the British public, challenged of late by the behaviours of the tiny few, but to fulfil their potential acting alongside the state and a private sector who share the mantle of meeting the demands and needs of the British public now and in the future. We committed to collaborate on a bold initiative to transform social sector leadership – what some call “pulling all the levers at once” and others “a collective shot in the arm” – to be delivered within a fixed timeframe but with an impact that lasts beyond the activities themselves (or funding).
The Funders’ Collaboration on Leadership, as it has come to be known, has brought together 50 individuals from funders, umbrella bodies, social sector organisations, and government with the aim of developing innovative and scalable solutions to the problems identified at the retreat. The focus is on four main themes, each of which now has a working party:
- Restoring trust in the voluntary sector.
- Sharing foresight information and preparing the sector for the future.
- Improving the standard of governance by informing and giving skills to trustees.
- Developing a new leadership style for our sector.
Each working group has been challenged to develop a defined, time-limited experiment that tackles each priority head on. If we can demonstrate evidence of the potential to be transformative, the plan is to prototype, pilot and take each to scale. We have a strong interest in ensuring this initiative adds up to more than the sum of its parts and we will be seeking to link the work of the different groups in ways that create a multiplier effect. We have a strong commitment to avoid duplicating other sector initiatives on governance, leadership and trust, complementing and supplementing them, where we can. We will disseminate the findings from the work and keep the collaborative flame burning with events and communications.
This doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because of the commitment of people like Shaks, those who joined us in Windsor and others besides. And, it doesn’t come free. We are pleased that the Office for Civil Society has set aside a budget of £1.7 million to invest in stronger leadership and governance up until 2020. Our desire is that this contribution forms no more than a third of the total cost, with the remainder being raised from other sources including trusts and foundations, who will be encouraged to trial the approaches with the organisations in their grantee portfolios.
We intend that a real difference is felt by the organisations who make up our sector, those who work with us, who benefit and even those who have been our detractors of late. We estimate that there are 1.3 million leaders in our sector. To empower them further, we must extend a rich but
co-ordinated offer of support to remarkable people in a context in which their work is not only valued but sought out.
Join the conversation with #FundersCollab on Twitter.
