For those of you looking for an addition to your summer reading list, I have a strong recommendation – ‘You are what you read’ by Jodie Jackson.[i] Jackson, a partner at the Constructive Journalism Project[ii] and one of this year’s CJA Media Awards judges, has spent the last decade researching the psychological impact of the news, finding a negativity bias in reporting that leads to a sense of ‘crisis’ and lack of hope amongst readers.

The NCVO Constructive Voices project highlighted the 2019 Digital News Report, which showed nearly a third of people say they actively avoid the news because it has a negative effect on their mood and they feel powerless to change events.[iii] Constructive Journalism sets itself apart from this, remaining critical, but also seeking to foster conversation, hope and action.

Within criminal justice reporting a negativity bias is all too apparent. Of course, the multitude of issues plaguing the criminal justice system invite criticism, and raising the public’s awareness of the challenges is important. But Jackson argues that explaining the possible solutions is also vital.

The 2017 report Reframing Crime and Justice[iv] also highlighted ‘It’s commonly thought that there is little government or society can do to reduce crime. Communications that dwell on the problems of the criminal justice system, but do not suggest solutions, will trigger fatalism.’  The annual CJA Awards help to combat this negativity by promoting the innovative and effective work of Outstanding Organisations and Outstanding Individuals across the country. (The 2019 awards are now open for nominations!)

The CJA also presents an award for Outstanding Journalism. This year we have worked with a group of experts including journalists, CJA members and people with lived experience to refresh the criteria and nominations process and ensure the award champions journalism that drives the conversation forward.

Why have we done this? Talking with CJA members last summer when developing our strategy[v], there was a recurring theme – the need to positively engage with the public debate about criminal justice and to change public opinion:

‘We need to change public opinion – it can be done. Look at public attitudes to smoking 25 years ago.’

‘The general public are key stakeholders. Rehabilitation is a shared responsibility. We need the public to help people re-connect and not be stigmatised.’

‘We need to leverage support from the public, to bring people with us.’

‘This sector tends to preach to the converted, not those who need to be convinced.’

It became clear that a key element of achieving the CJA’s vision of a fair and effective criminal justice system is through influential communications with the public through the media.  Inspired by the Mind Media Awards good practice criteria for mental health reporting,[vi] the CJA’s expert group has developed our own good practice criteria for criminal justice reporting, drawing on constructive journalism and reframing principles. The criteria[vii] include:

• Show what works, not just what is broken.
• Include ‘hidden’ voices and issues.
• Challenge myths and avoid stereotypes, clichés, negative terminology and sensationalism.
• Portray individuals’ experiences authentically, humanely and sensitively.
• Set individuals’ experiences within a wider social policy context.
• Influence and inspire people to think differently, care about the issue and take positive action.

We will promote these principles to the sector and media through our awards and we also plan to work with the National Union of Journalists to produce more detailed guidance on criminal justice reporting.  This is a timely piece of work because of the growing interest in the role of the media on public perceptions of criminal justice. For example, the London Violence Reduction Unit’s new strategy includes an objective to ‘change the message around violence’ as they recognise that ‘the way in which issues are represented by the media […] shapes our views and as a result, can shape our behaviour.’

Our expert group also recognised the growing volume and quality of digital media including blogs, vlogs and podcasts, which often allow individuals to bypass traditional media outlets and to develop their own criminal justice related content. We are therefore excited to introduce a new Outstanding Digital Media Champion category to celebrate and promote the growing importance of these mediums.

The judges for the 2019 Media Awards are: Danny Shaw (BBC Home Affairs Correspondent), Raphael Rowe (Reporter for Netflix, the One Show and Panorama), Penelope Gibbs (Author of Reframing Crime and Justice), Jodie Jackson (Constructive Journalism Project) and Nadine Smith (CJA trustee).

For more information about the CJA Media Awards and how to nominate or email [email protected]

[i] https://www.jodiejackson.com/you-are-what-you-read/

[ii] https://www.constructivejournalism.org/

[iii] https://www.ncvo.org.uk/about-us/media-centre/constructive-voices/about-constructive-journalism

[iv] http://www.transformjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Reframing-crime-and-Justice-a-handy-guide_Transform-Justice.pdf

[v] http://criminaljusticealliance.org/cja-strategy-2019-2022-connecting-change/

[vi] https://www.mind.org.uk/news-campaigns/mind-media-awards/2017-mind-media-awards-criteria/

[vii] http://criminaljusticealliance.org/criminal-justice-alliance-media-awards-2019/

In libel-proofing their book, The Secret Barrister will no doubt have entered “Keres & Co” into the search engine to ensure that, in name at least, this firm was their creation. If anything, Keres & Co is the creation of the Ministry of Justice and its subsidiary the Legal Aid Agency.

Over the past decade, criminal defence has transitioned from being an honourable and moderately profitable discipline of law to one reduced to trying to minimise the amount of work conducted at a loss. The 2014 Otterburn report found that criminal law firms run on an average profit margin of 5%. Since then, defence practices have suffered an 8.75% cut imposed by the Ministry of Justice, a downturn in volume due to clients being released under investigation and fewer prosecutions, and a recent trend by the Legal Aid Agency to reduce payments for time spent reviewing evidence. Low fixed fees for police station work put pressure on on-call solicitors to get matters processed efficiently. The prospect of out of hours work ahead of a full day in court is not conducive to wellbeing. The police, unlike lawyers, work on a shift system and so have little incentive to speed things up. And a defence solicitor can spend hours with a client in a police station only for Keres & Co to pitch up post-charge, claiming to have been sent by the family, and sweep the client away with one quick signature. Ultimately it is often more time efficient for on-call solicitors to delegate these attendances to unqualified reps so that they can continue with other fee-earning or administrative duties.

Fees for court work are insufficient too: one stark example is the £330.33 paid to a defence firm if a case goes to the Crown Court but the prosecutor drops charges shortly before the trial. This amount is meant to cover the time spent preparing the case, representing the defendant at the magistrates’ court, instructing experts, visiting prisons and speaking to witnesses. In many cases fixed fees are so unrewarding that firms can only survive by introducing privately funded work, or focussing on large multi-defendant page-heavy cases, both of which take senior lawyers away from standard criminal defence work. Survival is based upon the increasingly bloody battleground of large cases. The alternative is for firms to stop providing standard criminal defence work altogether.

Caught between an increasingly uncooperative Crown Prosecution Service and a Legal Aid Agency determined to reduce payments, firms are getting tired of the ongoing battle to find margins of profitability. Significant numbers of highly regarded firms have taken the view that criminal legal aid work is being devalued beyond viability, paving the way for a two-tier system of large factory firms or Keres & Co type firms. Clients face the unpalatable choice of being passed along a conveyer belt of lawyers and clerks or risking their liberty in the hands of firms prepared to cut corners to ensure profitability.

The Ministry of Justice tells itself that while firms are still prepared to conduct criminal defence work, there is no issue. The auditing process coupled with peer reviews, it believes, can weed out poor quality. In reality, the oppressive regime imposed by the Legal Aid Agency does not assess quality by outcomes or caseloads but by the ability to jump through compliance hoops. Firms choosing to focus on outcomes and genuine client retention are penalised.

The current criminal legal aid contract is becoming unfeasible for firms who pride themselves on high quality provision, leading to the rise of the Ministry of Justice’s own Frankenstein’s monster – firms which put profit before those they represent. It is only when the Ministry of Justice accepts this that legally aided clients will get the robust defence that they deserve.

This blog has been cross posted from Transform Justice 

Their new criminal justice report can be found here.

Impact, impact, impact…. It’s a bit like the “location, location, location” of the voluntary sector! We hear it time and time again, but understanding it can be a bit puzzling and frustrating. Where do I start, what do I capture, how do I do it…sometimes we allow other pressing priorities to move it to the head-scratching pile for a little while longer!

This sums up where we, and many of our members in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Plus (LGBT+) sector were last year. We knew impact was important, but were unsure of where to start.

Then along came the Consortium’s Connect Fund project. We began our social investment journey knowing there were glimmers of potential within LGBT+ organisations, but needed space to think these through before we jumped in with the solutions. I remember describing the need for our project, but being quite honest that the end product was a bit unknown.

We were delighted to be given the opportunity by the Connect Fund to allow for those supportive head scratching moments. Our project now has the potential to transform the LGBT+ sector – in terms of social investment and with much wider implications.

The light-bulb moment came at the end of the opening phase of the project, capturing where the LGBT+ sector was and what might be the solution. Of course, there wasn’t just one solution! There are many. Straightaway we knew that one of the massive roadblocks preventing LGBT+ organisations from accessing social investment was the lack of coordinated approaches to impact. How can we ask investors to engage with us if we can’t properly articulate both the financial and social returns we are offering?

Working with our fabulous consultants Traverse, who have deep understanding of diversity issues and outcomes and impact measurement, we all got rather excited when we realised what we needed was an LGBT+ Outcomes Framework.

Yes, I know, there it is, my infrastructure geekery was in overdrive. We knew there was only one way to make this work, and that was collaboration. So we pulled together a cohort of 6 LGBT+ organisations to join us on this journey. Six months later, we are ready to publish an LGBT+ Common Outcomes Framework. What it means for us is incredibly exciting. For the first time we can set the challenge to the LGBT+ sector to articulate what we all do as specialist organisations in a common way, whilst still allowing for individual nuancing.

With these common areas at the forefront, we can begin to think about the data we capture and how it is presented to create long term change for individuals. As simple as it sounds, this is game-changing for a small sector like the LGBT+ sector. It opens up new doors many having been trying to push for many years, with limited success.

Of course, this is just the beginning of the story. Now that the light-bulb is on we have no intentions of switching it off.

LGBT+ Consortium will be leading the charge by adopting this new Outcomes Framework as the basis of our Strategic Plan, and challenging others to follow suit. The hope is, by articulating impact well, we will for the first time open up future social investment, and build long-lasting sustainable LGBT+ organisations.

LGBT+ people and communities are far more visible than ever before. With this enhanced profile comes a responsibility for the sector to move to maturity. I am so very excited that LGBT+ organisations want to be at the forefront of doing things differently and articulating the difference we make for individuals in need.

Paul Roberts OBE is Chief Executive of LGBT+ Consortium, a national specialist infrastructure and Membership organisation, which focus on the development and support of LGBT groups, organisations and projects so they can deliver direct services and campaign for individual rights.

This blog has been cross posted from the Connect Fund. 

A new conversation on economic growth is certainly welcome. Over a decade on from the Financial Crash of 2008 and subsequent recession here in the UK, massive inequality persists, both between and within regions. That the UK economy has the highest levels of regional disparity among OECD nations demonstrates the structural imbalances that inclusive growth seeks to address, to ensure that the benefits of economic growth are shared across every section of society – both across and within regions and places.

How inclusive growth can be developed in practice is the core question underpinning a new NLGN research project we are undertaking in partnership with Barrow Cadbury Trust. We will draw on current practice from the front line of strategy implementation and service delivery. Through a series of peer learning workshops, we will share current experience, including key challenges that organisations pioneering inclusive growth interventions have experienced, and also generate new ideas. These conversations will help to inform practitioners’ approaches. The research will also explore how communities can be placed at the heart of inclusive growth strategy and delivery, following NLGN’s vision for the future of public services as set out in our Community Paradigm report.

Our goal at the end of this process is to have brought some practical clarity to the debate around inclusive growth and to have established concrete steps through which practitioners can develop their own frameworks for action. A final report will be published in January of 2020.

Charlotte Morgan and Trinley Walker

This blog was originally posted on the New Local Government Network (NLGN) website

If you would like to find out more about the project or get involved, please contact Charlotte Morgan or Trinley Walker: [email protected] – [email protected]

“Thank you very much Massimo for those very generous words and for this most astonishing award. I must say I am really stunned, although I am sure as usual I won’t be lost for words.

I am a great believer that awards and honours are symbolic of the achievements of many hands and not of one person alone. In our foundation we work on structural change for social justice ends across a variety of disciplines. Structural change can never be brought about without many hands working together over a sustained period of time augmented with hefty doses of savvy, luck and timing. So an award to me is an award to all those many hands we work with in our own foundation, in other foundations and in civil society and beyond.

As an award though, this also comes at an opportune time, showing solidarity with us in the UK who remain determinedly European in the face of our impending changing status in the European Union. Thank you to the many of you who have extended the hand of friendship to us. And, of course, this is an award for all us women who have contributed to philanthropy over time and to the EFC itself over the past 30 years.

My first EFC board meeting was the 20^th anniversary nearly 10 years ago. I was shocked to find only three other women in a roomful of 30 or so men. I want to pay tribute to those women – Ingrid Hamm, first Vice Chair, Suzanne Siskel and Betsy Campbell, who looked after me that week and have been a source of inspiration since.  And to the men who supported us over the intervening years and even at times stood aside.

EFC governance has changed dramatically since then.  Our first woman Chair Ewa Kulik-Bielińska brought a freshness to the role as a central/Eastern European. Many other women colleagues have stepped up and contributed greatly. This diversity is crucial as I passionately believe that no good things flow from poor governance, wherever or whatever we are doing.

We are living in difficult times and facing many challenges. As we have explored over the past couple of days, there are threats to liberté and egalité which we must all play our part in changing.  We started the conference by equating ‘philanthropie’ to fraternité and I will add sisterhood to that and frame them together as solidarity. Sisterhood is powerful!  As Antti Arjarva reminded me we are a broad church working in a wide variety of fields: research, climate change, culture, medicine, education and much more. Yet the key European values of liberté, egalité and solidarity can and must run through them all.

So let us all go back to work next week seeking to work in a spirit of equality and solidarity, using all the assets at our disposal to protect liberty, to increase equality and to keep improving the governance of our own organisations and that of those we support.

Thank you to all my EFC colleagues – Gerry and the staff and governing body – and of course to our own fabulous board and team at the Barrow Cadbury Trust.”

‘Liberté, Egalité, Philanthropie’ was the focus of this year’s EFC (European Foundation Centre) Annual General Assembly (AGA), and while interesting discussions of freedom and solidarity flowed among the many philanthropic institutions gathered in Paris, it was the talk of equality that resonated most with me over the three days.

The main plenary on égalité posed a call to action for foundations – to utilise their resource, their influence and their freedom of decision making to invest in systemic and structural change. The role of philanthropy should be to tackle the inequalities that current governments and markets are failing to address. While foundations cannot – and should not – try to replace the state, they have an obligation to support innovative solutions to challenges so they can prove their worth. As was pointed out during one of the Next Generation talks I attended, the money we as foundations have is in essence risk capital – we don’t expect to get it back, so we need to be bold with it. While that doesn’t mean the abandonment of good governance, there is an argument for us to take risks where the public sector cannot.

Through the work we support and partnerships we develop as a sector, we are able to see patterns of change emerging. We are able to help identify the barriers to equality that people face now and see what may be the next great struggle for civil society. This, along with our resources, gives us a power that we must own in order to fight for change. Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, Oxfam GB’s Chief Executive, highlighted that this long-term view was a privilege of foundations. We are not curtailed by political pressures or market changes; we can invest in a vision for the future and, most importantly, see it through. This means not only repairing the problems of today but tackling the root causes of inequality to create a fairer and more just society.

We are in the midst of a climate emergency and, as Mary Robinson explained in one of the sessions, inequality is only going to become more stark over the next ten years unless we act now. One of the closing remarks was that structural change is the work of many hands, and it is the responsibility of the philanthropy sector to use its convening power to build bridges between the private sector and civil society to work together towards a common goal. Our sector has a unique voice and now is the time for us to use this in even more decisive ways.

Liz Hayes is Assistant Manager at Connect Fund, Barrow Cadbury Trust.  This blog was originally published in Alliance magazine.

68 CEOs in the FTSE 100 earn more than 100 times the average UK worker’s salary, while almost four million (1 in 8) workers in the UK are living in poverty. How many of these business leaders have gone into the New Year with a resolution to address this disparity? Though the causes of in-work poverty are complex – with state structures, institutions, the market, an ineffective benefits system, and individual circumstances all playing their part – side by side, these figures are baffling and shine a light on some of the stark economic imbalances in the UK today.

Although UK employment rates have risen, they are still lower than they were a decade ago. At the same time, the UK’s productivity continues to decline or flat-line. There is also a concerning high number of precarious roles which are often concentrated within the lowest paying sectors in the UK.
In September 2018, the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice called for fundamental reform of Britain’s economy, finding that “the UK is being held back by a business culture dominated by decades of short-term profit taking, weak levels of investment and low wages.” This was shortly followed by a report issued by the UN’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights which chastised the government’s “punitive, mean-spirited and often callous approach” to poverty in the UK. In December 2018, JRF called for reduced housing costs, a strengthened social security system, and better-paid employment to reduce the number of people swept into poverty.

68 CEOs in the FTSE 100 earn more than 100 times the average UK worker’s salary, while almost four million workers in the UK are living in poverty.

From an investor perspective, the status quo calls into question to what degree businesses are embedding social, environmental and governance (ESG) responsibilities into the heart of what they do. Failure to take these factors appropriately into account has serious negative repercussions for workers and their families, and it also creates, drives and underpins a range of financial risks. This is bad news for institutional investors for whom long-term and sustainable returns from investee companies are vital.

As investor understanding related to the financial materiality of the quality of work and company labour practices gains more depth, interest in workforce policies and practice is on the rise. Also, increasingly more and more investors are motivated by the moral case to act: that this is the right thing to do and that business success can be delivered on a stakeholder model that benefits workers and society as well as shareholders.

ShareAction – with the support of JRF and Trust for London – recently published an investor briefing called Influencing UK Workforce Practices through Responsible Investment. Not only do we want to strive for 100% Living Wage accreditation across the FTSE, but we also need companies to demonstrate leadership on a range of workforce practices. If we want to see systemic change for the better, improvements are necessary across the board – from tackling endemic levels of modern slavery, breaking down barriers to freedom of association, increasing worker representation, addressing the rise in precarious jobs, to ensuring fair pay and equal opportunities for all.

Investor engagement and shareholder activism can reprogramme the economy for the creation of safe and prosperous communities supported by good, fairly-paid jobs.

Ongoing and better-aligned corporate engagement by investors has the potential to drive significant progress within publicly listed companies in the UK. Now is the time to develop opportunities for strategic collaboration and ramp up broad-based engagement on common themes that affect UK workers. In 2019 ShareAction will be exploring how to build on our long-standing Living Wage campaign to do just this. Investor engagement and shareholder activism can help to reprogramme the economy for the creation of safe and prosperous communities supported by good jobs. And the work’s already begun.

This blog has been cross-posted from Share Action and written by Mara Lilley, Senior Campaigns Officer, Share Action

Two years on, what has the Connect Fund achieved?  Since its launch in June 2017, £2.2 million has been disbursed to 51 projects across nine regions in England. A further £500,000 was committed alongside the Connect Fund by external funders to match or part fund these projects. The Connect Fund has built online and face-to-face learning communities which have highly encouraging buy-in and participation. While only 20% of these projects have finished, some initial outputs and interim findings can be shared.

Connect Fund projects to date have delivered:

• 234 new connections, collaborations and partnerships between social investment intermediaries and social sector organisations
• 265 social sector infrastructure staff received social investment training
• 126 peer support visits by VCSEs to learn about social investment
• 2,000+ hours of enterprise development support delivered to VCSEs
• 84 social investment events were held

See this data in a visual format in this short animation.  The Connect Fund uses both quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods, independently supported by NPC, to gather critical feedback on its effectiveness. An external survey has found that 59% agree there are better connections between social investment intermediaries and VCSE infrastructure organisations, and 91% strongly agreed or agreed with the statement that the Connect Fund supports collaborative working. Over one-third of respondents specifically mentioned increasing connections, networks or partnerships as a result of Connect Fund projects.

Champion voluntary sector infrastructure

Voluntary sector infrastructure organisations are building the knowledge and skills to support enterprise development and social investment. These initiatives have created an ecosystem of social sector support organisations that champion social investment and develop pathways to enterprise. Infrastructure organisations have created clusters of activity for skill development, awareness-raising, communities of practice and peer learning to advance knowledge of and engagement with social investment. The focus has been to avoid duplication by strengthening anchor institutions and linking voluntary sector infrastructure to existing resources such as Good Finance. The early foundations are being laid for a voluntary sector that is informed and engaged with social investment with the potential to underpin place-based initiatives across the regions.

Catalyse market initiatives

The Connect Fund has bridged gaps in the market by funding joint initiatives. The social investment sector is increasingly evolving to focus on blended, flexible or patient finance. In a fragmented market, the need for innovative, more inclusive and collaborative problem-solving is evident. The Connect Fund has supported projects to improve market information, open data sharing, and strengthen sector networks. As our funding evolves, we will move from a general approach, to more strategic alignment to ensure effectiveness, drive further collaboration and ensure the legacy of interventions.

As a result of Connect Fund projects, Social Enterprise UK, Women in Social Finance, UK Community Foundations, Responsible Finance, VONNE and many other regional networks like Social Enterprise East of England have been more engaged with social investment. Across multiple issues, the Connect Fund has provided the first risk finance to intermediaries and infrastructure organisations working jointly to solve challenges.

Convene new voices for social investment

A priority for the Connect Fund is to increase the diversity of voices in social investment. This means regional diversity to broaden a London-centric market, and diversity in terms of the protected characteristics of race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability, among others. In addition to funding across the 9 regions, the Connect Fund actively supported 9 diversity projects.

The Connect Fund was the sole funder of the Diversity Forum, a much-needed, timely and insightful coalition of social investment intermediaries committed to expand the diversity of investment decision-makers. In addition to its learning community events, the Connect Fund helped to convene The Gathering for 150+ social investors in Leicester. This was a co-created event for the sector, by the sector that took over one year for the Steering Group to organise, as a key means of sharing learning and driving collaboration.

What does this all add up to?

The work of the Connect Fund is not done. Local infrastructure is vitally important to place-based initiatives and social investment at a time when the market is highly fragmented. We will continue to advocate for the value of supporting social investment infrastructure. Resource to drive forward collaboration to fill gaps in the market remains essential. Challenges remain to be solved.

In partnership with Access, the Connect Fund has a role to play in championing infrastructure, promoting collaboration, convening new voices and catalysing enterprising initiatives. Let us know if you would like to be part of building these solutions.

http://www.connectfund.org.uk/

https://twitter.com/connectfund

What is the difference between a single parent starving themselves to feed their children, an elderly person unable to get out of bed because they can’t afford to heat their home and a person developing a mental health condition due to debt crisis? The answer is “absolutely nothing”, if you think about it in financial terms.

I didn’t know until I started campaigning for change that it costs more to be poor! Many services and products that are essential to daily living have extra charges attached, and premiums are paid by people struggling to make ends meet that mean they find it even harder to survive. The list below is just a few of the ‘poverty premiums’ encountered:

• Energy tariffs
• Prepayment meters
• Paying for insurance in instalments
• Higher insurance policy prices
• Convenience shopping
• High-cost short-term credit (e.g. payday loans)
• Travel costs
• Life emergencies (e.g parking at hospital, prescription charges)

These premiums are something I had been unaware of throughout the eternal money struggles of my daily life.

The everyday costs of the Poverty Premium

It was a foregone conclusion that council housing had prepayment meters for electricity and gas. Of course, I wasn’t allowed an overdraft or credit card – they were for people far better off than me, the “normal” people. Contents insurance was a luxury, but I hadn’t got anything worth stealing anyway! That being said, the policy payments would have been high as we always were always housed in “high-risk” areas. The only way I could afford anything half decent was using doorstep lenders and high cost credit like shopping through rent to own lenders.  The problem? 47% interest.

What could make life easier?

Obviously more money. Despite working at every opportunity I could, and not wanting to rely on handouts, insufficient benefits payments and poverty wages are the reason so many people find themselves living in poverty in the first place. However, an eradication of those Poverty Premiums would have made my money go further, maybe help to make ends meet. An average amount of £490 per year could be saved for low income households if such premiums didn’t exist.

Payday lenders, rent-to-own retailers and credit repair credit cards could reduce or eradicate high interest charges. Energy companies that rely on loyalty, need and not always best practice, coin in huge profits off standing charges and high-priced tariffs. Reducing their charges in line with direct debit customers and realising that one size does not fit all would go a long way to helping.

Social housing making use of furnishings left by previous tenants could stem the need to use payday loans, rent-to-own and doorstep lenders, leaving more available funds to prevent tenants getting into rent arrears. The regulation of high cost lenders by capping interest rates will definitely help the extraordinarily high use by struggling households.

How would you feel?

Just take a minute to calculate what you class as the necessities and daily spending that cannot be avoided in your life. How would you pay for them if your existing finances were not available? Would you be outraged at the hidden costs you would be forced to pay?

Let’s get the message out there to the people, businesses, housing companies, government, industry and regulators.

Alicia Vernalls