Social Investing and the International Context

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Blog Editor

Here on the VAHS Forum, we tend to focus on the voluntary sector in Britain, past and present. But in this global age, what happens here can have a direct impact on other parts of the world, as Jon Weier writes for us.

The Canadian government announced recently that it would begin a program of investing in social impact bonds. As the Globe and Mail, one of Canada’s major national newspapers, reported, this would entail the creation of a system in which philanthropic and charitable organizations, as well as businesses, would be encouraged to invest in social programs.  If these social programs were to then meet agreed-upon targets, the organization that had made the investment would be reimbursed, with interest, by the government.

As a subsequent op-ed piece pointed out, there are significant concerns about the move towards this kind of funding.  There is some worry that existing funding envelopes would decrease in order to fund this new initiative, or that social bonds would be used as an excuse by the government to reduce funding to the charitable sector.  Similarly, there are questions about whether this would further the trend that already exists to favour programs that have an easy, quantifiable, measure of success, rather than programs that are much more difficult to evaluate or that are more long term in their goals.  Finally, this could lead to the practice of selecting participants for these programs from among those individuals most likely to succeed and less in need of services, in order to ensure that measurable targets are met, while neglecting those most in need.

As the articles both mention, this initiative is inspired by a similar program of social bonds that was introduced in the United Kingdom in the past few years.  What neither article discusses is whether these social bonds have been successful, or whether critics’ fears were borne out.  And this seems to highlight the importance of transnational research when it comes to the history of the charitable sector and its relationship with government.  If governments and charitable organizations are going to be influenced by initiatives and movements that are developed in other countries and end up having an international impact, it’s important that we understand the national context in which these programs were developed.  While representatives of the Canadian charitable sector have expressed some misgivings about this new program, most seem unaware of whether these programs have been successful in other jurisdictions.

Those of us engaged in research will find such poorly-informed policy transfer worrying. Our contributors have given their verdict on various aspects of the UK  Government’s Big Society agenda, but what do readers think in particular of the record in this area? And what do we think of the Coalition’s policies serving as a template for other governments?

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Prison and probation: Should charity have a role in criminal justice?

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Lindsey Metcalf

The Coalition Government’s announcement of plans to contract out probation services to the private and voluntary sectors last week represents another shift in the ‘moving frontier’ between state and voluntary action.  It is likely to fuel debates about the implications of policies that shift responsibility for mainstream public service delivery onto non-statutory providers.

Probation – like many other public services – has its origins in charity.  In 1876 a printer, Frederic Rainer, donated five shillings to the Church of England Temperance Society to support work to break the cycle of re-offending.  His gift paid for the appointment of a missionary at Southwark Crown Court.  This led to the formation of the London Police Courts Mission that sought to ‘befriend’ and offer practical assistance to those coming before the magistrates.  Statutory probation services were established in 1907 (and came under the control of the Home Office in 1938).  Charities continued to play a supplementary role alongside statutory probation services (Toynbee Hall and the Children’s Society being just two examples), prompting familiar debates about the relationship between and the respective roles of state and charity.

Social policies introduced in the past decade have significantly increased the number of voluntary organisations providing services connected to the criminal justice system.  It is estimated that some 20,000 voluntary organisations in England and Wales are currently engaged in work with offenders – much of it aimed at reducing re-offending by providing help with accommodation, education and training and health.

The involvement of the voluntary sector in the running of prisons and probation services is controversial however.  In 2008, a consortia of voluntary organisations and a private sector company submitted a bid to build and run a prison.  The involvement of Nacro – a voluntary organisation with a reputation as an advocate for penal reform – raised challenging questions about its ability to function as both prison provider and advocate to offenders.

As Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Chris Grayling is responsible for probation policy

The government’s proposals to outsource probation raise similar critical questions about the role of voluntary organisations in the penal system.  Is it appropriate to run criminal justice processes in a competitive marketplace?  What are the implications of staff and volunteers running ‘offender management’ services that potentially impact on a person’s liberty?  Is it ever possible to combine the roles of ‘befriender’ and ‘enforcer’?

Research into the implications of statutory-voluntary ‘partnerships’ in other aspects of welfare provision has identified a raft of potential challenges for the voluntary sector, including short-term funding, squeezing out of smaller organisations, and pressure to adopt the agendas of statutory partners.

Given this, it seems inevitable the issue of voluntary sector independence will raise its head again in response to the outsourcing of probation. Can voluntary sector mainstream providers focus on tackling the complex issues of social exclusion linked to re-offending or will they face pressure to steer towards a more punitive and less rehabilitative government agenda?  Can voluntary organisations maintain their independence and values under pressure to ‘compete’ and offer ‘cost-effectiveness’?  Is the outsourcing of the criminal justice system simply another inevitable shift in the ‘moving frontier’ or is it a step too far?

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Historians and Charities

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Blog Editor

Fresh from talking to Save the Children about their founders and their early days, Emily Baughan writes for us on what historians and charities can learn from each other.

When I first began research in the archives of Save the Children, they were housed in the organisation’s UK head offices in London. As I read harrowing accounts of the 1921 Russian famine, I sat metres away from a team organising deliveries of food and medicine to famine stricken regions in Niger during the 2010 East Africa Famine Appeal. Witnessing these two food crises unfold alongside each other, I saw that the questions and problems being faced by the staff as Save the Children today were similar to those which confronted their predecessors over almost ninety years before. This experience left me with a conviction that historians can and should have important inputs into conversations about contemporary humanitarian practice and policy.

If historians wish to be heard by humanitarian organisations which, by their very nature, lurch from one crisis to the next, they must find ways to make their research accessible. One very obvious way of doing this is by directly talking to organisations, as I enjoyed doing at Save the Children offices in Cardiff and London this spring.

The early leaders of Save the Children, sure that they would be remembered as the ‘heroes of the age’, were careful to compile a ‘devastating mass of documents for a future history-reading generation’. They even spoke of their ‘pity’ for the historians who unearthed their prolific paper trail! Yet, conscious of this future interest in their work, they began to mythologise their origins and sought to obscure instances of conflict and controversy. They did so by centring the story of Save the Children’s early years upon one of their early leaders, Eglantyne Jebb, who was portrayed as a saintly figure ‘ahead of her time’ in her concern for ‘all the word’s children’ in a period of nationalism and xenophobia.

In my talks, I offered a more complete reading of the Save the Children’s early history, reintegrating the wide range of actors that influenced its work, and situating its discussions and decisions within the wider social and political context of the era.  Rather than being saintly, otherworldly figures, Save the Children’s founders grappled with many of the questions facing charities today. Should they use graphic missing word to fundraise, or would these offend public sensibilities? Should they further their reach by co-operating with governments and business, or would this compromise their integrity? How should they interact with other charitable organisations with which they were in ‘competition’ for donations? With limited resources, how did they decide which children should be helped?

In a bid to overcome the controversy associated with their work, Save the Children’s early leaders claimed that humanitarianism was a universal ethos, distinct and separate from political concerns. Matching the rhetoric of ‘non-political humanitarianism’ with the Edwardian discourse of ‘scientific philanthropy’, the choices they made were claimed to be ideologically neutral – the natural outcome of the intersection between universal concern and pragmatic common sense.

This, of course, was not the case. Actions which appeared as neutral were underscored by the ideas and assumptions of the interwar era. Their relief work on the continent of Europe betrayed Victorian value judgements about the deserving and undeserving poor. Efforts in Africa upheld the importance of colonial intervention. In their discussion of the British poor, they were influenced by the  ‘the science of eugenics’.

As historians, our role is not to castigate charities for past actions out of step with present norms and values. The best corrective we can offer to organisations’ celebrity origins stories is to denaturalise purportedly universal humanitarian norms. We should show that, far from being politically neutral, humanitarian acts and actors have been deeply influenced by contemporary norms and ideological agendas. Understanding this, I believe, is vital in order to open up debate in the present day humanitarian sector. If humanitarian is understood as a flexible and contingent ideal, there can be greater scrutiny of contemporary efforts, and greater innovation in future planning.

I benefited enormously from the talks I gave at Save the Children UK in London and Save the Children Wales in Cardiff. Fielding questions from a new audience, well versed in many of the issues I deal with, was a great way to gauge which aspects of the project seem particularly important and interesting. It helped me to rediscover the relevance and reality of Save the Children’s past, several years since I first ventured into their archives.

Kevin O’Sullivan (Galway) and Matthew Hilton (Birmingham) are currently running a project
which looks at how historians can communicate with the present-day humanitarian sector.
Emily Baughan has written more about the dilemmas faced by Save the Children in fundraising
and in conflict with other organisations in the interwar period. 
Posted in Archives, Emily Baughan, Events, Forum, New Researchers, Research | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Feature: Kaiserwerth Deaconesses

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Blog Editor

This gallery contains 4 photos.

For our May feature, Carmen Mangion reports back for us from an academic conference in Germany on the history of deaconesses, religious women who were part of a transnational movement at the heart of nineteenth-century care and provision for the poor. … Continue reading →

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Charity and the First World War

Posted on April 29, 2013 by George Campbell Gosling


Leanne Green, VAHS Seminar, 19 November 2013 (slides)
Advertising War: The Visual Imagery of Charity Campaigns in the First World War

How do we remember the First World War? And what do historians make of how we remember the First World War? Both of these things have been constantly renegotiated over that past century since the lamps went out across Europe, and they show no signs of slowing down as we approach the centenary of the outbreak of war. While pioneering works by Samuel Hynes and Daniel Todman have ensured that the afterlife of the conflict has been given its rightful place in its history, we should be aware that we are at the beginning of a major chapter in that story of how we remember what was supposed to be the ‘last war’.

Some challenges to our collective memory have been contentious. While the Blackadder portrayal perhaps tells us more about how we have tried to come to terms with the war more than the war itself, a more positive rewriting of the ‘donkeys led by lions’ account has the danger of downplaying the sheer scale of sacrifice. Others have been more universally accepted, such as the recognition the war was much more than a European affair. Our April feature piece presented some current research being undertaken by one of our Canadian colleagues, taking a transnational view of the YMCA’s war work.

Peter GrantThis also fits with another shift in the history of the First World War, one readers of this blog are sure to welcome. This is the increasing recognition of charity work within the wider war effort. Peter Grant’s doctoral research on ‘non-uniformed voluntary action’ in Britain has drawn attention to ‘the greatest act of volunteering ever witnessed in this country’; seen in ‘the voluntary effort at home, especially to support the men at the front, in health and sickness, but also to aid numerous other charitable causes’.

Meanwhile, ongoing doctoral projects by Jon Weier and Leanne Green (whose recent VAHS seminar podcast you can listen to above) remind us that this is also part of how we see Britain’s international role. Both as part of transnational networks and with an imperial and humanitarian view of its place in the world. Indeed, the continuity of this view as expressed in the humanitarian appeals for European refugee work at the outbreak of war and after it suggest this may have survived the shock of the war better than we might imagine.

The postwar campaign methods of Save the Children may have been different from those of others following the 'Rape of Belgium' but the message and assumption about Britain's moral duty to act as a protector is remarkably similar

The postwar fundraising methods of Save the Children may have been different from those of others following the ‘Rape of Belgium’ but the message and assumptions about a British moral duty to act as a protector is remarkably similar

We are not the first to talk about this. In the 1960s Arthur Marwick wrote that the First World War provided ‘the last great flowering of grand scale private philanthropy’ and in the 1990s Gerard DeGroot incorporated charitable work into his narrative of Blighty during the war, while a decade ago Adrian Gregory used the Military Service Tribunals to show that civil society is not always benevolent. But there is still much more to say.

So, are you researching charitable work during the First World War? How do you think this should be included in our collective memory of the conflict as we approach the centenary of the outbreak of war?

Posted in Forum, George Campbell Gosling, Podcasts, Reflections, Research, Seminars | Tagged , | 2 Comments