The Big Society means in simple terms that the state should pull back from delivering public services and communities should do more for themselves. A stark reminder of what this means is as follows:
Like most people who have ever held the role of branch secretary it never really leaves you and years later I still get phone calls at home from people who are distraught and seeking advice and help.
Last night was one of those nights when the phone rang at 9.20 PM from a steward I had dealt with many years earlier. She had been to a meeting of children’s services working in a council that is facing tens of millions of pounds worth of cuts. The meeting was hosted by the outgoing director of children’s services who told the audience of predominantly women on pretty poor pay that the nurseries that they worked in were to close.
They could opt for voluntary redundancy or the nurseries might be taken over by the voluntary sector. Despite this director already having secured a fat redundancy package herself she took a harsh line with these women saying she ‘didn’t care’ who would end up providing the service so long as there were nurseries still available locally to look after children.
But her slant of ‘provider neutral’ missed completely the point these women were making. One of the voluntary sector organisations that had made it known it wanted to take over the nursery service is the same organisation that regularly refuses to carry on caring for children if funding dries up.
For example if a single parent earns slightly more than would entitle them to free care they simply tell the parents that they are no longer ‘eligible’ and to go and ’try the council’. It’s the council nurseries who then end up taking these children on at a reduced or free place rate.
These same children are often borderline in terms of their development with slow language skills and usual come with the sad baggage of poor housing and poor health. It’s the council that picks up the pieces where the ‘voluntary sector’ drops out of provision not the other way around. Without funds the idea that some happy clappy hippies are still prepared to provide a service, free of any form of funding, is fanciful and dangerous.
The council incidentally already provides grants to this voluntary sector organisation and it has already said it will stop or significantly reduce the grant payments. So it doesn’t stack up. They have already proven that they can’t do the job without funding. The funding will stop or be an absolute minimum so where will these female nursery staff end up? An unviable TUPE transfer situation where it is clear that the service would only be possible without their current pay and pensions being honoured.
Worse still the safety net of the council, as the default providers for children who don’t fit the niche criteria of the voluntary sector will be lost for good. So the people who really sit behind this gamble of a big society are as ever predominantly women workers in care related professions, and the most vulnerable people who rely on those same services.
Far too many councils are prepared to divest services into the hands of unproven and unviable ‘third sector’ organisations. And the council in this case that is putting these nurseries in this position is a Labour council. However harsh the budget pressures to take a ‘provider neutral’ stance in an abdication of responsibility and one we should challenge.
By cosy love-ins with third sector providers Labour councils are doing Cameron's job for him and justifying the pretext of the Big Society to simply slash state provision of vital frontline services.
It is time these Labour councils stood up to some semblance of socialist principles and defended jobs and services.
Anna Rose
