Anil Ranchod, Stroke Association Not having a degree hasn’t stopped me Expand The positivity and commitment in the charity sector is infectious I don’t have a degree simply because we couldn’t afford it. So I came into the charity sector as a temp, 23 years ago and was amazed by the people I met. Here was a talented, friendly, passionate group of people whose motivation was to make a difference. Their positivity and commitment was infectious and on securing a permanent position, I was hooked. I still try to imbue those qualities in the teams I work with. The first team I worked with taught me loads about being a professional My first charity job was as Marketing Assistant at the NSPCC. I was working as a temp supporting one of the officers and the role came up and I went for it. I’ll never forget, there were over 200 applicants, so I felt very lucky and honoured to even get an interview. My main role was to support the Marketing Manager and the team, who were brilliantly supportive and taught me loads on integrity and being a professional. My background was in managing a small mail order business and banking. I believe it was my can-do attitude and pragmatic approach to finding solutions coupled with a hunger to learn. I learned on the job I was really pleased that in five years at NSPCC, I learned on the job and reached Senior Marketing Communications Officer by the time I left. In 2003, I decided to go into PR and started my career again. Again, surrounded by some brilliant and supportive people, I managed to achieve lots of successes. One of my biggest successes is that I created and successfully delivered the UK’s stroke awareness month, now known as Make May Purple for stroke. We’ve won several awards and it has been featured in PR Week. Not having a degree hasn’t stopped me (but it’s easier teaching someone who wants to learn) If you’re thinking of working in the charity sector: do it because you care. All too often I see people coming into the sector because they think it’s less demanding than the private sector, but that is quite the opposite. I’m proud to say that I have always worked for causes I feel strongly about and that’s my motivation. Don’t be afraid to show your passion and don’t give up at the first hurdle. Not having a degree hasn‘t stopped me, as I continue to show my passion and commitment to the cause. But that’s not enough. You need to be aware that you’re learning – ask questions and don’t be afraid to say you don’t know something and you need support. It’s easier to teach someone who wants to learn.
Anna Feuchtwang, CEO, National Children’s Bureau I learn best by doing Expand Anna is the Chief Executive of NCB. She is also the Vice-chair of Asylum Aid, a charity which provides free legal advice and representation to the most vulnerable and excluded asylum seekers, and lobbies and campaigns for an asylum system based on inviolable human rights principles. Starting out in the voluntary sector “At 18 I wasn’t particularly interested in academic study, I was more interested in learning by doing. While there were strong expectations that I would go to university, when I didn’t get the required A levels it helped me focus on what I wanted to do most – which was to become a journalist. I was a journalist on a local paper and actively involved in international campaigns like the Anti-Apartheid Movement. When a job came up at Oxfam working as a press officer on campaigns it seemed like the perfect combination of my interests. I stayed with Oxfam for over ten years and had been promoted to Head of Communications by the time I left. Professional development My early development as a manager came primarily from being a trade union rep and receiving excellent training from the TUC and the National Union of Journalists. For the past ten years I’ve learned most from being part of a peer learning group using a technique called action learning. I benefitted greatly from an excellent coach when I first became a chief executive. My skills have also been developed by in-house training and development. Successes I led a consortium of international organisations to deliver a joint programme celebrating the lives of people living on the zero degrees meridian line as part of the UK’s Millennium event. It became the centre piece of Channel Four’s Millennium programming and featured in the Millennium Dome. I also created an international partnership owned and governed by its national member organisations who together change the lives of children living outside of family care and who support families to stay together. Anna has also been the Chair of ActionAid UK and the Chair of Bond, the membership organisation for the UK’s international development organisations. After working for Oxfam, Anna became Director of Communications and Public Affairs at the Association of London Government where she worked with London’s 33 authorities on child protection issues following the Victoria Climbie case and the introduction of Every Child Matters legislation.
By 'child protection' services do you mean children being removed from parents by social workers? Expand The child protection services under threat include social work to identify where a child is suffering or likely to suffer a significant level of harm at home, and should be placed in residential or foster care. But local children's social care includes many other services, such as - Social work to help families overcome problems and stay together Support for young carers looking after a relative Essential help for children with special needs or disabilities and their families Making sure lone refugee children in the area receive care and accommodation Providing sufficient, good quality residential and foster care placements Making sure children in residential or foster care have regular reviews of their placement, independent advocacy and mechanisms to have their views taken into account There are several other agencies involved in protecting children, for example the police and health services, and whilst their funding is separate and not directly affected by the withdrawal of central government's formula grant to councils, the work itself is extremely interdependent and where local authorities struggle to fulfill their child protection duties, the effectiveness of the other agencies will be diminished too.
Care Review ideas - the Care Bank Expand The idea The Care Bank is a new national public body with a duty to every child on a care order. With funding directly from the Treasury, it pays for all placements including adoption, fostering, residential and the costs of kinship care. It does NOT influence decisions about placements, but frees local authorities to work with each child to make the decision that is best for them without reference to the cost. Each provider of care has one business relationship - with the Care Bank - and must work with open book accounts. The Care Bank can monitor providers for their sustainability, profit margins and investment in decent pay for the workforce. It has regulatory power over mergers and acquisitions. The Care Bank has a strategic role in foresight planning and commissioning of the types of care difficult to commission locally - specialised care and/or care needed by a relatively small number of children. Local authorities retain their corporate parent duties and their power to commission care that is needed locally, empowered by the certainty that the Care Bank will pay for all necessary places.Government’s response to the public procurement consultation indicates that services such as social care may be exempted from competition in new procurement regulations. We believe that the care system should be one of those exempt sectors, and that the Care Bank would provide a robust alternative procurement framework. The impact we hope this will achieve The Care Bank will rebalance power - away from providers and towards children and their local authority corporate parents. - Children, alongside their social worker and prospective carer (as well as their parent where appropriate) can choose the care they feel is right for them, without being influenced by the cost. - With the right placement decision made first time, fewer placements will fail and fewer children will need to be moved to different homes. - Care Bank Funds follow the child, and the child’s own evaluation of their placement will be the trigger for continued payments, putting the child’s experience of care at the heart of all decisions. - Social workers can feel confident putting the child’s needs first and there need be no hierarchy of placements due to availability or price. - The Care Bank will simplify procurement, making it more transparent and less costly, and ensuring provider finances are fair and sustainable. - It will enable decision-makers to build a clearer picture of need and provision, and plan strategically for the future, meaning children are less likely to experience out-of-area placements or inappropriate types of care. - Local authorities can focus resources on family help and other types of social care children need. - For an illustrated summary of the main elements and impacts of the Care Bank, click here. - For a full explanation of the Care Bank and the need for such reform, click here.
Care Review ideas - the Children Act Funding Formula Expand The idea The Children Act Funding Formula would retain central responsibility for the funding of children and family services from national taxation, enabling local authorities to fulfil their duties under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989. We believe that this legislation remains well-designed to allow councils scope and flexibility to meet each child and family’s unique needs, whether that is simple, practical help or more complex intervention. What has been missing increasingly in recent years is sufficient funding for it. Also missing in current funding is weighting for levels of deprivation, which government data analysed by the Child Welfare Inequalities Project shows is a crucial factor in resourcing local authorities equitably. The Children Act Funding Formula would award 3 - 5 year grants to local authorities based on three factors: Current and projected child population Disabled children and young carers Deprivation indices for the area It would not be ring-fenced but, like Section 17, allow councils to decide in partnership with communities and families how best to spend it for children’s wellbeing. The impact we hope this will achieve A fair national funding formula accounting for levels of deprivation would reverse years of growing inequality between areas, during which councils with the highest levels of need have seen the biggest cuts to their budgets, and had the least to spend per child. Whilst accounting for variations in the specific needs of children in each area, it would enable all areas to achieve the same quality of outcomes as each other.Over the long term, the sufficiency and certainty of the Children Act Funding Formula would allow local authorities to rebalance spending between Section 17 duties (including ‘early’ or ‘family’ help) and more critical interventions that have taken priority while budgets are insufficient to meet all levels of need. Combined with the Care Bank (submitted separately) the Formula would give every area the power and the resources to design services in partnership with local families, and to invest in the holistic support envisaged by the Children Act, from children’s centres to refuges to respite for families with a disabled child. Ultimately, families would receive the support they need to stay together wherever possible and fewer children would need to be taken into care. - For a full explanation of the Children Act Funding Formula, click here.
Care Review ideas: Exempt all arrangements for care provision under the Children Acts from public competition rules Expand The idea The Government’s response to the public procurement consultation indicates that the Light Touch regime in procurement of social care services will now be retained. Furthermore, in paragraph 121 it suggests that services such as social care may be exempted from competition rules altogether in new procurement regulations. The care system (any/all kinds of care placements that children need while in care) should be one of those exempted sectors. Such an exemption would be transformative in freeing local care commissioning from the constrictions (real, and perceived) of compliance with procurement regulations. It would also be liberating for councils to be lifted out of the shadow of threats of legal challenge from ‘market competitors’ if they are ‘excluded’ from chances to compete for new business from them. Creative, community-led commissioning, and rethinking of how best to ensure best value without resorting to competition, would still be needed if the exemption were declared. We think the Care Bank idea (submitted separately, and in previous Review submissions) would provide a robust alternative public investment framework and oversight body in what could be a turbulent transition from a national competitive market, to a non-competitive locally driven system that puts children’s needs, views and preferences in the driving seat of determining what kinds of care are funded, and who should run them. But the case for exempting children’s social care from competition rules stands alone, to us, and would be of transformative impact even without the Care Bank. The impact we hope this would achieve One of the most significant benefits of freeing the care system from competition would be the ability to build long-term collaborative partnerships for caring well in local communities; and to reverse the short-termism and instability caused by competitive mechanisms like frameworks and spot purchasing. Councils could construct partnerships with (for example) charities, co-operatives of local foster carers and community social enterprises who commit to be part of the social fabric of that community for many years to come. What care is needed, nurtured, adapted and invested in would be a matter for the council and its community to decide and build together – not open to being seen as a competitive market to be ‘broken into’ by any organisation. The Care Bank would support creative local commissioning and co-production with children and families because the Care Bank would make sure the money for their care follows each child, so keeping as many children well cared for in their home authority as possible (and commissioning the people, training, support and places to make that a reality) would bring Care Bank funds into the community to pay for them, instead of sending children away from their community to be cared for far from home.
Care Review ideas: Tax all providers of UK public services equally Expand The idea Learning from similar policy reforms recently introduced in Demark, we propose that government should legislate to require that in all public spending decisions about public service contracts, officials must verify (before confirming any final contract award) that any organisation to whom public funds are awarded is paying in full their appropriate taxes to the UK government for the business they do here. This should apply equally to all company forms and ownership structures of firms involved in public service contracting, whether registered as a British business or registered in another country. The impact we hope this will achieve At present, markets like those which operate in children’s social care can be treated purely as sources of potential profit for private equity firms and investors, with little incentive for them to invest in good quality services over the long term. Private equity firms anywhere in the world can buy up small British providers, maximise the profits they can make from state contract fees, and then exit the market again after around 3 - 7 years. Complex ownership structures that trace back to registration in tax havens enable the extraction of what the CMA described as sometimes 'excessively high profits' out of the UK economy, without even being taxed properly 'on the way out'. We do not suggest that all private care companies, nor indeed all private investors, use such techniques currently, or would countenance doing so. Responsible companies and investors, who conduct their business and tax affairs entirely lawfully, definitely exist and operate ethically within the current market, and would not be the target for this reform. Indeed, making sure that responsible care organisations, ethical employers and caring investors aren’t having to 'compete' with ones that are behaving less ethically, and aren’t paying comparable taxes, to do similar work, in the same country, is one important reason for suggesting this should be a standard requirement in all public procurement conducted with public (ie taxpayers’) funds.
Cathy Shimmin, Senior Training Manager, Directory for Social Change 5 ways round the degree Expand “I had a vague idea but not really a plan” When I was little I always wanted to teach. I had a vague idea but not really a plan. I was doing well in school until I hit about 14 (hormones, world experience, divorce – parents not mine!) and just lost interest in school. I busked my way through a handful of ‘O’ levels and got out of there as quickly as I could. For the next nine or so years I crawled my way through various jobs: waitressing, shop work, architect’s assistant, clothes concession manager, data entry clerk (even in shipping 1980’s job titles were not aspirational), bar manager, gym receptionist and tons of temping office type jobs. It all just seemed like an aimless meandering at the time. However, when I look back, some of this experience gave me the best grounding in the world of work. I worked with all sorts of people at all sorts of levels in huge variety of settings. I learned loads about team work and masses about good and bad management and leadership – real experiential learning. In the early 90’s I left my gym job (very telling when you look at me!) and had my first ever period of unemployment. The Dublin job centre made me go for an interview with a charity, Carmichael Centre (a little like UK CVSs). It was for a role as Assistant to the Director. I told her honestly that I didn’t have a clue why FAS had sent me but that I was very organised and efficient, had a good work ethic and that ‘it might be a blast to work for a charity for a change’. (Do not try this line if you are going for an interview with a charity. The sector and Equal Opps interviews are a bit more sophisticated nowadays.) I got lucky. She liked me and we gave it go. 1. Get someone who believes in you and is prepared to mentor you. The late Kate O’Sullivan was a truly wonderful mentor to me at Carmichael Centre. I PA’d for her for about 10 months and then she created a project for me to manage full time. It was working with people who had been long term unemployed and I loved it. I had some real learning curves as I moved into managing other people but found a niche in working with people to help them find out about how they could move forward in their careers. 2. Find something you are sincerely passionate about. I had a real interest in helping people who had left school early and not quite found their place in the world (wonder where that came from?). I had a genuine belief that most had much more potential than they were realising. With that belief as a starting point, it becomes easy to help people. During my five years in this role I got lots of experience and some qualifications in Management and computer skills (it was all still quite new then). One year we had a shortfall in funds for providing some aspects of our job-seeking skills training. Kate, pushy as ever, decided I could do it myself. “You know how to write applications, you’ve had tons of interviews – think about your experience, read about the theory and put it into something that looks like a workshop.” Aaaarrrgghh! “I just kept looking for opportunities to grow my skills” I did it though. It worked. I loved it … and I remembered that I had always wanted to teach. So I just kept looking for opportunities to grow my skills. I loved that job but needed to re-group and think about the future. I took some time out to think about it. Working at the Directory for Social Change The first thing they said at my DSC interview was “So, tell us how you got to this stage in your career’. Wow! I had a career – how did that happen? I told them about how I just loved to help people learn and grow, and was a proficient administrative manager and loved working with charities. DSC would be a great place to get a bird’s eye view of the sector and learn more about training and events. They offered, I accepted and my 6 months has become 15 years. During that time I’ve had a few roles at DSC – all within their training services. 3. Let those who can help know what you want to do and what you need to do it. The CEO, Debra Allcock Tyler, took over after I had been there for a couple of years. She had 1-1’s with every member of staff when she joined (good practice by the way) and during mine I ranted on about how much I loved training and wanted more opportunity to deliver than just organise and manage it. She listened. Debra was my second mentor and lived up to all my expectations of what a good mentor should be. She gave me an initial six weeks’ mentoring, threw me in the deep end, gave me some course titles I could deliver, told me to get the material together, gave me some delivery dates – and then supported me all the way. I learned more from that experience and mentoring in six weeks than I could have learned in any three-year teaching degree – experiential learning that I could use in a practical way. At that time I was the In House Training Manager at DSC as a result of a couple of internal promotions. I was doing both this and trying to get training experience in. 4. Say yes to some of the stuff you don’t like doing, get noticed and learn from it. One budget planning period I mentioned that it could be economically wise for DSC to employ some trainers on a full time basis. Debra said, ‘write me a proposal, with the numbers in’. Do you know, I nearly didn’t. I hate writing to structure and well, numbers, we’ve been there. I still have a copy of that e-mail and proposal I sent to Debra and I still have my job as the first trainer DSC took on as an employee. I love it. 5. Keep learning! Most careers worth their salt are a journey rather than a destination. I loved learning to be a trainer and am still learning. Every day I deliver a training course I give myself some review time afterwards to see what I can change, add, take out, learn from that day – no matter how many times I have delivered it before. Passion and commitment above qualifications If you have a genuine interest in the field you pursue, if you demonstrate your willingness and commitment to learning, if you look out for and maximise opportunities that work well for the organisation as well as yourself, you are much more likely to be hired for your attitude, and given the skills training along the way. The voluntary sector is a rewarding and challenging place to work. We do so much with so little. Never worry that the ‘little’ is about your academic attainment. The ‘much’ is about your passion and commitment. If you have that, go for it, it’s always a commodity in demand in this sector and certainly what I would look for in recruits in my field – always over and above qualifications.
Cheryl Stagg, Administrative Assistant, Barnardo’s I did an apprenticeship instead Expand I didn’t go to uni because I wasn’t sure about my career path in school: I went to college and ended up enrolling on an aviation course, which I completed it but it wasn’t really for me. I was keen to make a difference I was motivated to work for a charity in the first place because I was keen to make a difference and decided on a meaningful career. I chose Barnardo’s because it’s a well-known organisation. When I came to Barnardo’s they helped me to apply for the Business Admin apprenticeship vacancy in the office. I was successful. I have good communication skills which have helped me to learn new skills around the workplace. I completed my L2 & L3 Business Administration apprenticeship with the help of Palmersville Training and I am now employed as a full time admin assistant. I have been working in the Charity Sector since October 2011 and really enjoy my job and the challenges that come with it. Doing an apprenticeship I really enjoyed the experience and learning different tasks such as covering reception and collecting evidence for my portfolio. I had lots of support from the staff, including my tutor who I had regular reviews with to go through my learning plan. I felt welcomed and realised that administration was what I wanted to do as a career. If you don’t have a degree and want to work for a charity – go for it I would tell young people to go for it. I didn’t want to do a degree – and now I have a Level 3 in Business Administration and I’ve got a great job at Barnardo’s. I really enjoy my job and every day is different. I’m taking on extra responsibilities and hope to progress in my role in the future.
Chloë Darlington, Policy and Communications Manager Policy and Communications Manager Expand Chloë Darlington, Policy and Communications Manager Chloë has a Masters degree from Edinburgh University and developed her communications and fundraising skills as a producer of plays and drama festivals in Edinburgh. Since then, she has worked in the children and young people’s voluntary sector, initially as External Affairs Manager for the young people’s helpline Get Connected (now The Mix) and then as Communications Officer for youth participation at Woodcraft Folk. With an increasing focus on campaigning and social justice, she became Policy and Communications Manager for Children England in 2014. Chloë has been a trustee of Trust in Children, which makes grants to projects around the world helping children to access education, since 2004. Contact: [email protected] 020 3597 6296 / 07980 26 26 11