Refugee Support Group (RSG) is at risk of closure because even though it does not receive direct public funding, charitable trust funding is becoming scarcer because of increased demand and the economic climate.
Small organisations like RSG play a vital role in empowering some of the most excluded and vulnerable people in society to speak up for themselves.
Watch this video of Jeremy Cushing talking about Refugee Support Group:
We are sharing RSG's letters here to encourage you to write as well, and to support RSG. RSG is actively seeking collaboration opportunities to avoid closure of the organisation and its essential services. If you are interested in working with RSG or can offer support, please contact Jeremy Cushing at info@rsgdevon.org.uk.
Letters:
Dear Prime Minister
I am a trustee of a small charity in Exeter. Before the election you made a promise that your government would protect the vulnerable and do nothing to damage front-line services. You had a very moving passage in one speech when you envisaged a minister approaching you with plans that affected front-line services being sent back to his ministry to revise his spending policy.
I am writing to you to argue that a programme of cuts, however necessary, should be designed to minimise bad effects. This implies that some sectors might actually be given increased funding - for example, cuts in the legal aid budget might justify increases in funding for advice charities.
My charity represents asylum seekers and refugees. I think everyone would agree that they are extremely vulnerable, both because of the experiences they will have had in their home country and because of the very severe legislation which affects them once they are here. Yet frontline services affecting them are being savagely cut: the UK Border Agency has had to make big reductions in its budget and these have been passed on to other frontline agencies (e.g. the Refugee Council). Refugee and Migrant Justice was forced to close because of legal aid cuts. You will no doubt know of many other examples of organisations helping refugees which have had to downsize or close. My small charity seems likely to be one of them.
Partly this is not the result of your government's policies. As government spokesmen are currently all saying, not all charities receive funding from statutory authorities. The credit crunch has already reduced the grants available to small charities from another major source, national charitable funds. But we now face an even more serious decline in funding as a result of your government's policies. If this decline is not reversed your promise to protect the vulnerable will indeed be seen to have been hollow. As far as I can see you are winning the argument on the need for cuts, but losing it on the Great Society: everyone I speak to - and especially everyone concerned with the voluntary sector - thinks that your policies are not sufficiently well crafted to protect the most vulnerable. Some estimates (e.g. the NPC's) put the loss of funding for the sector in excess of £5bn, against which palliative measures so far amount of less than £500m.
Not only is it arguable that cutting funding to the voluntary sector at a time of major decreases in statutory spending is a less than ideal strategy, it is also arguable that there are many ways in which the government could minimise the impact of cuts (some of which, like reforms to the CRB rules, would not even cost anything). I am not aware that the government is putting much energy into finding them, and the demise of the Liverpool pilot was explained by the failure of government to carry out any of the changes which had allegedly been agreed on. This is a familiar situation: governments always find it difficult to co-ordinate actions behind a new strategy. This is why I suspect that a real push from your office is required. This could show that in spite of widespread doubts the Big Society idea is still alive.
I urge you to look into this and put more pressure on those parts of the government which impact the voluntary sector.
Yours sincerely
Jeremy Cushing
David Cameron, MP
Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
London
SW1A 2AA
Dear Mr Clegg
I’m writing to you as a trustee of a small charity in Exeter, to express my concern about the effect your programme of cuts is likely to have on the voluntary sector. You will be aware of many charities and other voluntary agencies which have been forced to close or downsize (only last week, the Refugee Council). You are widely accused of adopting neo-liberal policies, which if experience from other parts of the world can be trusted almost invariably lead to the enrichment of a few individuals and corporations at the expense of misery for many others. Before the election both you and Mr Cameron insisted that the deficit had to be tackled but promised that the most vulnerable would be protected from the cuts. As far as I can see you have largely won the battle for public opinion on the first point, but you are comprehensively losing it on the latter.
The last government laboured over many years to improve the functioning of the voluntary sector. Much of what it introduced looked like top-down tinkering to many of us, but there were some notable improvements – e.g. the push for ‘intelligent commissioning’. There is a real danger that your government will throw out this baby with the bathwater of unnecessary bureaucracy, while at the same time destroying much of the sector by the combination of severe cuts and ‘localism’, which seems to set local authorities free to discriminate. You will no doubt have noticed the recent announcement by Devon County Council of radical cuts in its domestic violence funding. There are few people in society more vulnerable than people affected by domestic violence.
I urge you to push for a strategic approach to the voluntary sector which does protect charities helping the vulnerable. It is an enormously complex area but one in which there is a great deal to be done. I attended a conference on improving relations between the government and the ‘third’ sector the other day, and it was almost totally devoid of inspiration. Representatives of state authorities mouthed platitudes but did not seem to want to listen to the wealth of experience among their audience. Can you not change this?
Yours sincerely
Jeremy Cushing
Nick Clegg, MP, Deputy Prime Minister
Jeremy Cushing
Nick Clegg, MP, Deputy Prime Minister
Dear Mr Pickles
I'm writing to you as a trustee of a small charity in Exeter, to express my concern about the effect your programme of cuts is likely to have on the voluntary sector. You will be aware of many charities and other voluntary agencies which have been forced to close or downsize (only last week, the Refugee Council). Local authority funding and commissioning is vital to many parts of the sector and the combination of cuts in central government grants and removing ring-fencing for much funding is bound to reduce the amount of money paid by local authorities to charities. I might refer you to the announcement by Devon County Council that it would remove all funding for domestic violence work, for example: this has since been modified but will still represent a disaster for many extremely vulnerable individuals.
Your government seems to be winning the political battle over the extent of cuts. But it seems to be losing the battle on whether it is committed to protecting the most vulnerable, or front-line services. No-one I talk to (apart from one Conservative MP) believes that this is possible as things stand at the moment.
The voluntary or 'third' sector is in fact one of the most effective - because flexible and cheap - ways of protecting the vulnerable. I appeal to you to find some way in which the impact of your department's policies on it is minimised. As a start I urge you to abandon your determination to frontload the cuts, but there must be many other ways in which the department could affect local authorities' policies on this front (many of which might not even cost any money). Please could you initiate a policy rethink?
Yours sincerely
Jeremy Cushing
Eric Pickles, MP
Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government
Dear Lord Wei
I am writing to you as a trustee of a small charity which is likely to close through lack of funds. You have been appointed to champion David Cameron's idea of the Big Society (appropriately as an unpaid volunteer, I believe). At the moment the press is full of claims that this is an idea which failed. I am hoping that you will join in a push to rescue it, and with it the strength of the voluntary sector, at the moment looking likely to diminish significantly.
The government seems to have won the argument over cuts, in that most of the public believe that they are necessary. However before the election the Conservatives promised that cuts would not affect the front line, and also that they would protect the vulnerable. David Cameron also put forward his vision of a new approach to public participation. You seem to be losing this part of the argument - hardly anyone I speak to believes that the vulnerable are really being protected, and nearly everyone in the voluntary sector thinks that the government's policies are likely to do it lasting damage. The demise of the Liverpool project brings this into sharp relief.
It is fairly obvious that any strategy which aims simultaneously to diminish government expenditure and prevent this harming the vulnerable will be complex. In particular it will be likely actually to increase spending in some areas - for example, if you cut spending on legal aid it would be intelligent to increase spending on advice charities. At the moment I can see no sign that this kind of thinking is having much influence on government policy: maybe from within the Cabinet Office you can have some effect on this?
It is also true that there are many ways in which the voluntary sector could be helped which would not necessarily cost much money. The last government put a lot of effort into improving the liaison between the voluntary and statutory sectors, but they also introduced quite a lot of burdensome bureaucracy. I celebrate the fact that this government plans to make the CRB system less all-encompassing, though I feel that it could go much further in this direction. There are many other ways in which the sector could be helped - such organisations as Volunteering England and the NCVO have the necessary expertise, of course. I do hope you are encouraging the government to take full advantage of expert advice. It was very disappointing that Joe Anderson said 'the government has failed to deliver a single change that we have requested': which suggests that there is still no strategic thinking behind the Big Society. I hope you will be able to change this.
Yours sincerely
Jeremy Cushing
Dear Mrs May
I read today about the effect of cuts on Refugee Action. Last week it was the Refugee Council. Before that we had Refugee and Migrant Justice. I am a trustee of a small refugee charity in Exeter, and we are likely to have to close next year.
Reading the news from places like Tunisia and Egypt I am proud to live in a country where the government actually funds organisations whose remit includes criticising it. But the system is cruel to refugees: UKBA does not have the reputation of being sympathetic to them and many suffer almost as much from the immigration bureaucracy as they did in their original countries. Asylum seekers are undoubtedly among the most seriously disadvantaged groups in our country, and the Conservatives promised that, while needing to make real cuts, they would not damage the front line. The organisations listed above are right in the front line and they help the most vulnerable people in our society. Cannot the cuts be managed so as to protect them from the worst effects?
Yours sincerely
Jeremy Cushing
Theresa May, MP
CC to Damian Green MP
No comments:
Post a Comment