.jpg)
The Guardian view on charities and the cost of
living crisis: overwhelming needs
Editorial
As more and more people struggle with food and heating
bills, the danger is that the services supporting them will collapse
Mon 26 Dec
2022 18.30 GMT
When Family
Action was established as the Charity Organisation Society in 1869, its aim was
to find more effective ways to lift people out of poverty. After two name
changes and more than 140 years of casework, the charity once again finds
itself bearing witness to a daily struggle for survival. Every day, caseworkers
encounter people struggling to meet basic needs, including parents reheating
formula milk rather than pouring it away. This is the painful frontline of a
cost of living crisis that is now threatening charities as well as the
communities they serve.
Growing
needs combined with rising costs mean some charities have never been more
tightly squeezed. With councils desperately short of money, there is no chance
of public sector contracts being uprated in line with inflation. Nor will
shortfalls be made up by fundraising. A survey by the Charities Aid Foundation
found that the number of people giving fell by 4.9 million in 2021 compared with
two years earlier. The boss of the Charity Commission, Orlando Fraser, has
described the situation as an “existential crisis” and criticised the
super-rich for being less generous than a decade ago.
As in the
pandemic, one consequence is that more resources are being redirected towards
emergency support and away from long-term and preventive work. But the reason
why the current situation is so serious is that charities and their staff were
already under severe pressure due to Covid and years of austerity before that.
Already, some charities are digging into reserves to fund operating costs.
Around half
of the 170,000 registered charities in England and Wales provide some form of
direct support to people (the other half either work abroad or in research, grant-giving
or other areas). Between them they have around 1 million employees, and in
2019-20 they had a total income of £58.7bn, £30bn of which came from donations.
As these numbers make clear, charities are a huge chunk of our social fabric.
Under a public sector outsourcing model developed by New Labour and extended by
the Conservatives, charities have taken much more responsibility for delivering
public services since the early 2000s. Family Action, for example, has 85% of
its work commissioned by councils, the NHS or central government.
Wearing the state’s shoes
At the same
time, the whole point of charities is that they are independent. Most do not
borrow money and lack the assets necessary to secure loans. Kathy Evans, the
chief executive of Children England, has described them as a “currency
converter” between the community and the market. This in-between status gives
charities room to manoeuvre, and means that they are justifiably viewed as more
nimble and innovative than state agencies in the way they operate. At a
grassroots level, it can be easier for them to build up trust because they are
separate from authorities including landlords, social services and schools.
Some have grown out of mutual aid efforts, and seek to empower people by blurring
distinctions between providers and users. These are the kinds of initiatives
being supported by this year’s Guardian and Observer charity appeal.
But there
is risk here, as well as a great deal of energy and goodwill. In providing
necessities such as food, as a growing number are now doing, charities are
stepping into shoes once understood to belong to the state. Philanthropic
activity is being pushed away from the government and back to its roots in
locally based voluntarism – much as David Cameron envisioned when he advocated
for a “big society” to fill spaces created by public sector cuts. The question
is what happens if and when organisations that are helping people to survive
day to day can no longer pay their bills. Last week, the government delayed an
announcement on a new energy support package for charities and businesses, to
replace the one that expires in March. Even hospices are warning that energy
costs mean they may have to close beds.
One
reaction to the mounting sense of crisis is to put heads down and focus on what
can be done rather than what can’t. Charities pride themselves on their
practicality and, in the midst of a crisis, worrying or theorising about the
future can be viewed as a distraction from the task in hand.
The human costs of failure
Charities
have nothing equivalent to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) in terms
of lobbying and influence. Currently, some Conservative MPs appear more
inclined to attack than support them. Earlier this month a group of 40
bankbenchers wrote to the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, calling for an end to the
public funding of organisations that campaign against government policy. Such
arguments, combined with the general lack of interest and resource dedicated to
the voluntary sector within government, particularly the Treasury, should be a
general concern and not one reserved for those directly affected. Whatever view
is taken of the policies that led to this situation, the fact is that charities
have effectively joined or taken over parts of the welfare state – which
perhaps needs a new name that more accurately represents the way that its
functions are now shared between state and non-state bodies.
Like
businesses, charities encompass a broad range of opinions and should not be
regarded as a homogeneous mass. But on some points there is a broad consensus;
one is that unless benefits are raised, they will remain trapped in their
current position as providers of what one chief executive has described as
destitution prevention services. If smaller charities are forced to close or
mothball operations, or bigger charities withdraw from delivering services that
are no longer financially viable, the most immediate and publicly visible
outcome will be more destitution.
But there
is another risk in those areas of public provision where statutory functions
have been taken over by charitable organisations. Where the state is legally
obliged to provide a service but has no means of doing so, either on its own or
with civil society partners, private-equity-owned and debt-laden businesses
could seek to fill the gap. This has already happened in children’s social care
and nursery provision, with alarming results, including increased financial
risks and a lack of transparency.
Frontline
workers will have more pressing human needs to worry about in the coming
months. But the sector’s leaders, politicians and the rest of us should be
extremely worried about the consequences, if and when charities find that they
are no longer able to perform the tasks offloaded to them over the past two
decades by the state.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário