The marriage between Clegg and Cameron has been the topic of intense discussion over the past few months and especially during this party conference season. But what of the relationship between charities and the state?
ACEVO recently posed the question: "Are charities being co-opted by the state or are they spending too much time campaigning?" In today's challenging climate of budget cuts and sweeping reforms, what are charities to do? Do they cosy up to government in the hope that they'll receive more public contracts and therefore protect their survival? Do they plug the gap left by disappearing public services by offering their support through fundraised income? Or do they challenge the decisions the government has made?
For Scope, an organisation that exists to drive social change, the answer is clear. If there was ever a time to be actively and insistently championing the voices of disabled people and making sure the government listens and pays attention to the impact its policies are having on their lives, this is it.
The fact that we run public services, contracted and funded by local government, should not lead people to question our ability to challenge government. It should demonstrate that we are grounded in reality and add credibility to our voice. A voice that comes from the experience and expertise we garner through our daily conversations and interactions with the thousands of disabled people and families who we support.
The reality for disabled people
For example, in response to its emergency budget, politicians told us that it would be impossible to calculate the impact that planned cuts would have on disabled people. Despite talk of evidence-based policymaking, ministers seemed content with this approach. Disabled people, on the other hand, were not. So we set out to shine light on the decisions being made and to try to understand what this impact would look like for disabled people and their families.
We commissioned the thinktank Demos to research the effect national policy changes introduced by the coalition, including welfare reforms, would have on disabled people's lives.
The report, Destination Unknown, revealed that disabled people will be affected to the tune of £9bn over the course of this parliament, affecting every aspect of daily life from housing, living costs and social care support.
For Scope, highlighting flaws in government policy is not enough. To drive social change, we have a role to ensure the voices of disabled people are heard in relation to issues that affect their lives. This means our responsibility goes much further.
And so the report went much further than just a headline. It made a series of concrete recommendations designed to cushion the effect of these national policy changes whilst recognising the need for reform. We deliberately set out both to highlight where we thought the direction of travel being taken by ministers was wrong, and to look at what they could be doing instead within the fiscal constraints.
More recently, we commissioned a second report to look at the impact local budget changes were having on people's lives across each local authority in the country. It ranked each local authority according to its budget changes and the extent to which councils were protecting frontline services.
The research did not end there. A startling revelation from this research, Coping with the Cuts, showed that the extent of budget cut actually had no real bearing on the extent to which disabled people would be negatively affected. It found that the councils who were coping the best had taken innovative steps to protect frontline services. And so we set out to raise awareness of these creative approaches, in the hope that more councils could better protect the services used by disabled people in the future.
A look ahead
As further changes and budget cuts are revealed disabled people continue to worry about the effects.
For Scope, this brings our role and responsibility into even sharper focus. We must not merely oppose ill-thought through reform but inform policymakers so they can make better decisions in the future.
To ask the question: "Are charities spending too much time campaigning?" at a time when disabled people feel the very foundations of support that enables them to play a role in society are beginning to erode is ironic to say the least.
Not to campaign at this particular moment in time would be to do an enormous disservice not only to disabled people whom we support directly, but to everyone else affected by these reforms.
Alice Maynard is the chair of disability charity Scope
This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To join the voluntary sector network, click here.
