Values & principles – “This is just the start,” says Ivan Cooper

This is a slightly edited version of what Mr Cooper had to say. The full speech is viewable on our Youtube channel.

People are increasingly aware of the crucial role played by the community and voluntary sector in Ireland. The impressive facts are fairly well known thanks to work of the Charity Regulator and Benefacts. It’s worth reminding ourselves that the sector consists of:

35,000 community and voluntary organisations.
86,000 volunteer directors and trustees.
165,000 people employed.
Over €14 billion turnover, half of that raised by the sector itself and half coming from the State in various forms such as grants, service agreements and contracts.

So, there is a real partnership here.

The sector is massive in every respect and is present across the country in many forms. There are tens of thousands of local voluntary community groups, most of them employing no staff and often taken for granted, and focusing on a multiplicity of areas from environmental action to community development.

They form the fabric of our local communities and their presence came to the fore during the Covid crisis, when their work to reach out to older and more vulnerable groups was crucial to keeping communities safe.

Thousands of organisations essential services

The sector is also present in our activist communities working and advocating for a world free of poverty and social exclusion and disadvantage, and for a world free of discrimination and prejudice in all its forms. There is much that remains to be done if the vision of a fair and inclusive Ireland that underpins the values and principles that we are championing is to be realised.

The sector is also present in the thousands of organisations that provide essential services and supports through our hybrid public services system.

Startlingly, one in three people delivering public services in Ireland work for a charity, a community group or a social enterprise. That is a mind-boggling number and it hasn’t sunken into the policy system sufficiently yet.

That is the extent of the hybridisation of our public services.

Sector works in close partnership with the State

It is important to note that these values and principles are intended to provide a foundation for collaboration and partnership between the sector and central and local government.
The essential role played by our community and voluntary sector across all these facets of national life means that this very diverse sector works in close partnership with the State. It collaborates with departments such as the departments of rural and community development, education, justice, social protection and environment, and also with agencies like the HSE, Tusla, Pobal and the education and training boards.

I cannot emphasise enough the entwined nature in the way the sector and the State collaborate in supporting people in communities and people in Ireland.

Places where the relationship is strained and under stress

In the final analysis, community and voluntary organisations and agencies both work for public benefit. They are not for profit. I believe this crucial fact shows the similarity in the nature of community and volunteer organisations and their statutory counterparts. They are both expressions of our human need and desire to provide for ourselves collectively and inclusively – and to do so with care, fairness and inclusion.

This closeness in both spirit and work is what I think makes the values and principles so important.

I have to be honest. There are unfortunately many places where the relationship is strained and under stress. I need to communicate from the membership of The Wheel.
It is felt that lip-service is sometimes paid to the crucial values and principles we identified. We need to make sure doesn’t happen.

How are we going to do that? The State holds a great deal of power in the relationship because it has control of much of the resources allocated to the sector. Remember, this is work that involves what would be regarded by the public, if they were asked, as essential services (that happen to be delivered by community and voluntary organisations).

Important positive processes underway

These principles need to be applied, adapted and lived and there are already important positive processes underway, such as the health dialogue forum between the Department of Health and the HSE and the community and voluntary sector, and such as Tusla’s work to commission services in partnership with the sector.

Which brings me to my main point – while it is great that we have this document, we now need a sustained effort to lead the culture change that is needed at all levels in public services and in all spaces in the sector.

We greatly welcome and note the Minister’s intent to champion these values and principles and to work with public sector colleagues to realise their intent. We would encourage a very proactive and ambitious approach to achieve the culture change necessary if these principles are to change the way we do things around here. That is what is needed if a partnership approach is to thrive”.

Pathfinders need to be the norm

This is just the start of a process, it is just a document. It is emergent, it comes out of places where these values live in the sector and in the system in public services. Those pathfinders need to be the norm. We need to put in place a process.

In furtherance of this, we believe we need to see a programme of awareness raising within the public service and across all relevant departments and agencies to promote these values.
We need formal acknowledgement of the principles and values by all relevant departmental and HSE management teams and the co-option of these principles into their practice.
We need to see reviews of engagement and funding processes and procedures and funding agreements to bring them into line with the spirit of these values and principles.

Too often we see legalistic and adversarial and conditional small print that takes precedence and unhelpfully sets the tone in relationships between funders and the organisations they fund.

Finally, we need to see real case studies of what the application of these principles and values would actually look like in practice.
We need processes to roll out the application of these principles and those processes should model the way forward for departments and agencies.

Do we actually provide and offer value for money?

In conclusion, we in the community and voluntary sector must look at our own practice at both organisation and sector levels and ask whether the approach our organisations take is in fact inclusive: Does it respect diversity? Do we genuinely value subsidiarity in our own organisations in the way we work, in terms of de-hierarchising and all the rest of it? We must ask: Do we actually provide and offer value for money?

The sector itself will have to look closely at these values and principles, and ensure that they change culture in the community and voluntary sector for the better. All of that will need resourcing.