The danger, as always, is that those with least to start with – often those that come through the door of Community Links – end up no better off. On the Today programme this morning, Newham’s Mayor Sir Robin Wales spoke up for 18,000 people in Newham who have never had a job, and it was pointed out that so far only 4% of the construction jobs on the Olympic site have gone to previously unemployed east Londoners.

Last week I went to a talk about the Olympics, given by an incredibly enthusiastic Newham Council employee. We were on top of a tower block not far from the site, with a group of young jobseekers on our back-to-work scheme. The views were fantastic, but many of the young people felt like it was a long way away. Shahid told me:

“I’m looking forward to watching it on telly, and coming down to Stratford to see the atmosphere. There’s going to be a lot of different people coming from all over the world – it’ll be nice. Job wise, Jobcentres all talk about it, but there’s not much information. I don’t know what the first step is. The only thing I’ve done is go into Newham volunteers. I haven’t heard of anyone getting a job. It hasn’t had any impact – I’ve got lots of friends and families around this area, I’ve lived here my whole life, and I haven’t got any connections with anyone who’s involved in the Olympics. “

When east London won the bid, we hoped people from Newham would be running the Olympics and running in the Olympics, not just picking up litter. Yet even litter picking is proving an elusive aim. Developers find it hard to recruit and retrain young local people who have often not been employed before. As the Mayor pointed out, this should be a spur to providing more intensive in-work support, overcoming these hurdles, not abandoning Newham’s youngsters altogether. Our recent research with young unemployed people in Newham showed that young people overwhelmingly want to work, but are held back by a lack of jobs and a lack of proper support.

If the new houses being built on the Olympic site are filled with people moving in to the area, and the jobs at Westfield don’t go to local jobseekers, then a once in a generation opportunity will have been lost. Tower Hamlets residents saw almost no gain from the development of Canary Wharf, as the much heralded but deeply unambitious ‘trickle down’ benefits to local people failed to materialise. The rhetoric around the Olympics has been much more positive, but there’s still a way to go before it becomes a reality.

We hope that in the Autumn of 2012, you will we be able to stop every resident in the five Olympic Boroughs, ask them ‘how did the Olympics impact on you?’, and get an enthusiastically positive response – whether it’s a new house, a new job, new shopping opportunities, new attitude to sports and healthy living, or just a new and positive experience. That would be a truly powerful legacy, but there’s a lot of work to do before it’s realised.

Matthew Taylor says the RSA could be called the think tank for the Big Society so closely are the visions aligned. So could Community Links and, I suspect, a lot of other organisations. This might signal an opportunity or it might be a warning. Few can dissemble from the warm words but is it really possible in practise to please so many people?

Thus far we’re promised some old ideas rebranded Big Society – the social investment bank for example , some reworked – the social action day was consumer tested last year and rejected , some relatively small new ones – funding the training (though not the employment) of community organisers for instance and, today, four Economy Size Societies in the Eden Valley, Windsor , Sutton and Liverpool. Worthy initiatives perhaps but scarcely amounting yet to a brave new vision. The more ambitious iterations of the Big Society are less clear and more worrying – Andrew Lansley claimed the label for his NHS reforms as did Michael Gove for independent schools.

Here my concern is less about the producer interests of the organisations on this patch – third sector agencies and social enterprises may well grow the business, but much more about the best interests of our service users, particularly the most excluded.  Some of the services on which the most vulnerable are most dependent are clearly threatened and could, under the cover of the Big Society, diminish significantly over the next couple of years. Not necessarily but very possibly.

Arriving for work at Community Links in Canning Town this morning I passed a long queue of people waiting for advice or practical support in this, one of the UKs most disadvantaged communities. The questions I ask of every government programme are the same today as everyday. “How does it meet their needs? How does it tackle poverty, not just money but poverty of opportunity, and what more could be done?” I’m not sure that what I know about the Big Society, or what its leading minister, Francis Maude, had to say about it last week,  helps me with the answers.

Criticism at this stage is of course just as empty as wide eyed enthusiasm. It simply isn’t yet time for the jury to return. We could however be thinking more about the criteria for   judgement, the basis on which we might   appraise the Big Society , challenge it, build it. Our Chain Reaction network has begun this work with a statement of principles sketching our vision of the good society, outlining the principles that might underpin that vision and suggesting the expectations, for ourselves and for government that might flow from this analysis.  We put forward this vision, these values and these expectations for ourselves and for government as a set of principles that might guide the judgements that we make and the work that we do.

We share it as a work in progress and invite others to contribute.

In a time of austerity, government can ill-afford the estimated £13 billion in public finance costs that will be incurred by the 2008 NEET cohort over their lifetimes. The blight on individual lives is even more appalling, young men who were NEET are three times more likely to suffer from depression, and five times more likely to have a criminal record, than their peers.

This week Community Links publish our new survey of young people not in employment, education or training. Our research suggests that the vast majority want a job and are actively looking for work.  All but two of thirty five NEET young interviewed were keen to work and actively looking for a job. A significant number were also highly qualified but struggling to find work in an increasingly competitive employment market.

“I’ve applied for loads of jobs but I’m up against people with lots more experience who are going for the same jobs as me,” said one young man with ten GCSEs, three ‘A’ levels and a BSC in Computing and Business. “I’ve been to graduate careers fairs where I’m competing for entry level positions with people who have been made redundant from Lehman Brothers and other big firms. It’s incredibly hard to get your foot on the ladder.”

The label NEET covers a diverse group; whilst just over a quarter of the young people interviewed had five or more grade A-C GCSE’s, a similar number had no qualifications at all. More than half of those with no qualifications had been excluded from school.

Only half of the young people who took part in the survey were claiming benefits, relying instead on support from family and friends. The absence of the most basic level of financial support made it extremely difficult for some to stay in education.  One 17 year old described how he had enrolled on a full time course but could not find the £20 per week needed to pay his travel costs. Poverty had a big impact; there have recently been calls to reduce or cut benefits for young people who refuse work or training. But a lack of cash is the very thing causing some young people to fail. Some who simply could not afford the cost of travelling to college, for instance, were abandoning education as a result. One 20 year old woman described how she had been unable to complete a Business Studies degree because she was sharing a two bedroom flat with eight other family members. “Five of us sleep in one room,” she said. “There was just nowhere to work or think and after 18 months I had to leave the course.”

Others from poor backgrounds were giving up on higher education because they were afraid they would be unable to repay high levels of debt accrued to cover tuition fees and living costs.

A more generous level of support for young people in education and training could cut the risk of young people becoming unemployed for extended periods, and reduce the long term cost to society. Taking away financial support by cutting benefits or other punitive measures is likely to have precisely the opposite effect to that intended and lead to greater demands on public finances in the long term.

Read the full report.

Alongside Community Links’ core purpose of providing first rate services to people in east London, we share what we learn with other organisations and policy-makers nationally. Since 1989 our Ideas Annuals have collected and published hundreds of examples of successful local projects from around the country. Our Chain Reaction Project continues the work of sharing good project ideas in an online forum.

Through our policy work we have a track record of influencing government and changing the systems and procedures adversely affecting the people we work with .

One of this year’s projects, part of the European Year of Tackling Poverty, is around poverty amongst people of working age. As well as a series of local listening campaigns held around the country, we’re launching the competition to gather together innovative examples of projects working with people experiencing poverty. We believe that people who experience a problem are the experts and often best placed to develop sustainable solutions. We want to provide a platform for people who know best what it is like to live in a struggling community to tell their own story and challenge the myths about how poverty is perceived.

Four projects will be given a video camera to keep, and the chance to make a film about their work. One will win the overall award at a ceremony in November. But as many longlisted projects as possible will be included in a publication celebrating the diversity and importance of work going on around the country. Work that is often localised and unreplicated, but could have a huge impact if copied elsewhere.

So if you know of or run a project that inspires you, please do consider submitting an application.

We see this within the coalition government as Chancellor George Osborne announced £74bn public spending cuts in the emergency budget  – and launched a crowd sourcing website calling for ideas for public service savings.

And we are following with interest the emerging discussions around the Big Society Network which is calling on individuals with the local expertise and skills to step up and take part in running activities in “Your Square Mile”.

Thanks to NESTA’s recent and timely Radical Efficiency research which examined over 100 case studies across the globe, we can learn about best practices that have significantly reduced service costs and at the same time improved the quality of service delivery. The Radical Efficiency report outlines a community-driven service delivery model that encourages partnering with service users, recognising community leaders, and incorporating existing community assets. It has found that by changing the way services are designed and delivered, between 20 and 60 percent of efficiency savings can be realised.

All in all, it is about innovation. It is about looking at the communities you serve and considering how to re-conceptualise public services or programmes. For example we have blogged before about how the Community Links Everyday Innovators programme set up a volunteering project in our local Jobcentre and reduced Jobcentre delays from eight weeks to three days.

Our Everyday Innovators Programme is a step-by-step framework that inspires service providers to be more creative and strategic in re-designing and co-designing better services by effectively engaging clients. More than just being about radical thinking, in our experience, this model also reduces costs.

New thinking doesn’t mean re-inventing the wheel. The learning gained from  over thirty years experience developing and delivering services in one of the most deprived parts of the UK  has been distilled into the ‘Everyday Innovators’ approach. It is built on the idea that the communities you serve are assets with expertise, experience and knowledge. By giving them a new role in your service design and delivery, you will gain front-line insights that many marketers spend their lives to find. In essence, rather than trying to “do more with less”,  just like Radical Efficiency and the “Big Society” concept,  Everyday Innovators is, as professer David Halpern has said, “doing more with more”.

Everyday Innovators is about creating a collaborative process to work together, and about building Big Society.

Want to find out more?  Why not come to our upcoming Everyday Innovators Taster session which takes place in London on 30 July 2010.  from 10:00 – 16:00 at Community Links, 105 Barking Road, London, E16 4HQ
The cost is only £10, which includes lunch and refreshments.
More information and registration.

For a few weeks this empty patch of ground will be transformed into a venue for a diverse range of drama as well as a full programme of eclectic events stretching from boxing to haircuts by children!

As part of the fun Community Links will be taking over the space for a full day next Monday 12th July.  We will be presenting a Family Fun day with a programme of activity and taster sessions including a chance to get professional advice and help filling in forms; Keep Fit; Pensioners Bingo; Salsa Dance workshop; after-school craft activities for local children and ending up with music and street dance performances from young people in the Youth Zone until 9:00pm

It’s great to have unused bits of urban land put to community use and bringing drama to areas outside the west end of London is to be celebrated. Come and join us at our family fun day next week – or come sooner and take in a show. Highlights this week include free performances of  “She from the Sea” by Zawe Ashton from the Clean Break Company – a theatre company using theatre for personal and political change, working with women whose lives have been affected by the criminal justice system. The programme outlines the performance :

Pearl, Masha and Edlin are trying to move on.  A simple life by the sea is all they need to forget their pasts.  But when a mysterious visitor is washed up, she brings with her a dark history that threatens their new way of life. A decision must be made.   Let her stay or make her swim?

Hooked?  … I might see you there….   7.30pm, 8 July 2010 or 2.30pm & 7.30pm, 9 July 2010. Loads of other interesting and exciting things are happening and it is a great opportunity to experience something new in an unusual setting.

Have a look at the full programme and do drop-in on Monday 12th to join in the  Community Links family fun day.

Newham has worked hard to get off the bottom of the league tables when it comes to multiple deprivation, but we have seen the consequences of the recession over the last two years as demand for our services has soared – those seeking debt advice have doubled, and those seeking employment support have tripled in last 18 months.

So here’s a snapshot of what these changes mean for local people in east London.

Benefits and Tax Credits

• The three year freeze (should read ‘cut in real terms’) of Child Benefit will affect 41,035 families in Newham who receive Child Benefit (a total of 79,320 children), a powerful tool in the fight against child poverty. Newham has one of the youngest populations in the country so we will be affected disproportionately.
• We welcome the increase of Child Tax Credit by an extra £150 per year. This will help the 38,600 Newham families who are currently in receipt of Child or Working Tax Credits (highest take-up in London) offset the cuts of their Child Benefit.
• Even though the government cut the free schools initiative being trialled (very successfully) in Newham and other boroughs, we are heartened to hear of Newham Council’s commitment to continue with it anyway.
• A total of 1,910 people (18.8% of those on JSA) have been claiming JSA for longer than 12 months in Newham, many of whom we help back into work through our very successful employment programmes. We recently submitted a paper to DWP proposing how the new Work Programme must be designed so that it doesn’t leave behind those who most need its support – read a copy here.
• We are concerned about the Housing Benefit being withdrawn from people on Jobseekers Allowance after 12 months. Particularly if at this point they have to go on the compulsory Work Programme. It’s contradictory and may lead to a massive increase in homelessness, debt or cash-in-hand work.
• Key out-of-work benefits are claimed by 30,440 residents   (18.3% of the local population). Through delivering an advice service to 9,000 people each year and our research and campaigning work we know that fundamental reform of the benefit system is an absolute imperative. So we were heartened to hear that changes are underway, including work incentives which we’ve been lobbying for. We look forward to working with DWP over the summer as it prepares a new Welfare Reform Bill.

Housing
Current LHA rates for Newham top out at £350 for a 5-bedroom house, so Newham residents won’t be affected by the cap.

Tax
We welcome the government following up on one of our policy recommendations to increase the personal tax allowance threshold. This latest increase to £7,475 will take about 10,500 local residents out of the tax system (15.8% of Newham’s working age population), putting more money into the pockets of those who need it most.

However the VAT increases will adversely affect those poorest in our society. The richest 10% spend £1 in every £25 of their income on VAT. The poorest 10% spend £1 in £7.

Jobs
Where are the jobs? The assumption in the budget is that the private sector will fill the deficit by providing more jobs. And that it will be easier for people on benefits to move into work. But again where are the jobs now?

• In Newham there are 46 jobs for every 100 people of working age. Compared to 94 for London, and 83 nationally. In other words, people either don’t work, or have to travel outside the borough for work.
• Nine JSA claimants are competing for each unfilled job vacancy in Newham, compared with a national average of 5:1. And there are 10,196 people are claiming JSA in Newham. That’s an awful lot of competition from just one of the 33 boroughs in London.
• The types of work available to people in Newham are in the service sector (representing 89.9% of all jobs in the borough). Often insecure and temporary (32% are part time), low paid (21% get paid less than £7 an hour) and low skilled (24.2% fail to reach level 4 at Key Stage 2 – average of English and Maths).

Public Sector
Newham residents rely more heavily upon their public services than other more affluent areas. Some local services are already at bursting point as demand outstrips supply. When these are cut where will local people turn to?

• 36% of jobs in Newham are in the public sector (top 10% in the country). Newham Council has already had to cut £30million (c.7%) from this year’s budget. However if we are to see departmental cuts of 25% over the course of this parliament and a council tax freeze, how may of these jobs will go in Newham? Public sector funding also supports a diverse voluntary sector, delivering a wide range of services. The prospect of 25% cuts is not good for those who work in the sector, or for those they support.

It’s early days to see how this budget will actually impact on local people in east London. But we do know that as belts have tightened in the past it has often been those with least that suffer most. Let’s hope this coalition government’s rhetoric of fairness and support for the most vulnerable actually plays out into reality.

The consultation process for the Comprehensive Spending Review should be launched today (24^th June) and the timetable runs through to the autumn – so get involved, we will be.

Note: Current data sources have been used where possible, and can be provided upon request.

Under reforms introduced to the legal aid system, providers are not fully paid until a case is closed. In complex asylum cases this can take several years, but in the meantime charities like Refugee and Migrant Justice still have to pay their 300 expert staff, cover their rent, and keep going. Since charities rarely have assets, they find it very hard to secure commercial bridging loans in the way a business might, leaving them incredibly vulnerable.

RMJ says they are owed over £2m by the Ministry of Justice, £2m that they cannot find from other sources, and £2m that has forced them into administration. They are the largest supplier of vital legal assistance to asylum seekers and vulnerable migrants, they have done excellent work, they’re just not getting paid for it in time. And the victims, alongside RMJ’s staff, will be those who have already suffered the most, those who are often fleeing victimisation in other countries, the most vulnerable. The most vulnerable, who all governments pledge to protect, but who are often those most cruelly let down.

Fast forward 2 years, and there is a dangerously similar story emerging in welfare reform. Government is planning to move to a ‘payment by results’ model whereby providers of back-to-work services are only paid in full once someone has in a job for a year. Community Links is the most successful back-to-work provider in London and the South East, but we certainly couldn’t afford to be £2m out of pocket. We specialise in helping those who have been out of work for a long time, often among the most vulnerable, those who government has pledged to protect.

Iain Duncan Smith has indicated that he’s aware of the importance of ensuring charities like ours can take part in the new system, but until we see the details of how that will happen, we remain worried. That’s why earlier this week we sent this short briefing paper to Duncan Smith and others, outlining how we felt the new Work Programme should be structured.

RMJ’s plight is a disgrace, and government should be doing all it can to ensure RMJ can continue its vital work. But as importantly, government must learn from the experience, so other charities are not forced into the same situation in the future.

Click to enlarge

There’s a simple formula running through the diversity of projects we run at Community Links. Whether it’s young people making music videos or playing football, pensioners enjoying a game of bingo, or most recently families looking round a farm, that common theme is that we’re building communities. Bringing people together to enjoy an activity, but perhaps more importantly, providing the space, the time, and the encouragement for people to meet and get on, for community to grow and society to become richer.

That was the theory behind us taking on, at the start of the year, responsibility for Newham City Farm. For the next 20 years it is ours to develop into a true community hub. Yes, part of the aim is to give children the chance to see where milk comes from. But even more important, to us, is the chance to strengthen a local community. And if it takes some piglets and horses to get people together, that’s absolutely fine.

We already run a children’s playscheme and part of our school provision from there, and farm manager Theresa regularly hosts Community Links volunteers who help out around the place, most recently by building the beginnings of a market garden, with which we hope to raise money for Community Links.

But we have ambitious plans. If you click on the picture above, you should find a large map of the current site, with all the changes we’re proposing. Please do let us know what you think, or if you can help. They are only provisional, but they do begin to give an idea of the scale of our ambition.

If in the land of the blind, the one-eye man is king, then in the realm of trillionaires, even those with merely a millionaire status would languish at the bottom of the heap. Power – visual power, purchasing power, military power – whatever form it takes, is inherently relative. It makes no sense to talk about someone being powerful or not without making a comparison with someone else’s ability to make things happen. And since poverty is in essence about the lack of power, we should never lose sight of the need to combat it by limiting the concentration of power in those who can already pretty much do what they want.

Yet, it is not an uncommon suggestion that people should not worry about what others have got. Perhaps the visibly wretched should be given clothes, shelter and food. But beyond that, we are often told; people should look after their own needs and leave others to get on with their lives. Where they have a common interest in cooperating, they can voluntarily do so; otherwise just let people mind their own business. This sanguine outlook has one critical flaw. It ignores what entrepreneurs have tirelessly demanded as the level playing field, or diplomats have for centuries sought as the balance of power – in short, a power structure where no one has a predominant capacity to subdue, intimidate, marginalise, or take unfair advantage over others.

If we really care about helping the poor, the powerless, all those who are vulnerable to the whims and commands of others, then we need to make sure they can stand up to the powerful. In my new book, Against Power Inequalities, I look back on history and find that over centuries, across the world, a similar pattern emerges with those in powerful positions seeking to strengthen their grip even further by constantly changing the rules in their favour, and progress in making communities more inclusive only achieved when reformists and citizens have managed to redistribute power more fairly. Along the way, there are of course many twists and turns. Some claim to fight for the powerless and end up just grabbing power for themselves. Others express deep concern for the poor while they consolidate economic arrangements which will continue to benefit the rich at the expense of everyone else. But sustained change for the better is possible.

We are not talking about some utopian end point, but a constant effort to moderate excesses. The civil service has now been told that its highest earners should not be earning 20 times or more than the lowest. The same message needs to be repeated for society at large – at present, the top 10% in the UK have 100 times more wealth than the bottom 10%. At the global level, the challenge is even more severe. The richest 1% of adults own 40% of the world’s assets, while the bottom 50% barely own 1% of the world’s wealth.

To adapt the homily about not just giving a hungry man a fish, but teaching him the art of fishing, there is no point in teaching him how to fish if he is unable to stop the multinational fleet of trawlers taking away the entire fish stock.

Henry Tam’s new book, Against Power Inequalities, provides a short guide to the contest for power redistribution across the centuries, and draws out the underlying causes of disempowerment which are still with us today.  It is available for  free download from the Equality Trust, or from Henry Tam’s own blog Question the Powerful.