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RESOLVED:
 
That Cabinet:
 
Adopts the refreshed
Voluntary and Community Sector Strategy 2025-2035 at Appendix
1.
 
REASON FOR DECISION:
 
The last VCS strategy was developed on the
back of seven years of austerity that was starting to take its toll
on the sector and particularly medium and small organisations. It
was an attempt to better protect the future of the sector and
particularly those organisations who are part of the systems of
support that provide early help and intervention for our most
disadvantaged and vulnerable residents.

As with the last strategy this refresh
provides an opportunity for the Council to set out why it values
the VCS (Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise) and why
it needs to work with the sector. There is now a better
understanding of the role of the VCS in the transformation of
public services and the role of the state no longer being
principally about ‘delivery’ but also
‘enabling’ the building of stronger
communities.

As a diverse and independent sector without
clear mandated leadership we recognise the challenge for the VCS as
a whole to set out and respond in an effective and coordinated way
to the issues this strategy identifies. However, the process of
refreshing the strategy allowed the Council and the VCS to not just
look at practical issues together but also the changes needed to
how we work together and the relationships that support this. The
refreshed strategy provides an opportunity to rearticulate the
challenges of culture, attitudes and behaviours which not only
speak to relationships between the Council, other statutory
partners and the sector but also between different VCS
organisations and the negative impact these have on our ability to
effectively support residents.

This refresh maintains the strategy’s
high level and long term ambition. To ensure and guide ongoing
implementation, the Council will be developing accompanying
short-term action plans against each of the themes in the strategy
that will help to deliver change in the short, medium and long
term.

The five key themes have a long term focus,
setting out what needs to change and why, whilst enabling us to
envision the future, further develop relationships as well as shape
future investment.
 
This theme explores the different ways of
thinking and behaving that allowed the Council and the VCS to work
differently during the Pandemic and what this enabled us to
achieve. It sets out how we have built upon what was learnt during
this period and has highlighted the culture, attitudes and
behaviours within the Council and VCS that continue to hinder our
collective ability to work ‘upstream’ with communities
as well as respond to the complexity of immediate needs facing many
of our residents.
 
The Council’s current understanding of
and approach to risk limits the Council’s ability to know the
sector relationally, engage meaningfully and develop mutually
beneficial relationships. Traditional power relationships were
challenged during the Pandemic enabling VCS partners to take
leadership roles and reduce expectations on the Council, made
possible by a temporary shift in perceptions around risk.
 
The Council is having to make significant
reductions to budgets but remains ambitious about dismantling the
systems and structures that perpetuate inequalities. Working with
the VCS provides a unique opportunity to understand where our
services are not working for those residents who are unlikely,
unwilling or unable to access help from us and how we can enable
the sector to do what is required. We also need to consider how we
are investing as a Council and the way we work that will enable us
to work with partners to address the most pressing
inequalities.
 
As competition increases for resources from
philanthropic sources the Council will be looking to maintain and
develop new funding streams for the VCS. Working with existing
external funding partners and tapping into new sources of income
will be a priority going forward.
 
The Council knows that the causes of poverty
are multi-faceted, and as with all complex systems the relationship
between cause and effect is almost impossible to attribute with any
certainty. We also have a better understanding of how racism is
currently designed into our processes, and how we perpetuate it if
we do not consider where it might be built into the way that we
approach measuring success. The Council needs to ensure that it is
using its investment with the VCS in a way that acknowledges this
complexity and moves away from funding for short term outcomes that
will not lead to the change we want to see. However this will need new and more innovative
approaches to measuring, drawing on alternatives that are currently
being developed and tested by Hackney and other councils.
 
Rather than investing in time limited and
outcome/output based project activity, our work with the sector
over the past five years has demonstrated how we should invest. We
need to refocus the grants programme and other resources to ensure
we create the right conditions for systems change and the right
support for vulnerable and disadvantaged residents, and support
place based working. From our experience during the Pandemic we
identified the need for investment in community infrastructure and
place based organisations.
 
Affordability, suitability, flexibility and
underuse of some premises and spaces remain as issues, challenges
and aspirations related to the VCS securing the premises,
accommodation and spaces they need to operate and deliver services.
The equalities and system issues highlighted throughout the
refreshed strategy impact on access to accommodation in the same
ways. In working to improve availability and access to high quality
delivery spaces, the Council must maintain a critical focus on
addressing inequalities.
 
To manage Council assets, a cohesive and
strategic approach that reflects local needs, is required if the
Council is to ensure that they are fit for purposes and can meet
community needs in an effective way. 
Our policies and processes impact the way that spaces are managed
and made available. Improvements are required to make processes
more accessible, to communicate policies more clearly and to manage
and make space available in an effective and inclusive way.
 
The Council recognises that social action can
help people feel connected and empowered which in turn helps tackle
inequalities and leads to more resilience in communities and is
essential when trying to address structural racism and the
associated imbalances of power. Volunteering and social action have
significant potential to strengthen bonds within Hackney’s
communities and help to maintain cohesion. We know more can be done
to develop knowledge about the conditions needed to harness
people’s willingness to contribute, for example, how people
navigate the processes of establishing new groups, their needs for
physical space, support, and volunteering roles.
 
The Council has primarily focused its support
on the formal voluntary sector in recognition of the dependence
that many organisations have on volunteers. As their resources
reduce, capacity to manage volunteers is impacted and this has
increased reliance upon the resources of infrastructure
organisations to undertake this. The Council and other anchor
institutions in the borough could have a greater role to play in
promoting volunteering and this includes internally, especially
within the Council given the capabilities and capacity of staff
teams.
 
Although the more traditional approaches to
training and advice for the VCS remain valuable, new and flexible
ways of increasing the strategic capacity and leadership within the
sector need to be explored. Our experience of the Pandemic
demonstrated the impact of meaningful and ongoing relationships and
collaboration between organisations as a way to increase knowledge,
skills and leadership within the sector and how this is a key way
of improving competencies and access to resources.
 
New ways of working, building relationships,
equality in partnerships are all moving us away from the funding
systems that pass risk to the sector and instead take a more shared
risk approach. This helps to tackle the inequalities and racism in
the system of investment as it places greater  value on the
unique position of the VCS organisation and how to maximise their
impact. Although the Council recognises that systemic inequity may
have impacted an organisation's ability to meet the requirements
for accessing grants and other Council resources, until we can work
together to overcome these barriers, organisational development and
capacity building remain central to the health and diversity of the
sector.
 
APPRAISAL OPTIONS:
 
Refreshing the strategy ensures a coordinated
approach that will help to deliver the required annual savings of
£820,000 to the Council’s grant programme, manage the
impact better, and begin resetting and deepening the nature of the
relationship with the sector so that we can more effectively and
jointly address the challenges ahead.