HOW SHOULD COMMUNITY HOUSING BE SUPPORTED? 

David Mullins and Tom Moore

Community-led housing organisations can provide solutions to entrenched social problems such as homelesssness, lack of access to affordable homes and neighbourhood decline. This has led to a groundswell of support for community land trusts (CLTs) and self-help housing organisations in recent years, including from the Localism Act. Yet to take root such innovations need more than just rhetorical support.

David Mullins and Tom Moore compare CLTs and self-help housing to see how they can access the support they need, while maintaining their unique local focus.

THE WORK PROGRAMME AND HOW WE JUDGE PERFORMANCE
Chris Damm

In policy jargon, commissioned public services such as the Work Programme are often described as quasi-markets. Independent providers compete for market share, but the market is funded and largely designed by the state.

This differs from a regular market, where consumers would normally choose their provider themselves. Previous employment schemes planned to give users this choice, but no such plans have been made for the Work Programme.

Chris discusses whether user choice could provide a better measure of success than job targets alone

By Rob Macmillan

Hmmm, the Big Society - it’s a troubling issue isn’t it? It’s struggled to gain a foothold in the public’s consciousness. If the Clapham Omnibus still exists, you can be sure it isn’t full of lively chatter about the latest developments in the Big Society agenda. Politicians and policy makers have continuing difficulty in explaining what it is. And it seems to have become tainted by its link to a stronger government narrative on austerity, deficit reduction and public spending cuts...

By John Mohan

John discusses the challenges of measuring a 'big society', and argues that collecting robust data now will be vital if we are to monitor the effects of government policy

Niall Crowley

Ireland, along with the rest of Europe, is enmeshed in an economic and financial crisis. Austerity policies are changing the nature of society to the extent that what started as an economic crisis is now a political, an unemployment and even a cultural crisis. But there is virtually no comment on or debate about another crisis – the crisis that civil society, and in particular the community sector, finds itself in...

Community development is, officially at least, dead. Community engagement is no more. We are all now community organisers, doing social action. But government pronouncements about the ‘Big Society’ (apologies to all readers) and ‘communities’ do beg some questions.

What kind of social action? Is it the Occupy Movement that is wanted...

Pete Alcock

Civil society is a very different notion from the third sector. This is vital to understanding the relationship between voluntary organisations and the state and engaging in political debate, argues Pete Alcock, Director of the Third Sector Research Centre.

The third sector is facing a radical upheaval in its political and economic environment and the goalposts are being changed. Rob Macmillan discusses leadership - and calls for strategic debate on the role and future of the third sector.

Proposed reforms to public services have had a high profile in the news in recent months, particularly in the fierce debate over the Health and Social Care bill. With a TSRC/ ESRC policy seminar set to explore these issues next week, James Rees discusses possibilities for the future of third sector service delivery.