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Archive for May, 2008

The rules of engagement

Friday, May 30th, 2008

Yesterday I attended the BURA _ British Urban Regeneration Organisation - “Rules of Engagement”event. I really liked the format - a half day “mini conference” with a diverse mix of short presentations and case studies. A fixed panel of three people from different sectors were present throughout and provided an intial response to each of the presentations to stimulate discussion from [...]

Cash-in-hand and working rights for young people

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

I am the course tutor on the Community Links Community Development course which has run for several years - recently we have included a ‘Research Unit’ on the course which we set-up in partnership with Links UK
The programme runs from September to the beginning of July, and the students on the course spend one day a week [...]

NESTA Innovation Edge

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

photo credit: Larsz
I’m feeling very inspired.. and a little bit starstruck… having attended the excellent NESTA Innovation Edge conference at the Royal Festival Hall earlier today.
The “Inventor of the World Wide Web” Tim Berners-Lee addressed the event (fittingly via an online, yet slightly out of synch, video link). In conversation with Guardian journalist Jonathon Freedland TBL spoke modestly of the part [...]

Benefit Fraud: Reading between the lines of official statistics

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

This old chestnut rears its head every year. Recent headlines read: ‘More than £2.7 billion in benefits lost to fraud and error’ according to a new National Statistics report. During 2007/08, the Department for Work & Pensions spent around £126 billion on benefits, about a quarter of the overall government annual budget. It is estimated that [...]

CREATE: the Community Allowance - update

Friday, May 16th, 2008

Here’s an update on my post from last week about the CREATE report. We had a good meeting with the Minister for Work, Stephen Timms, and his team yesterday. We are continuing to work towards piloting the Community Allowance  later in the year. If you are interested in become a pilot partner then please do contact [...]

TUC: Commission on Vulnerable Employment

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) Commission on Vulnerable Employment recently published its final report ‘Hard Work, Hidden Lives’. I went along to the launch as we gave evidence in person to the Commission last summer, primarily about our work on the informal economy and its relationship to poverty.
Our 2006 report ‘People in low-paid informal work: [...]

Catalyst Awards for Social Technology

Monday, May 12th, 2008

I attended the launch of the Catalyst Awards for Social Technology last week. It was inspiring to hear practical examples of people using technology in innovative ways for a social purpose - I look forward to more inspiring stories when the winners are announced in July.
I am a great believer in the power of telling individual stories [...]

CREATE: Unlocking Poor Neighbourhoods

Friday, May 9th, 2008

Does the benefits system stop your organisation from paying people to do bits of work in your community?
Are you on benefits and had your claim thrown into chaos for months when you declared part time, or sessional community work? 
LinksUK is a co-founder of the CREATE Consortium, who have launched a new campaign to establish the Community Allowance within the UK benefits system. This would [...]

Informal Economy: Press Coverage

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

We were delighted that New Start Magazine recently reported on our work researching the infomal economy
On 25th April, I wrote an article which featured as New Start’s cover story ‘Cash-in-hand: Why embracing the informal economy could be a nice little earner’, which focused on understanding the UK’s local and regional informal economies.
 
In that same edition our recent report [...]

What do Young Parents Really Want?

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

Community Links’ Mission Statement says that we “appreciate that those who experience a problem understand it best”  and much of our work reflects this approach  - none more so than the “Everyday Innovators” programme which encourages service users to generate their own ideas for using mainstream resources and budgets more effectively. These ideas are then tested and shared [...]