News from the Baring Foundation
Strengthening the Voluntary Sector
programme 2012
The Baring Foundation has launched the 2012 round of
the Strengthening the Voluntary Sector programme. This will focus
on the legal advice sector and reflects the Foundation's on-going
commitment to supporting an effective system of social welfare law
services. The programme is called Future Advice and has two strands.
The first is the Providers Fund with
a budget in the first year of £1 million. This aims to help advice
organisations to develop and implement ideas for restructuring and
organisational development that will put agencies on a more sustainable
footing. The Fund is being run in collaboration with Comic Relief,
The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and Unbound Philanthropy.
In 2012, we have decided to run this as a programme by invitation
only. Eighty-eight organisations have been contacted and invited
to submit expressions of interest. These organisations have been identified
through a combination of commissioned research, consultation with
experts and our existing knowledge of the field. We anticipate being
able to make between 20 and 25 grants. The Foundation considers whether
to run closed programmes very carefully. We only use this approach
when we judge that there would be an overwhelming response in relation
to the resources available which would result in an extremely low
ratio of grants to applications and a lot of time spent by applicants
in submitting proposals with a very small chance of success.
The second strand is a Strategic Fund
which will make grants and commission work that aims to bring about
a supportive environment for advice services. The Foundation has made
a number of initial grants looking at issues including raising income
from individuals, making strategic use of the law so as to widen access
to free legal advice services, maintaining policy work on Legal Aid,
supporting the further development of Public Legal Education approaches
and a longer term initiative to explore the future of social welfare
law services. Alongside the grant-making, we will be publishing reports
and holding events details of which will be published on this web-site.
To
find out about the organisations and activities we have funded under
the STVS programme click
here.
New Reports
Interculturalism
A breakdown of thinking and practice: lessons from the field
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Between 2008 and 2010, the Baring Foundation
funded the annual Awards for Bridging Cultures run by the Institute
of Community Cohesion. These rewarded and celebrated grassroots
practice in intercultural dialogue. Since then we have commissioned
the Birmingham based human rights organisation, brap, to examine
what can be learnt about good practice from the award winners.
Their first report is now published and will be followed by
a series of shorter manuals later this year.
Click
here to download a copy.
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Social welfare law: what the public
wants from civil legal aid
Global grant-making
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As a follow up to Going
Global published in 2007
(click here to download a copy of Going Global),
the same foundations, Nuffield, Paul Hamlyn and ourselves, have
commissioned an update on the scale and character of the contribution
of independent foundations in the the UK to international development,
called Global grant-making. Based on information from 2009/10
it concludes that foundations provide around £292 million in funding
to civil society working on development, roughly half that from
the Department for International Development. This is around 9%
of the total spending of all UK foundations. Foundations fund
a wide range of work and Africa attracts the largest percentage
of funding at 37%. The report concludes with a series of challenges
and issues for foundations working in this field.
Click here to download a copy of Global grant-making. |
Protecting Independence: The Voluntary
Sector in 2012
| The Foundation has a long standing
interest in the independence of the voluntary sector. In 2011
we initiated the Panel on the Independence of the Voluntary Sector.
This is a five year initiative to bring together a group of authoritative
sector figures to make a regular public statement on the state
of voluntary sector independence in order to stimulate reflection,
debate and action. The Panel has published its first statement.
Click
here to see the full report and here
for the press release. |
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The outcomes & impact of youth advice
– the evidence
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The Foundation has been supporting
work to gather evidence of the role and value of legal advice
on different parts of the population. This report, by James Kenrick
from Youth Access, focuses on children and young people. The report
demonstrates the critical difference that getting good advice
can make to young people’s health and well-being, and highlights
the contribution that advice services can make to the achievement
of a range of major central and local government policy goals
relating to health, education, employment, housing, poverty, crime
and child protection. The report also contains important messages
for local front-line advice services about good practice. For
example, it identifies the service characteristics that appear
to be most closely related to achieving good outcomes for young
clients, including face-to-face advice provided through independent,
holistic, young person-centred services. Click
here to download a copy. |
On the Front Foot
| In 2006, the Foundation made 22
grants under its STVS – independence programme. This programme
was a response to the expanding role of many voluntary agencies
in delivering a range of services in partnership with the state
and a concern about the impact of these changes on their independence
of action. The report describes the grants that were made and
reviews the results. It finds that certain types of organisational
resources seemed particularly helpful, including work on improving
monitoring and evaluation, negotiation skills and strategic planning.
Most important, however, seems to have been the opportunity that
grants gave organisations to reflect on who and what they are,
their core identity and values. It was this that then moved organisations
to use their new organisational resources in active and confident
pursuit of their independence. Click
here to download a copy |
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Legal aid in welfare: the tool we
can't afford to lose
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The Foundation has been supporting
work to gather evidence of the role and value of Legal Aid. Scope
has looked at the impact of the proposed changes to Legal Aid
on disabled people. The report called Legal aid in welfare:
the tool we cannot afford to lose draws on the experience
of disabled people, with case studies that map out the impact
that removing legal aid would have. The report makes clear that
removing legal aid for welfare benefits cases will undermine the
Government’s own ambitions to support more disabled people into
work and deprive many of them of the very support that can make
work viable. Click
here to download a copy. |
Legal Aid is a Lifeline: Women Speak
Out on the Legal Aid Reforms
| The Foundation has been supporting
work to gather evidence of the role and value of Legal Aid. The
National Federation of Women’s Institutes has produced a powerful
report called Legal Aid is a Lifeline. It focuses particularly
on the needs of women who have experienced domestic violence and
presents the results of focus groups with WI members and a literature
review of the case for funding civil cases involving victims of
domestic violence. The messages are clear: access to legal aid
is a vital life saving resource for women who have experienced
domestic violence; and the current proposals to cut Legal Aid
represent a real threat to justice and fairness. This undermines
the government’s own commitment to tackle violence against women.
Click
here to download a copy. You can watch a short
film about the research
-
click here. |
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Creative Homes: How the Arts can contribute
to quality of life in residential care
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This is a joint publication with our partners
NCF (the National Care Forum - the umbrella body for not for
profit care providers) and NAPA (the National Association for
Providers of Activities for Older People). It is intended to
celebrate existing good practice in the use of the arts with
and for older people in residential care and to inspire more
and better work.Click
here to download a copy
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An Evidence Review of the Impact of
Participatory Arts on Older People.
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This independent review by the Mental Health
Foundation was commissioned by the Baring Foundation and is
the first synthesis of the evidence base for the effects of
participating in artist-led creative projects on older people.
It is based on 24 peer reviewed studies and a further seven
good quality evaluations which have not been peer reviewed ('grey
literature') and lists more than 50 other studies. It concludes
that 'it is evident that engaging with participatory art can
improve the wellbeing of older people and mediate against the
negative effects of becoming older.' It explores these impacts
in terms of mental and physical wellbeing and the broader effects
on communities and society.
Click
here to download a copy
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Arts and Older People Website
As part of a series of strategic grants, the Baring Foundation put
out a tender to create and run for three years the first dedicated
website on arts and older people in the UK. This elicited 41 applications.
We are pleased to announce that we have awarded the tender to Age
UK Oxfordshire. The website will be launched in 2012.
