Scotland has seen many initiatives in the area of social justice, and a host
of new and re-engineered agencies and quangos spending public money to
create a Scotland "where everyone matters". Social Inclusion Partnerships (SIPs),
established in May 1998, have been a crucial part of this. They have
attempted to pioneer a shift away from a bricks and mortar focus and
physical regeneration to wider ideas of social regeneration by developing
new ways of working, using public money and involving communities. There are
48 SIPs in Scotland, 34 area-based and 14 thematic, with one-quarter of them
in Glasgow. Together they spend a total of £120 million a year which is not
very much in a Scottish Executive budget of £20 billion particularly given
the hopes and aspirations invested in them. It is also not much compared
with the previous failed Tory Scottish Office "New Life for Urban Scotland",
which focused £80 million into four priority areas.
SIPs were meant to provide a new start after decades of failed initiatives
in poor areas. The £120 million per annum was designed to act as a catalyst
for other agencies and money from the public, voluntary and private sectors.
It was intended to bring joined-up solutions, rather than the fragmented
practice of numerous agencies: local authority, Scottish Executive,
Westminster, and numerous quangos. Sadly, the reality has been that for all
the rhetoric of partnership, professionals and bureaucrats have not begun
working together in new ways to support communities. Instead, they have
behaved in the traditional bureaucratic-officialdom way and sat on their
budgets and kept their money to themselves. This has meant that the impact
of the SIPs has been severely limited.
For all the rhetoric of finding new ways of working SIPs have been more
top-down in practice. A crucial issue has been the unrepresentative nature
of SIP boards. These are generally stuffed with the institutional clutter
and bodies that dominate Scottish public life: education, health, enterprise
boards, local authorities, MPs, and MSPs. There have been accusations of
boards being dominated by "Labour placemen", and as a result of concerns, a
Register of Interests was introduced by the Scottish Executive in March 2002
- three years after SIPs were set up.
Another concern has been the degree of community involvement another
favourite buzz-phrase. According to the Scottish Council for Voluntary
Organisation's directory of SIPs, of the 48, only three have a majority of
community representatives on their boards. Several have none at all. This
has seen tension and conflict between community activists and local
campaigners and SIP staff and board members about who speaks for the
community, and who has the best interests of the community at heart.
Launched with great hope and filled with the rhetoric of change, SIPs have
become part of the professional class of networked state Scotland - that
group of salaried, sometimes well-remunerated professionals who know how to
talk in the way that they are seen as the champions of the people and the
down-trodden, but are really looking after their own interest and
advancement.
Communities have expressed dismay in several SIPs about most senior posts
going to people outside an area, thus restricting one of the ways SIPs could
contribute towards regeneration. SIP boards and the way they have involved
communities represents a very narrow notion of public Scotland. And while
they have been good at talking the talk, in reality they have continued the
tradition of imposing solutions, of assuming professionals know best, and
being part of the Fabian paternalist palliative tradition which is not about
giving people the right to run their communities as they see fit.
The picture of poverty and disadvantage is a complex one, but most people in
poverty in Scotland do not live in a SIP. Glasgow has 16 of the 20 most
deprived areas in Scotland and 12 SIPs. How does one deal with areas that
are middling through and that have both problems and deprivation, but are
not perhaps among the worst?
Areas for example such as Govanhill where there was controversy when the
Council shut the local swimming pool, fuelling fears that the area was being
left by national and local services to decline. People in Govanhill,
sandwiched between the Gorbals, which has SIP status and Castlemilk, which
has a local partnership, felt abandoned. Do areas have to become problem
areas before support kicks in?
While there have been concerns over area-based SIPs duplicating existing
services, there have been successes. Themed SIPs, which bring together
agencies and individuals on a specific issue, have broken new ground.
Examples of pioneering work here include Big Step - working with young
people; the Glasgow Anti-Racist Alliance; and the Routes out of Prostitution
initiative. These projects have brought together people who might not
normally get together, done something different and improved people's lives.
Change is coming to SIPs, with their administration and monitoring now being
undertaken by the quango - Communities Scotland. However, we need to do more
than tinker with their structure, we need to learn from their track records.
In a country as scarred by poverty and injustice as Scotland is, how can we
bring about change?
Can governments and public agencies really deliver social justice, or do we
need to think about different ways? How can we capture the enthusiasm, drive
and innovation that exists in communities and give people the capacity to
change things themselves? Perhaps part of the answer is in realising that
government is as much a part of the problem as the solution.
Source:
The Herald, Saturday 8th March 2003:
www.theherald.co.uk
Gerry Hassan's latest book is Anatomy of the New Scotland, published by
Mainstream, priced £20.
