Our commitment to social value cannot be separated from the fight against poverty, and the communities most affected must be at its heart, writes Soul Purpose 360’s Palma Black
Article published in Inside Housing 7 May 2024
After more than 20 years working in social housing in community-facing roles across London and the South East, I have seen many shifts and changes in how disadvantaged communities are engaged and disengaged, supported, or not.
I have seen innovative and impactful programmes like SureStart come and go, and food banks become a necessary staple in society.
Like many who worked in community development through housing associations, we found these careers through a desire to help others, by using our skills, knowledge and experience to benefit communities, rather than the self.
My first job in social housing was as a community development and social policy officer in a small, Black-led housing association in Croydon. I loved it. Engaging the community in social research using focus groups, events and more, I was able to understand local issues and their impacts, and use these findings to recommend policy changes that were adopted by the council across housing, education, social services, health, as well as the voluntary sector.
The Single Regeneration Budget and other area-based funding programmes such as SureStart meant my colleagues and I were able to involve residents and deliver projects that met direct need, to bring about positive social change.
Later, my work in estate regeneration provided opportunities to support, enable and empower residents to play active roles at the heart of decision-making in their communities and collectively build social cohesion.
Throughout my career, I have been privileged to work with some amazingly dedicated resident communities and colleagues from the statutory services and third sector, to bring about tangible changes for individuals and communities.
“This was a crucial time for social housing: the removal of funding by central government, the benefits reform with punitive charges for residents – social housing began to creak under the weight of change”
However, investing in communities didn’t come cheap. The housing sector needed to demonstrate the cost-benefit to the resident community and to the landlord. The resident voice or case studies on their own were no longer sufficient to demonstrate impact – there was a need to measure and quantify impact. Social return on investment and social proxy values became an industry in themselves.
This was a crucial time for social housing: the removal of funding by central government, the benefits reform with punitive charges for residents – social housing began to creak under the weight of change.
Almost overnight, community development was replaced with digital engagement, and employment and training staff whose focus was to ensure that residents were able to secure employment and understood how to pay their rents online and on time – a crucial risk-mitigation measure for the sector.
The Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 had a significant impact on public sector procurement, forcing private sector developers and contractors to contribute to the communities they were working in and deriving financial benefit from.
Corporate social responsibility became an outdated notion and led to the creation of social value teams in the corporate sector, focused on delivering social, economic and environmental value for local communities and stakeholders.
However, as social value teams discussed contract values, apprenticeship opportunities, staff volunteer days and counted the number of trees planted, and as they paraded their financial contribution to society using proxy social value figures in glossy annual reports, the fabric of society was breaking down across the UK.
Food banks became normalised, anti-social behaviour and youth violence spiralled, and domestic assault and violence against women and girls reached all-time highs.
Increasing demands were being placed on the already burdened and underfunded NHS through the effects of poverty-related poor diets, leading to complications from obesity, such as high blood pressure and heart disease, in disadvantaged communities. Type 2 diabetes, which was traditionally only seen in adults aged over 50, became a regular occurrence in children, while the number of patients admitted to hospital with malnutrition and nutritional deficiencies tripled in a decade.
“The last decade has been marked by the elimination of community development that traditionally empowered residents to participate in social change for the benefit of their own communities”
Seasoned community development professionals began to ask: ‘How could the gains we secured be lost in just one generation?’
The last decade has been marked by the elimination of community development that traditionally empowered residents to participate in social change for the benefit of their own communities. Community activism has become a dirty word. What the community development sector feared most had become reality: communities were being ‘done to’, rather than ‘done with’; residents were proactively disempowered.
Evolution and change are inevitable and necessary. Even community dynamics have altered, with more and more people finding connection online, rather than in person. But with rising visible homelessness and long queues at street kitchens handing out free food, we all acknowledge that change must come.
Social housing providers sit at the heart of society and have a key role to play in housebuilding and rebuilding a sense of community through active in-person engagement – a return to putting community development at the heart of social change.
Any future administration will need to try to pick the best from the best, to recoup the deficits communities have experienced over the last decade and offer real and tangible solutions for change.
I implore the next government to reinvest in neighbourhood regeneration and social programmes designed to lift people out of poverty and put residents at the heart of their communities. None so fit to break the chains as those bound by them.
Palma Black, chief executive of Soul Purpose 360 and head of engagement at Edaroth, the development-management arm of AtkinsRéalis, will be speaking at Inside Housing’s Tenant and Resident Engagement Conference on 14 May 2024
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