Chapter 9 - Forward!

When the global recession engulfed the world like an unstoppable force in 2008, it spelt hard times ahead for everyone and none more-so than the so-called ‘third sector’.

But for disability organisations across Britain there had already been a crisis period which had taken place from around 2004 to 2006, during which time many disability groups all over the country and those run by disabled people in particular, went out of business.

Different groups went into decline for different reasons during this disquieting period of time for the disabled people’s movement.

For some groups, changes in local funding criteria had suddenly put them at a disadvantage in terms of adapting to a new funding culture; organisations of disabled people could not compete with local branches of professionalised national organisations; in some local authority areas there had been an ideological shift with user-led campaigning groups falling out of favour.

For many groups it was a question of steadily depleting infrastructure – the big three-year grants which gave organisations the superficial impression of ‘never having had it so good’, invariably did not cover core costs such as central administration, building and running costs and the cost of organisational directorship and leadership training.

For user-led disability groups, these pressures came on top of the fact that many organisations were being run by individuals with a wide range of personal health, mobility, financial and independent living challenges. As a disabled activist once commented “before I can get down to Parliament to join the afternoon lobby, firstly I have to organise how I’m going to get out of bed in the morning”.

Whilst the user-led agenda which had originated in UPIAS and then BCODP in the early ‘80s contained a radical, innovative and powerful message around self-determination, the reality was that however ideologically sound they were, increasingly, many user-led boards and committees lacked the professional expertise around things like directorship, management and financial accountability required by funders, partners, members, staff and ultimately, by service users themselves.

In the West Midlands, a number of well-known organisations folded between 2005 and 2006 including Disability West Midlands, Birmingham Coalition of Disabled People, West Midlands Disability Arts Forum and Shropshire Disability Consortium. We have already learned that in 2003 Birmingham Disability Resource Centre, itself, had also come under pressure following the collapse of a very substantial funding stream around employment and training. However, it had astutely commissioned Tom and Deb Veitch to carry out consultancy work to advise the board on how to reshape the BDRC around a more business orientated model.

One of the consequences of this consultancy was the appointment of a new Chief Executive Officer, Louise Simmons, who came to work for BDRC from the Alzheimer’s Society in January 2005.

With a strong background working for both third sector, local authority and government bodies, Louise brought values and beliefs to the role which were conducive to working for a social model of disability organisation whilst also knowing from essential first-hand experience how the public sector thinks and operates.

The cliché ‘game keeper turned poacher’ is commonly heard in the third sector when a long-term employee of a large public agency, such as a social services department, unexpectedly joins a grass-roots voluntary and community sector group. There can be a perceived ideological chasm between the two sectors and with the inference that the person has literally defected from an agent of control and oppression to one of subversion and rebellion (or vice-versa if the employee goes in the other direction or, of course, depending on which sectors we define as being the poacher or gamekeeper).

Louise Simmons perhaps exemplifies the more complex reality of the contemporary environment, where individuals no longer spend their entire careers working in one particular sector, but bring a range of knowledge and skills gained from different situations.

Louise had actually been born and raised in the Yardley area, but it had been some time since she had worked in Birmingham so she was on a steep learning curve as far as knowledge of the disability movement in the city was concerned. What attracted Louise to BDRC?
“It is an independent organisation, not linked to any other and if I think about my work in the charity sector prior to that I’d been working in a structure where there was a national organisation and below that was a regional structure across the country and then there were local branches – so I’d worked for national charities.

“I had not worked for a local charity, a stand-alone charity, and that in some respects was quite a challenge because I would not have the support, if you like, from the national organisation and the resources that come with that. So it was going to be a challenge.

“I think beyond that the services that BDRC were providing certainly interested me and I was given the impression from the advert that it was a medium-sized professional organisation very much moving towards social enterprise, very much operating as a business rather than a charity and all of that excited me as a number of charities were still operating, at that time, very much hand-to-mouth and still shaking tins on street corners.”