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Last updated: 25 November 2008
Touching the lives of people in local communities can only happen through meaningful engagement. By working in partnership with third sector organisations, the Government is better able to understand the needs and issues affecting all parts of society.
Tackling Social Exclusion
The third sector covers a range of not-for-profit organisations, from community groups to charities. many work at the forefront of public service delivery, driving forward innovative programmes with the potential to transform people's lives.
Leading from the Cabinet Office, the Office of the Third Sector (OTS) builds support across government for developing the environment for a thriving third sector. It seeks to empower the sector to excel at what it does best – deliver and transform public services, campaign for change, promote and encourage social enterprise and strengthen communities.
Following the largest ever public consultation with the sector, the Cabinet Office and Treasury [External website] published The future role of the third sector in social and economic regeneration: final report in July 2007. This sets out a 10-year framework for partnership working between the third sector and government, outlining a £515 million programme to support community organisations over the next three years.
A key element in achieving the report's aims is to ensure that all individuals and communities are enabled to play a full part in civil society. And one way of ensuring such engagement is by encouraging and promoting volunteering.
The document confirms the Government's intention to invest a further £117 million in the youth volunteering charity v. This was set up in 2006 with OTS funding to lead in delivering a step change in the quality, quantity and diversity of volunteering opportunities for young people aged 16 to 25 in England. One of the charity's initiatives is an innovative match fund, developed in partnership with the OTS and HM Treasury, which enables it to match – pound for pound – any private sector contributions for youth volunteering. The match fund has enabled several initiatives aiming to strengthen communities.
One such initiative is delivered by the charity Oasis UK with support from Stagecoach Group, Lancaster Foundation and the Cabinet Office's Economic and Domestic Secretariat. v's £117,752 investment will enable Oasis UK to expand volunteering opportunities across hubs in Grimsby, Clitheroe, Enfield and London Waterloo.
Over the next three years, the Office of the Third Sector will invest over £515 million in programmes including:
One of the charity's drop-in youth clubs provides a safe place for young people to ‘hang out’ on Enfield's Kettering Estate. Local police and community members approached Oasis UK to start the club, which supports the young people through relationships built with youth workers, mostly volunteers.
“It's a good youth club, you can do different activities and young people from the estate can come. The youth workers are good and you can get along with them easily,”
says one young person on the project.
The volunteers also do youth work in other parts of Enfield, including Edmonton, which has seen five youth-on-youth murders since Christmas 2007, and Enfield Lock – where crime has gone down by 10% and anti-social behaviour by 14% since Oasis UK started working there. A local police sergeant says:
“Thanks to our partnerships with Oasis UK and close working relationships with individual youth workers, we are more successful in making life safer for young people in Enfield Lock.”
The OTS strategic funding to v is part of a range of programmes outlined in the Third Sector Review that aims to develop an environment in which the third sector can thrive.
To find out more about these programmes and the Office of the Third Sector, visit www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/thirdsector