By Angela King,
Economic Development Officer in the Economy & Enterprise Service, Devon County Council.
The SEEING project enabled us to build on previous work undertaken as part of a national action research programme regarding the role of Local Authorities in supporting local social enterprise. (More information here)
SEEING has given us a much deeper insight into the role and maturity of the social economy, and the approach to its support and development in other parts of Europe in comparison to our own. This has been both interesting, due to the variety of case studies and approaches we have encountered, as well as surprising and reassuring at times due to the apparent greater scale and prominence of the sector and the support mechanisms in place (including the recent Social Value Act) in the UK.
Due to the sheer size and complexity of the social economy here in Devon, the UK partners sought to focus on social enterprise (in all its forms and without rigid definition) and to some extent Corporate Social Responsibility, rather than include the wider voluntary & community sector. The theme running through the work was very much around how the sectors (private, public, social economy) could work together to further social enterprise activity, with social value identified as the ‘golden thread’. Bodies from all sectors were viewed as lying on a fluid spectrum with entirely commercial activity at one end and entirely voluntary at the other, with a number of pressures currently manifesting that could see a shift of activity more towards the center of the spectrum. This was seen to be a good time to be doing this work.
As part of the legacy of the SEEING Project, the UK partners worked with Marchmont Observatory to pull together the findings and the forward strategy. This involved desk top research into current strategy, policy & initiatives at the various levels regarding social enterprise activity and cross sector links, together with interviews with key stakeholders, leading to a set of key recommendations.
At the end February 2013 we held our final regional “SEEING the Future” conference attended by 50 personally invited stakeholders from across the sectors to learn about and debate “Growing social value and social enterprise through better cross sector working”. As well as reporting the findings of the SEEING Project, delegates heard from three influential and inspirational speakers in this field. Key messages from the event included that:
- cross sector working can be hugely beneficial especially in meeting complex needs;
- there are good examples to be learned from where Local Authorities have really harnessed the power of the new Social Value Act, but it is early days and there is more work to be done;
- there is a blurring of the sectors now but that unhelpful misconceptions/stereotypes still exist;
- with the lack of any industry standard on measuring social value yet, it should be remembered that social value is in the eye of the beholder, that we know when it’s not there and that meeting people’s needs is what its all about – whether services to the public are doing so and if not how they need to change.
In total we have 14 recommendations from the work on SEEING covering 7 themes (1) Building on what works: existing synergies that enable cross-sector working, (2) Potential new mechanisms and support structures, (3) Financing, (4) The golden thread: social value/social impact and the crucial role of the public sector, (5) The potential of impact as an enabler, (6) The social enterprise spectrum and business support, (7) Further research. The recommendations will be reported to our Local Enterprise Partnership and the SEEING Team have already been invited to co-design a new Community Impact Fund for Devon as a direct result of the work.
All of the recommendations and the legacy reports can be seen on the SEEING website, together with the presentations and output from the Conference.