Civil society must play a key role in the cross-sector collaboration needed to solve the UK’s social issues, the former boss of homelessness charity Shelter has said.
Speaking at a Bayes Business School event in London yesterday on creating social change across the public, private and charity sectors, Polly Neate told the audience: “ Civil society really needs to be at the heart of activating collaboration.”
Neate, who was Shelter’s CEO until March of this year, added: “Collaboration for public service reform that tries to happen just by local public service organisations getting hold of the NGOs that they already have relationships with doesn't actually challenge the kind of systemic failures that are disempowering people.
“I believe that civil society really has a unique role to play, based on trust and independence.
“Now, I'm not saying civil society's perfect, and maybe I'm idealistic about it, but I actually think the best shot we have at reaching out in local community to create trust lies within civil society, and not within public services or the private sector.
“Trying to do it without civil society being fully empowered isn’t gonna work.”
Neate referenced two examples from her time at Shelter where the charity worked with local communities to successfully campaign for councils to build for more social housing in Norwich and Bristol.
She added that “civil society at its best really is values-led”, but noted that obstacles such as a “dysfunctional” commissioning cycle, whereby “civil society organisations are actually being commissioned to pick up the pieces of the chaos that the system wreaks in people’s lives”, are hindering this.
