Third Sector
crucial to creating 21st century public services
Third Sector organisations have been
exhorted to “boldly go” and grasp the opportunity before them to transform public
services in the UK.
Mark Johnson, managing director of TPP Law, a specialist
firm which supports the development of successful public service partnerships, told
a national conference today (Tues) that charities, housing associations and social
enterprises were in the vanguard of change.
But, as TPP Law’s own survey last November revealed
social enterprises have to work hard now to strip away the obstacles and barriers
they encounter with service commissioners to be able to realise their potential.*
“I believe passionately that the third sector has
a crucial role to play in re-designing public services for the 21st century: who
better to tackle tricky social problems, the immense challenges of demographic change,
globalisation and social diversity and the rising expectations of our citizens,”
Mr Johnson told delegates at the NCVO’s Public Service Delivery Network annual conference
in London.
“The total value of the market for outsourced public
services in the UK in
2007 was said to be worth £79 billion. In the same year, NCVO’s
almanac reported income from statutory sector contracts for the third sector was
£7.8bn.
There is ample scope for the third sector to grow its 10% share of the market
significantly.”
Mr Johnson, whose firm was a sponsor of the NCVO
event, which focused on ‘Transforming together - innovation, public services and
the voluntary sector’, added: “This Government has committed itself to public service
reform on a grand scale. New opportunities are opening up in offender management,
employment services, children’s services and education, health and social care and
local government services.
“At a time when public trust in private sector institutions
has been badly dented, and in spite of the economic gloom, I believe the third sector
is uniquely positioned to be in the vanguard of public service delivery. Their independence,
local accountability, and freedom to innovate, coupled with their sheer energy and
enthusiasm, are distinctive and compelling advantages in public service delivery.
The tide is most definitely turning - and now is the hour to catch the wave.”
Mr Johnson used examples of three innovative and
successful projects upon which his firm advised to highlight what could be achieved.
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The new integrated health and social care campus in Malmesbury,
which is run as a highly successful partnership between leading care charity The
Orders of St John Care Trust, the PCT and a private sector developer of extra care
housing- this was an innovative way to keep services local by reinvigorating a former
community hospital site; |
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Secure Healthcare, a social enterprise mutual society set
up by two psychiatric nurses who believed passionately that the way to stop prisoners
re-offending and reintegrate them into the community, was to give them a
quality healthcare service to deal with addiction and mental health problems: they had the
courage of their convictions and last year won their first contract at Wandsworth
Prison, which is working brilliantly; |
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Edmund Waller School Services, a new charity TPP Law helped
to establish in Lewisham which runs breakfast- and after school clubs and holiday
play schemes thereby enabling parents and carers to return to work or pursue further
study; so successful has it been with the first school, that it now runs these services
under contract to two other neighbouring schools bringing in additional income streams. |
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Mark Johnson with Cabinet Office special adviser Anne O'Brien
MP
For More Information Contact:
Mark Johnson
TPP Law Limited
53 Great Suffolk Street
London SE1 ODB
t 020 7620 0888
f 020 7620 0778
e info@tpplaw.co.uk
Email:
Mark
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