RNID's response to Minister Alex Attwood's letter on budgets

Question 1: What should be the priority areas within DSD to best protect those in need, stress or disadvantage? What works best and what should be reviewed?

A work of the Voluntary and Community Unit within DSD should be protected to ensure that your partners in this sector are sufficiently resourced and supported to continue to deliver much needed public services to the most vulnerable in our society. In particular we recommend that the Department:

• revisits the general principles and shared values outlined in Compact: Between Government and the Voluntary and Community Sector in NI
• implements the strategic actions outlined in Government’s Final Report on the Implementation of Positive Steps: The Government’s Response to Investing Together: Report of the Task Force on Resourcing the Voluntary and Community Sector
• continues to manage Government grants and provide funding programmes for the Community and Voluntary sector, ensures that the application process is clear and accessible and that the grants database is up to date
• continues to work in partnership with the Voluntary and Community sector to develop policy and strategy
• continues to promote Volunteering and Active Citizenship and ensure that the recommendations outlined in the Volunteering strategy are implemented
• creates access to volunteering for disabled people by enabling them to draw Access to Work benefit for volunteering activities
• work in partnership with volunteer centres and organisations to ensure adequate training/skills is offered to organisations to enhance their volunteering work
• continues to support Community Development

The Department also needs to give due consideration to charity policy and legislation in Northern Ireland, and in particular the establishment of the Charity Commission. We would hope that the creation of the Commission will not create unnecessary red tape for charities but rather acts as a ‘one stop shop’ for advice and guidance. For example, the Charity Commission could take responsibility for fundraising permits, which is currently the responsibility of the PSNI. This would creates less work for the voluntary sector if the process and support was available in one place, therefore reducing administration time which could be better spent on delivering services.

The third area for consideration is around access to benefits for deaf and hard of hearing people, particularly in light of high unemployment and underemployment that they unfairly experience.

Research has shown that only 9.7% of severely/profoundly deaf people in Great Britain receive Disability Living Allowance, and this may be explained to some degree by the fact that deaf people are more likely to be unaware of their entitlements, due to a lack of accessible independent advice and information services.

Deaf people face barriers in accessing benefits, such as the complexity of administrative systems which are not geared towards deafness or hard of hearing issues, the lack of access to appropriate communication to enable deaf people to receive information and advice, and a lack of targeted promotion of entitlements to deaf people. Access to independent advice which is tailored to meet the needs of deaf people has proven to increase benefit uptake, and deliver other positive outcomes for the individuals.

An example of good practice is the 3 year project RNID established in 2002 -“Equality of Access to Advice and Information for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People”.  The project aimed to help people who are deaf or hard of hearing access the advice and information they need in a way which addressed the barriers they face. The project employed two Specialist Advice Workers who were based in the Derry/Londonderry and Dungannon CAB offices. The Workers were supported by a fully qualified sign language interpreter and had expertise and indepth knowledge of issues relating specifically to deaf and hard of hearing people.  

Over a 42 month period the Specialist Advice Workers dealt with 2,554 enquiries from 1,372 clients, 60-75% of which related to benefits issues, the remainder relating to discrimination (employment, access to services), money/debt, housing, health and consumer issues.

A conservative figure estimated the Advisors assisted in the recovery of £458,564 of unpaid/unclaimed benefit entitlement for service users.  This represents over £10,000 for every operational month of the project, yet does not include the long-term financial impact; empowerment of the individual; awareness raised in health, social, private and public sector provision; satisfaction and recognition of service users; operational relationships between providers and Health and Social Care Trusts, Deaf Clubs, the Equality Commission; improved communication skills in CAB offices and increased opportunities to reach and support this client group.

While that project unfortunately came to an end, an accessible CAB advice service still operates a two hour clinic on a weekly basis from RNID headquarters in Belfast and receives an average of 5-10 deaf clients per clinic.

RNID recommends that DSD action its strategic commitments to the voluntary and community sector as outlined in the Compact, Positive Steps, Investing Together, and Resourcing the Sector reports.

RNID recommends that DSD actively promote, support and enable volunteering.

RNID recommends that DSD creates a Charity Commission which will enable not burden the sector.

RNID recommends to DSD that access to specialist provision of independent advice services for deaf people, within the mainstream service, should be provided.

Question 2: What could or should be done within the voluntary and community sector to work better to address overheads and deliver greater benefits to the community?

Partnership working is a basic tenet of much that goes on across the voluntary and community sector which has proven to reap benefits for the partner organisations in terms of time and money saved, broadening the reach of services, increasing the knowledge bank within the organisations, sharing best practice, and ultimately delivering greater benefits to the community.

RNID has many years of experience of working in partnership with other voluntary organisations North and South of the border, including RNIB, DeafHear.ie, the British Deaf Association and CAB; Government Departments, including DEL, DCAL, DHSSPS, DSD; and others such as EGSA and the Electoral Commission, with support from a range of funders including the Big Lottery, Health and Social Care Trusts, SEUPB etc.

One example is the Sign Language Partnership Group set up after formal recognition of British & Irish Sign Languages in NI in 2004. The group has representatives from deaf related organisations/deaf community and the 11 Government Departments. DCAL is the lead Government Agency and representatives from each Department get the opportunity to meet and engage directly with representatives of the Deaf community. It has resulted in greater understanding of needs and with it an acceptance of sharing responsibilities across Departments in funding communication support, resources to promote sign language and developing greater access for deaf people. This model of engagement should be encouraged as this approach widens partnership between Government Departments, the voluntary sector and users with more effective use of resources.

Another good example of a way to reduce overheads and deliver greater benefits to the community through partnership is the new Sensory Engagement Programme run by RNID, Deafhear, the Royal National Institute of Blind People and National Council for the Blind in Ireland.  The project aims to ensure that clients with sensory impairments can: access key services in key sector organisations; use technology to access key services; actively take part in economic and social transactions with businesses and service providers

Efficiencies in overhead costs have been achieved by sharing existing office premises and back office functions, combining the delivery of services to client groups which share some common issues and reducing duplication of services by working cross-border. It is anticipated that through this project a cross-border sensory project model of good practice will be realised and shared across Europe.

The other unique ability the voluntary sector has is the room to grow innovation in meeting the needs of our client group and to be creative within restricted budgets. This has led to a huge growth in the use of unpaid volunteers to deliver vital services. While volunteers are not ‘free’ and require an investment in terms of organisational commitment and management time to support them, their costs are considerably lower than paid staff costs, and their enthusiasm and empathy ensures a very high quality of service. We could not provide the volume of services we currently offer across such a large geographic spread without the support of volunteers.

RNID’s volunteer programme has recruited 158 volunteers over the last 5 years, most of whom have a hearing loss themselves. These committed volunteers are trained and supported to deliver information talks to a wide range of interested bodies, mount exhibitions, provide information to the public about hearing loss and hearing health, and carry out RNID’s Hearing Check.

Those volunteers who use a hearing aid also deliver our Hearing Aid Project to run regular drop-in clinics in large towns across the country, and visit people who have recently been given a hearing aid in their own home. This project grew in response to an identified need among new hearing aid users for support and information on getting the best use of their hearing aid, and a lack of knowledge of how to clean and maintain their hearing aid. Work is underway to identify the positive impact this service has had on the quality of life of the individuals, the increased usage of hearing aids, the potential reduction in repeat audiology or GP appointments and the fiscal benefits to everyone of such early intervention.

RNID has estimated that the hours of work carried out by our volunteers is equivalent to a full time paid member of staff.

RNID recommends that DSD look to the voluntary and community sector for best practice in creating efficient and quality services, increases partnership opportunities, and recognises and supports the valuable contribution that volunteers make to improving quality for life of other people.

Question 3: Do you have any wider comments about how the Executive should address the budgetary situation? 

All aspects of Government spending and outputs for that spend must be scrutinised in light of a very difficult economic climate. This includes the size of the workforce, which significantly outweighs counterparts in the other devolved countries and is enjoying the luxury of inflationary pay increases unlike many employees in the voluntary and private sector.

Urgent action is needed on the delivery of the Review of Public Administration, and in particular the downsizing of unnecessary local Government structures – a population of 1.7million people does not require an administrative burden of 26 local Councils. Urgent action on the proposed changes to the education sector also needs to be taken.

Lastly, the Executive should look to its stakeholders in the voluntary and community sector, which are delivering a vast range of public services, and seek to strengthen the sector through realistic Service Level Agreements, the sharing of expertise in the form of free consultative support, secondments between sectors to encourage the sharing of best practice, and the recognition of the added value the sector brings to the work of Government through innovate research, information, technological developments, the ability to lever funding and support from other sources and its close connections to local communities.

Evidence of success in Government working with partners in the voluntary sector to deliver key public services is available in RNID’s publication ‘Adding Value to Public Services’ which has been forwarded to you separately. We provided the first example of a charity delivering a major Government programme of modernisation within the NHS through the Modernising Hearing Aid Services (MHAS) programme in England. Using RNID’s commercial experience to lead the procurement process for digital hearing aids on behalf of the Department of Health, an agreement was reached that ensured a dramatic drop in the price of digital hearing aids. This made a potential cost reduction of approximately £40-50 million per annum to the Health Service compared to the price that would have been paid under the original contract. This is only one aspect of the positive outcomes achieved through the MHAS partnership for audiology services and patients in England.

The second major Government programme which involved RNID was the Early Support Programme, when our Head of Education Policy was seconded to the Department for Education and Skills to coordinate discussions with stakeholders, frame a strategy and produce joint guidance on delivering early intervention and support to deaf children and their families. The resulting strategy and guidance ‘Together from the Start’ initiated the delivery of the Early Support Programme which was managed in partnership with RNID and other organisations.

RNID recommends that the NI Executive takes immediate action to make public services and local Government more efficient, and improve its links with the voluntary and community sector to realise savings in the longer term.

Other Responses

A list of the other organisations willing to share their responses. If you would like yours to be included, please forward to lisa.mcelherron@nicva.org

Smart Solutions in Tough Times

To keep up to date with what's happening in the sector on the issue of the Comprehensive Spending Review, including a number of events, check our Smart Solutions section or read the campaign blog.