Insight and latest updates from our team

Advice, opinion and event reports from NICVA's staff and guest authors.

Has the Wells affair scuppered a Westminster deal for the DUP?

Scope analyses the fall-out from the Wells affair and concludes we should not be writing off the DUP just yet.

It's time to move on from the stale politics of peace

Guest Author
Independent MLA John McCallister calls for a realignment of politics in Northern Ireland and has some harsh words for the Make it Work campaign. 

Abortion: the lives of others

David Smyth of the Evangelical Alliance, writing exclusively for Scope, challenges those currently calling for changes to Northern Ireland's abortion law

Buy a plastic bag and save the environment: how not to make cuts

Scope analyses the bizarre recent conduct of the Department of the Environment and suggests this is a text book example of how not to implement cuts. 

Modern slavery - antiquity down your street

For most people the word slavery will evoke the distant and disconnected past. But for some people it is a reality in the here and now.

CollaborationNI Welcomes TheatreNI

A new voice for theatre and the performing arts in Northern Ireland.

Collaboration crucial to the challenges that lie ahead - Mervyn Storey MLA

Have you ever questioned why collaboration is worth considering?

Welfare Reform: overseeing the inevitable

Presuming the near-inevitable happens and Welfare Reform (eventually) passes the Assembly, does Stormont need a dedicated committee for oversight? Scope speaks exclusively with Michael McMahon MSP, who convenes just such a group in Holyrood.

Opinion: abortion - our laws are in urgent need of reform

Guest Author
Grainne Teggart, Northern Ireland campaigner for Amnesty Interntional and head of its My Body My Rights campaign, writes for Scope to say that local abortion laws lack decency in the way they treat women in distress.

The Wrong Mrs Vo - do the unborn have rights?

Scope examines the landmark European case which ruled that the unborn do not have a right to life 

Abortion in Northern Ireland: an overview

Abortion is amongst the most divisive issues in our tumultuous society. In the first of a series of pieces looking at this issue as it comes to a time of great flux, Scope outlines where we are and how we got there.

Over 450 job losses for the sector #CutsWatchNI

NICVA is warning that at least 450 jobs are likely to be lost in the next few weeks from voluntary and community organisations right across Northern Ireland as government cuts are announced.

#CutsWatchNI: the results are coming in

An updated summary of the responses to our #CutsWatchNI survey.

NICVA Responds to DSD Committee on Regeneration Bill

NICVA recently responded to the Department for Social Development Committee's Call for Evidence on the Regeneration Bill.

Eat your heart out Justin Bieber you''ll never out-twitter Ó Muilleoir

Scope stops off in South Belfast to examine politicians on social media and stumbles across the politician who out-tweets Obama.  

This latest spending cut will boost crime

Scope cartoonist Patrick Sanders sums up that there is to be said about the devastating cuts to NIACRO and the impact on re-settling offenders. 

The irony of calling quotas patronising

Guest Author
This month Scope has chosen to discuss gender quotas in politics. Here political activist - and feminist - Adrianne Peltz outlines why many of the standard objections are objectionable.

Innovation conference - Development, Design and Delivery

NICVA and the Chief Executive's Forums conference on innovation in public service delivery saw speakers from the public, private and voluntary and community sectors address delegates on innovative processes and practices.

Pity the poor children of the cuts

We could all end up paying a very high price for cuts to Early Years services, Scope explores the implications.

The need for new politics in NI

This month Belfast hosted Imagine! - a "festival of ideas and politics". Scope speaks to director Peter O'Neill about why he thinks it was important and his hopes for making it an annual event.