4 THE CAPACITY OF DISABILTY ORGANISATIONS TO ENGAGE
4.1 The way in which disability organisations engage with public authorities and the success of this engagement was found to be influenced by two main factors. Firstly, the characteristics, practices and approach of public authorities to disability organisations will impact on engagement process. This is discussed in Section 5.
4.2 Secondly, some key factors are about the disability organisation itself - its people, income, structure, reputation and approach - and whether it can actually engage. This is known as the capacity of the disability organisation to undertake and sustain effective engagement. These factors are internal to the disability organisation. This section is about the capacity of disability organisations.
4.3 Box 2 illustrates the types of difficulties faced by disability organisations.
Box 2: Impact of limited capacity |
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"Achieving the face-to-face contact is not so easy.. we haven't got the resources to be doing it all the time, there's not many of us and a lot of us are not very fit or, you know, have disabilities that would make it hard work for them to be involved. In our panel… we don't have people who want to lobby or campaign. What we want to do is work alongside and educate and encourage and, you know, assertiveness is not our strong point and we are certainly not aggressive…we're a much quieter bunch. It could change next month with the recruitment of a couple of new members. We badly need a co-ordinator…I do what I can but it's not the same as having someone whose job it is. We really need someone who's got time to go out and…really raise our profile and … be better able to involve our members who find it more difficult, but who could recruit volunteers to be supporters and match members up with each other. There's things that could be done that don't get done because they take a lot of time and relationship building and relating to the statutory sector would be more effective with somebody for whom it was part of their job. They would be at meetings and they would spot opportunities and they would follow that up." (Panel/forum member) |
4.4 Set out below are characteristics of disability organisations that affect their ability to engage. Some are positive in that the characteristics enhance the ability of the organisation to engage. Others are barriers that may reduce the capacity/capability of organisations. In summary there are five main groups of features that respondents identified:
- People
- Funding
- Organisation
- Relationships
- Reputation
People skills in disability organisations
People are at the heart of all organisations. An organisation with skilled and, knowledgeable staff, members and volunteers will obviously have more capacity to engage with public authorities.
Box 3: People |
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Factors that facilitate engagement - Having the right talents in your organisation
- Lobbying skills
- Research and presentation skills:
- Quality of analysis and arguments
- Using people's real stories as evidence
- Providing evidence and targeted recommendations or having a persuasive argument
- Posts specifically designed to 'research and influence' or deal with 'policy and parliamentary affairs'
- Innovation and creativity
- Capacity of individual members and volunteers
Barriers to engagement: - Lack of paid staff/hours
- Job remit too big
- Declining membership
- Lack of confidence to go to meetings
- Over-reliant on volunteers
- Lack of volunteers
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4.5 For some disability organisations, the capacity of their members or staff, often part time, had a key influence on their ability to participate in engagement activities:
"I think probably the fact that none of us are very well and we're a small body, it kind of goes against us, because you haven't got the energy to fight and we haven't got big influence." (Panel/forum)
4.6 Some organisations had declining membership, or (as illustrated above) said that because a large proportion of their members were disabled, this impacted on participation. "It is a challenge because many of the people helping to organise the organisation are disabled themselves so you know the very nature of the beast, you're not going to get a full turnout of individuals and that is part of the challenge because some of them are disabled, some of them elderly …if we have one or two members down due to illness because of their disability it radically affects how we can operate." (Volunteer-led organisation)
4.7 However, other disability organisations were well resourced and this meant that they could bring various strengths to bear on the engagement process. These strengths included paid staff and key skills such as research and lobbying.
Funding of disability organisations
4.8 People attributes are closely linked to funding, because without adequate funding, organisations have to rely on no or few paid staff and may be unable to attract the right skills or have a mix of skills in their staff.
Box 4: Funding |
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Factors that facilitate engagement - Stable core funding
- Having financial flexibility (not dependent on one source of funding)
Barriers to engagement: - Lack of money for research and training
- Short-term funding you are trying to "grow an oak tree not a sunflower"
- Insecure funding
- Under-resourced - have to prioritise issues for engagement
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4.9 When interviewed some disability organisations described the issues faced because of short-term or insecure funding:
"My main objective in life is to ensure we have adequate funding for next year….I mean this year we made 42 applications to various charities" (Chair of service provider organisation)
"I think there probably needs to be more acknowledgement that the times of lurching from 3 year funding to the next doesn't help in terms of consistency and capacity, and that you'll never be able to implement things unless you have continuity across organisations and some sort of stability across a particular way of working" (Service provider)
Organisational features of disability organisations
4.10 Disability organisations cited several positive organisational features that could contribute to effective engagement, including good communication, a non-hierarchical structure and the support of their national body, if they had one.
Box 5: Organisational factors |
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Factors that facilitate engagement: - Good communication within own organisation
- Non-pyramidal structure
- Support of a national organisation or local forum
- Being a contracted service provider
Barriers to good engagement: - Unequal power distribution between public authorities and disability organisations
- Size of organisations - too small
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4.11 Some service providers also felt that they had good levels of engagement in relation to their contract, as illustrated below:
"Like most providers, we've got a two-fold relationship with the local authority. On a local level with regards to the services they actually commission from us, we meet very regularly with the service managers and social work…and those meetings are fantastic because it gives us both an opportunity to see where we're at and whether we might be able to make improvements …they're incredibly supportive and …are always looking to us to provide specialist information." (Service provider)
Approach to relationships by disability organisations
4.12 Having good contacts and relationships with the 'right people' was a way in which many disability organisations described how they engaged with and influenced public authorities:
"I think getting to know each other makes a difference as well, and to get to know and understand each other's work so you develop relationships from that is what makes it most effective. So you know who to pick up the phone to, who has a particular area of expertise and you know that they are approachable and I think building up these relationships is one of the most effective ways" (Service provider)
4.13 The experience of trying to locate and talk to the most appropriate contact within a public authority was described by a number of organisations:
"Trying to contact someone in X is just absolutely a nightmare, you will get a name and you'll say I was told to contact you and you get flung from pillar to post" (Volunteer-led organisation)
Box 6: Relationships |
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Factors that facilitate engagement: - Having 'champions'
- Access to local and national politicians
- Contact with the right people/decision makers
- Being open and honest in partnership relationships
- 'Wearing other hats' and having lots of contacts
- Working co-operatively with other organisations - a united voice
- Proactive board of directors
- Being persuasive
- Having a 'can-do' attitude
- Being upbeat vs. having low morale
- Working co-operatively with other organisations - a united voice
Barriers to engagement: - No mechanism to feed into things nationally
- Not getting access to the right people to publicise activities and services
- Working in partnership means not being controversial
- No place at the table
- Campaigning role versus relationship building/partnership working - difficult balance
- Competition between disability organisations
- Problems of sharing information versus competitive tendering
- Demoralised by lack of influence
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4.14 However, relationship factors could also inhibit engagement, for example, a fear on the part of the disability organisation that if they challenged the public body, this might affect their future funding or relationships. One interviewee illustrates this tension:
"You have to tread this line between explaining why something is an issue and actually alienating people…do you influence people by getting alongside them, or do you influence people by campaigning against them? And it's not a terribly easy line to tread, always." (National organisation)
4.15 Some organisations referred to a 'them and us' factor where they felt that public authorities regarded them as different, or inferior, or that they were misunderstood:
"It almost falls into a them and us kind of camp and I try to see it from their point of view, and I know a lot of us in the voluntary sector do, but we still very much feel them and us, which is a shame" (Service provider)
4.16 Other factors affecting organisations' ability to influence were the conflict between being in a competitive tendering situation against other voluntary organisations versus being expected to work in partnership and share information which might be commercially confidential.
4.17 Attitudinal factors such as a proactive board of directors, being persuasive and having a 'can-do' attitude were thought to help to create a high profile and good reputation, which in turn helped organisations to influence.
4.18 A small number of organisations appeared to feel almost defeated by their lack of influence:
"There's no sort of outside help or things like that… [information] never seems to filter through to us.. we put information out about the swimming club to physios but, other than that, there's no real contact at all…We're not allowed into schools or anything like that so we can't actually go in and show them what we do...We're just sort of isolated really" (Volunteer-led organisation)
Box 7: Reputation |
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Factors that facilitate engagement: - Having a high profile
- Having a credible organisations/trusted brand
- Having good reports from regulatory bodies, e.g. Care Commission (service providers)
Barriers to engagement: - Fear that you will get bad name if you challenge previous decisions and then may not be listened to
- Feel that seen as third sector - taking money but not contributing, 'them and us' attitudes
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4.19 Some organisations felt that the good reputation they had with public authorities, for example, by being a longstanding organisation, or having good Care Commission reports, were key to achieving influence. Conversely, some felt that if they challenged decisions and were controversial, this would not help their cause:
"Over time, we have developed a strong brand… a trusted brand…I think that's come from reasonable and good management over the years. If we've got something to say then [public authorities] will be receptive" (Service provider)
"You don't want to bite the hand that feeds you" (Service provider)
4.20 A few other barriers to effective engagement were cited by disability organisations. These were:
- weather and geography (e.g. rural areas) - which can make it even more difficult for disabled people to be involved without good transport
- the lack of a universal communication system that is available to everyone, so that different formats have to be used for different people, potentially making some people feel excluded
- general lack of public awareness about disability
- the lack of a shared understanding between public authorities and disability organisations of what consultation should look like
- the size and type of the issue you are trying to influence, meaning that there may be less support for an issue that affects fewer people.