Building social capital through devolved decision making: the stronger communities action fund.

AuthorTaylor, Linda

Abstract

This paper examines the impact on community levels of social capital of an initiative by the Department of Child Youth and Family Services, the Stronger Communities Action Fund. The initiative has the goals of testing models of devolved decision making, encouraging communities to identify their social service needs, supporting innovative responses and increasing the stock of social capital. The high-level objective of the project is to improve outcomes for children, young people and families in disadvantaged communities. The research was based on Bullen and Onyx's (1998) work on the empirical measurement of social capital in communities. It was also informed by other social capital theorists and recent research on the measurement of social capital. The initiative appears to have had a positive effect on social capital. Indicators include increased participation, the creation of new networks and associations, and greater proactivity. The high-level objective of child and family wellbeing has provided some glue to hold the project together. The resulting growth in social capital needs to be matched by investment in economic, environmental and human capital to ensure positive future outcomes for the communities involved.

INTRODUCTION

Despite considerable investment by government in the design and delivery of social programmes over the past 20 years, some communities in New Zealand are beset by seemingly intractable social problems such as long-term unemployment, family violence, drug and alcohol abuse, and youth crime. The impact of the wide-ranging economic and state sector reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, and the changing nature of the global economy, left many New Zealanders in socially and economically disadvantaged circumstances. The accompanying political and social climate often did little to acknowledge these external forces and their impact on families and communities.

More recently, attention has been focused on taking a community-driven approach to assessing local social service needs and designing locally responsive solutions. This approach is premised on the assumption that it will lead to greater community investment in, and ownership of, both the problems and the responses to them. It is also assumed that such models will contribute positively to levels of social capital within the communities concerned. Social capital theory posits that the accumulated networks of goodwill, trust, shared values and reciprocity that are generated through voluntary interactions and associations in communities lead to an increased level of trust and collaboration, which continues to build on itself. The outcome of this process is social capital. Communities with strong stocks of social capital are expected to engender functional families and support social cohesion (Robinson 1997).

This paper assesses the impact of the Stronger Communities Action Fund (SCAF), a pilot of a community-government partnership to allocate funding for social services. The Department of Child, Youth and Family Services initiated the SCAF project in seven communities in 2001. Its goals are to:

* test models of devolved decision making across a range of communities

* encourage communities to identify their own social service needs

* support the development and funding of innovative, community-based responses to local needs

* develop capacity in the communities involved

* contribute to increasing the stock of social capital in those same communities.

The research used a single case study to evaluate the impact of the needs assessment and decision-making process on a small rural community in the central North Island of New Zealand. The objective of the research was to determine the impact on social capital levels of devolving funding for social services to local decision-making structures in the community. Particular attention was paid to whether the needs assessment and decision-making process, in and of itself, rather than the projects that were funded, has had a positive effect on the development of social capital.

ESTABLISHING THE STRONGER COMMUNITIES ACTION FUND

In early 2001 a funding pool of $1.6 million was established in Child Youth and Family for what were referred to as "devolved funding pilots". The development of policy advice on the implementation of such a devolved fund proposed that:

... government identify communities, either geographically based, kin based or ethnically based, that are experiencing social and material disadvantage. These communities are likely to benefit significantly from both the availability of funding, and from the social cohesion arising from participation in the decision making process. (Department of Child, Youth and Family Services 2000b) The Child, Youth and Family report referenced the Report of the Policy Action Team on Community Self-Help from the United Kingdom (Home Office Active Community Unit 1999). This British report suggested that if a community fund was available, over which local residents had decision-making responsibility:

This would represent a major incentive for local people to get involved, a way of binding people together in joint decision making and ... ensuring that funds have an impact at the most local level. THE PROGRAMME MODEL

The intervention logic that underpins the Stronger Communities Action Fund draws on social capital theory and on research that links improved outcomes for children and families to an increase in social capital in communities. The SCAF programme design is summarised below:

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The model was conceived as a three-way partnership between the fund-holding organisation, the "community" and Child, Youth and Family. The role of the fundholder was to act as a banker, to release funding on the direction of the community decision-making body; and to ensure that appropriate accountability was maintained. The role of the community was to develop a representative decision-making process, to assess local needs and priorities, and to make decisions on the allocation of the fund. The role of Child, Youth and Family was to provide funding, be available for support, advice and information sharing (if needed), and to evaluate the impact of the fund across the three-year implementation period.

SOCIAL CAPITAL THEORY

Alongside political, financial and human capital, social capital has been proposed as equally important in terms of society and its general wellbeing. According to Wilson (1997:745) the social capital literature (for example, research by Putnam (1993a, 1993b) and Fukuyama (1995)) puts forward that "the lack of, or decline in, social capital lies behind the psychological, spiritual and economic malaise in communities throughout the world". Social capital has been described as "not just the sum of the institutions which underpin a society--it is the glue that holds them together" (World Bank Group 1999).

The term "social capital" is used to refer to the outcomes from the network of relationships between people in a community that help that community to operate effectively (Robinson 1997). These relationships are often centred on voluntary associations such as community groups, sports clubs and work-based associations, and are based on trust and reciprocity between the individuals concerned. A point noted in the social capital literature is that:

Social capital develops from the core building blocks of the personal capacity for trust, tolerance, value of life, and proactivity. Connections are formed, first within the family and neighbourhood, and later within wider communities. (Bullen and Onyx 1998) Social capital theorists describe a spiral upwards and downwards for the generation and degeneration respectively of social capital. For the upward spiral to operate, Coleman (1994) asserts that a threshold needs to be reached for the generation of social capital to be self-sustaining. Beyond this threshold, voluntary and spontaneous social organisation occurs. When stocks of social capital are below the threshold, the substitution of formal organisation is required to provide a kick-start to this process.

SCAF is a policy instrument that is intended to act as such a kick start in communities that have diminished levels of social capital, but which have the potential to reverse into an upward spiral should the appropriate environment be created.

THE LINK BETWEEN SOCIAL CAPITAL AND CHILD AND FAMILY WELLBEING

The ability of social capital to contribute to positive outcomes for children...

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