Thursday 31st March 2011, One Great George Street - London, 08:45 - 16:45
Big Society 2011: Empowering Communities, Encouraging Social Action and Opening Up Public Services
Overview
On July 19 2010, the Prime Minister set out how the Big Society will be “the biggest, most dramatic re-distribution of power” from the state to individuals. The Big Society will promote social action, empower communities and enable public service reform.
In The Building a Stronger Civil Society strategy, published 14 October 2010, the government sets out the Big Society reform agenda and highlights the important role of the voluntary and community sector in building the Big Society. The reforms will give the sector a huge range of new opportunities to shape and provide innovative, bottom-up service.
The government is committed to ensuring that charities, social enterprises and cooperatives have a much greater role in the running of public services. By promoting contestability to open up more contracts to third sector providers and giving them more information about the costs of existing suppliers. The reforms aim to give the sector a bigger role in delivering more innovative, diverse and responsive public services.
Another aim of the reform is to encourage and promote social action and community empowerment. To help civil society organisations seize the opportunities that lie ahead, the government is working with the sector to help them develop new skills, partnerships and organisational models.
In recognition of the challenges faced by the voluntary and community sector, the government will direct around £470 million over the Spending Review period to support capacity building in the voluntary and community sector, including an endowment fund to assist local voluntary and community organisations. As part of this, the government will provide funds to pilot the National Citizen Service and establish a Transition Fund of £100 million to provide short term support for voluntary sector organisations providing public services. The Big Society Bank will bring in private sector funding in addition to receiving all funding available to England from dormant accounts.
Agenda
This timely and informative event will offer delegates the opportunity to understand the role of the voluntary and community groups, charities and social enterprises in building a stronger civil society that promotes social action and delivers public service reform.
| 08:45 |
Registration
and Coffee |
| 09:40 |
Chair's Opening Remarks
Andrew Kerr, Chief Executive, Wiltshire Council (CONFIRMED)
|
| 09:50 |
Making the Big Society a Reality in Local Communities
- What will the Big Society mean for local government?
- Drawing on the skills and expertise of local communities to respond to the social, political and economic challenges they face in their community and neighbourhoods New powers to help communities save local facilities and services threatened with closure
- Giving communities the right to bid to take over local state-run services
- Reforming the planning system to give neighbourhoods far more ability to determine the shape of the places in which their inhabitant live
- Taking forward the Community First Fund
Mark Carroll, Director, Decentralisation and the Big Society, Department for Communities and Local Government (CONFIRMED)
|
| 10:10 |
Funding, Supporting and Enabling People, Powered Change
- Funding opportunities to support People Powered Change
- Making the Big Fund work
- Opportunities to help charities, voluntary groups and social enterprises make the transition to becoming providers of public service
- New and innovative ways of supporting People Powered Change in addition to the Big Society Bank and Big Fund
Dharmendra Kanani, England Director, BIG Lottery Fund (CONFIRMED)
|
| 10:30 |
Enabling volunteering and community engagement through removing barriers - Zurich
- In light of the continuing budget pressures, how can charities and voluntary organisations continue to deliver vital services?
- Zurich is working with customers, Government and industry bodies to develop initiatives to enable and support the Big Society
- How can community engagement become a reality? What is required in order to get involved - what do you need to consider in order to set up and run a group that looks after the needs of the community?
- Launching Community Toolkit which is an online tool that provides advice and guidance on getting involved in local communities and setting up a voluntary group
- How the Community toolkit could inspire you to get involved and make a difference
Paul Emery, Head of Community and Social Organisations, Zurich (CONFIRMED)
|
| 10:50 |
Questions and Answers Session |
| 11:05 |
Coffee and Networking |
| 11:30 |
Big Society and Public Service Reform
- Promoting the delivery of better public services for less
- Public Service Reform White Paper
- Big Society and public service reform
- Opening public services to the voluntary sector
- Collaboration with voluntary, community and social enterprise sector
- Delivering better services by designing them better together and working in collaboration at the local level
- Getting the right balance between service delivery and efficiency
- Having the required skills to deliver public service reforms
Helen Bailey, Chief Executive, Local Partnerships (CONFIRMED)
|
| 11:50 |
Transforming Service Delivery in the Big Society
- Investing in civil society
- Increasing the sustainability of civil society
- Funding the Big Society
- Transforming public service delivery in the Big Society – the role of the voluntary sector and social enterprises
- New opportunities to help charities, voluntary groups and social enterprises make the transition to becoming providers of public service
- Examples of Big Society in Action
Jonathan Lewis, Chief Executive, The Social Investment Business (CONFIRMED)
|
| 12:10 |
Voices from the front line – the big society in action today
- Choice and freedom at the heart of the big society
- Never mind the theory, what is the good practice?
- Demand, demand, demand
- How the big society is succeeding
- Barriers to the big society
- The role of business led business incubators and hubs in the big society
- The success of barcelona activa
- Confusion of social enterprises, mutualism, cooperatives, limited by guarantee companies, charities etc – actually, it is not crucial
- Lets get on with it – there is too much talking and not enough doing
- To succeed you first must fail – how fear of failure will destroy communities
Duncan Chamberlain, Managing Director, Bridging to the Future (CONFIRMED)
|
| 12:30 |
Engaging the Socially Excluded in the Big Society
- Introduction to Local space
- The big society and social exclusion
- The inner-city importance to the big society
- Where to start with the disenfranchised
- The local Space way into the big society
- The benefits of success
Tony Shoults, Chair, Local Space & Philip Varlow, Board Member, Local Space (CONFIRMED)
|
| 12:50 |
Questions and Answers Session |
| 13:05 |
Lunch and Networking |
| 14:05 |
Afternoon Keynote: Empowering Communities in the Big Society: Making the Vision a Reality
- Empowering Communities in the Big Society
- Using social networking to empower citizens and communities to come together and make the changes they need in their area
- Your Square Mile: enabling citizens to find and join community groups and social enterprises
- Linking social enterprises and communities to each other to share ideas and resources, complementing the role of existing umbrella organisations
- Overcoming citizen engagement challenges
- Big society, diversity and inclusion: overcoming the challenges of inclusive participation
- Effectively implementing community-led projects
Paul Twivy, Founder and CEO, Your Square Mile (CONFIRMED)
|
| 14:25 |
Making the Big Society a Reality in Essex
- Unlocking the potential of communities
- Communities running public services at a time of financial constraint
- Elements of the Big Society that already exist
Cllr John Jowers, Cabinet Member for Communities and Planning, Essex County Council (CONFIRMED)
|
| 14:45 |
Questions and Answers Session |
| 15:05 |
Coffee and
Networking |
| 15:25 |
Volunteering in the Big Society: National Citizen Service Pilots – Experiences from Catch 22
- Volunteering in the Big Society
- Young people delivering the Big Society vision – young people developing social action projects to help their communities
- Providing young people with the skills and confidence to make a difference in their communities
- Fostering a culture of volunteerism and social responsibility in young people
- Preparing our communities for the devolution of power to communities
Rosie Chadwick, National Programmes Director, Catch22 (CONFIRMED)
|
| 15:45 |
Big Society - Partnership and Communication
- How do you develop effective public private partnerships to support important initiatives - in areas such as such as behaviour change, education and health?
- Where do you start?
- What are the key considerations?
- Case study examples.
- How do you engage your community effectively?
- How do you develop a local strategy?
- The who, how, what and when
Claire Cater, Group Director, Big Society & Behaviour Change, Bell Pottinger Group (CONFIRMED)
|
| 16:05 |
Closing Keynote: Mutuals: A New Model for Public Service Delivery
- Giving public sectors workers a new right to form employee-owned co-operatives and bid to take over the services they deliver
- Empowering public sector workers to become their own boss and to deliver better services
- Incentivise improved performance and harness the ideas and creativity of experienced and entrepreneurial staff
- Providing advice and guidance to those thinking of setting up their own co-operative
- Promoting the Big Society and delivering greater efficiency
Professor Julian Le Grand, Chair, The Mutuals Taskforce (CONFIRMED)
|
| 16:25 |
Questions and Answers Session |
| 16:45 |
Chair's Summary and Close |
*programme subject to change without notice
Exhibitor
Contributor
Audience
Delegates will be drawn from right across central, regional and local government, police, NHS, private, social enterprises, community groups, voluntary groups and will include directors, heads of planning, policy, housing, community cohesion, neighbourhoods, community safety officers, voluntary, community sector partnerships, community learning, directors, heads regeneration, economic development, business change, finance directors, chief executives, strategic directors, heads of policy and performance, heads/directors of public health, social care.
