Very often, statutory funders (Government Departments) contract out work to voluntary agencies to work in areas such as homelessness, crime in estates, unemployment etc.
Mostly these initiatives are started by concerned citizens, religious or philanthropic groups, or similar with seed funding and then after some time the Government steps in to give some permanency to the initiative. (If it feels that the initiative is not yielding any results, or is too uppity, i.e. too demanding, is non-compliant, or will embarrass them if something goes wrong – the Government will usually not support it).
When the Government does offer financial support it will usually (in my experience anyway) only give barely enough money to do the minimum and will expect the voluntary agencies to work for less money and poorer conditions than they would their own employees – i.e. civil or public servants. (I actually heard a representative from a Government Department, one day, saying that it would be a lot cheaper to give a certain task to a voluntary agency than employ more public servants to do the same job……. I think that he forgot I was in the room)!
The bare minimum approach often results in voluntary organisations having responsibility without power and this usually causes frustration and sometimes even conflict among those agencies that are working in partnership with each other.
The problems that families in the Focus Group present with can often seem overwhelming – even infinite – but they only appear infinite because we are looking at the problems in a reductionist, not systemic way. Because Pillars thinking filters into the community; this is not uncommon.
If we look at the problems systemically we might ask different questions and get different answers.
I’d also argue that very often the Pillars, (perhaps unwittingly) complicate issues which make them appear to be overwhelming. I have experienced the Pillars actually adding to chaos and incoherence by trying to reduce problems – that is, tackle each one individually – rather than seeing the whole family as a unit, or system.
The civil/public service can also make things hard to understand, using concepts and language that is beyond the ken of not only many people in the Focus Group, but many of us practitioners in communities.
Complication of issues is also, of course, a method of perpetuating dominance.