Mergers as a strategy to ensure more seamless service delivery

Interesting article from the US by  Bob Harrington about the benefits of a merger between two not- for- profit organizations as a way of creating a more seamless service delivery system to address client needs.

"As the facilitator of this merger (and a former executive director with experience in behavioral health), the most compelling outcome was the creation of a seamless service delivery system to address the needs of clients in a more holistic way.

By unifying services to address substance abuse addictions, mental illness, homelessness, and to provide job training and primary health services, this merger will help to ensure that client needs do not slip through the cracks of a fragmented delivery system.

In the mainstream dialogue about nonprofit mergers, the focus is often on efficiency and costs savings   but ultimately these alliances must make sense from a mission perspective: How can services be integrated and provided in a more effective manner? What will payers – in this case the City and County Department of Public Health – find attractive for contracting?

The landscape of services in San Francisco is fragmented, with many separate organizations providing numerous different services addressing specific client needs.  However, in most cases, they are not comprehensive, integrated services. The merger of Haight Ashbury Free Clinics and Walden House creates a more seamless approach, such that clients do not have to go in search of services from multiple entities to get the care they need"

Charities and not "biting the hand that feeds them"

Sometimes artists and charities who take money from mining companies in Western Australia give the game away.

This story Mining Company cash creates movie making boom  appeared on the ABC TV program Stateline WA on Friday November 4 and demonstrates that the primary reason for the "philanthropic" activity of the mining industry in WA is self interest.

The message is very clear- we will sponsor you but you must not speak certain truths about the industry. In other words the mining industry buys the silence and acquiesence of those it sponsors.

Listen to the journalists and artists in the ABC story who make it very clear that with the money comes conditions and the expectation is that you must show the mining industry in a favourable light.

Show the mining industry in a less than favourable light in their eyes or speak certain truths about the industry and you can say goodbye to the sponsorship.

One interviewer put it this way:

" We can't say we want you to sponsor us but the script says you are unscrupulous swines who rape and pillage the land..... they see the first draft of the script....... they don't want the industry shown in an unfavourable light..... you don't bite the hand that feeds you".

Of course this story reflects a much larger issue- the way that the mining industry and corporations in WA are using their money and power to shape the arts and cultural industry and the charitable sector to serve their corporate interests.

This article by Rosemary Neill provides an insight into the corporate takeover of the arts and cultural industry and charitable sector in WA:

In a harbinger of this, some of the country's most powerful businesspeople have teamed up with artists and launched a new, turbo-charged arts lobby, the Chamber of Arts and Culture, aimed at developing a coherent cultural vision for WA. Among the chamber's founding members are Rio Tinto iron ore chief executive Sam Walsh, prominent arts patron and businesswoman Janet Holmes a Court, former WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry boss John Langoulant, KPMG national executive director Helen Cook and former Australia Council chairwoman Margaret Seares.

An alliance of high-powered executives -- some drawn from the blokey resources and engineering sectors -- intent on proselytising for the arts is a first not just for the West but, arguably, for the nation. Walsh says this move signifies that "the state is growing; there is a need for a more creative and vibrant community and arts and culture will help us deliver that and help us attract people. I think the stars are aligned . . . we have a unique opportunity in Perth and WA's history, building on the mining boom, to work on these things." The unfailingly courteous Rio Tinto boss says the chamber has received "very strong support" from Day and federal Arts Minister Simon Crean. He stresses it is not merely an arts lobby; that it will engage with governments, the regions, schools and untapped audiences to spread the word about culture.

Here is what happens when the profit motive drives the delivery of human services

photo courtesy of Sydney Morning Herald

The dangers involved in allowing the the for-profit private and corporate sector to deliver human services to vulnerable people are once again evident in a report More than board and lodging: the need for boarding house reform by the NSW Ombudsman into licensed for- profit boarding houses in NSW.  The Report documents what happens when the profit motive becomes the main driver of the delivery of human services and Governments and the not for profit sector hand over responsibility for service delivery to the private sector..

In NSW boarding houses are run as for- profit private businesses to provide accommodation to people with disabilities, people with alcohol and drug problems. and mental illness. Residents are usually reliant on income support and pay between 75-100% of their benefits to the boarding house for accommodation and consumables

 The Report documents shocking levels of abuse, sexual assault and mistreatment of residents by staff and other residents. The Report demonstrates the complete failure of the Government's licensing and regulation of for- profit and corporate providers.

The Ombudsman's investigation  found that residents have been physically and sexually assaulted by staff and other residents, have died in appalling circumstances, and been denied basic rights, including contact with their families. This is the fourth report in less than 10 years on the failure of the state and the for profit providers to protect boarding house residents, in particular those with psychological and intellectual disabilities.

 Adele Horin's report in the Sydney Morning Herald  describes the conditions:

An estimated 455 private boarding houses operate in NSW with more than 5000 residents, most of them poor and vulnerable. They pay the proprietor 75 per cent to 100 per cent of their pension. Thirty-one of the boarding houses are licensed by the government to accommodate 687 residents with mental illness and/or intellectual disabilities. They must comply with conditions set out in legislation.

The report, More than board and lodging: the need for boarding house reform, shows the level of care for boarding house residents is inferior to that received by people with similar conditions in housing run or funded by the government.

For example, in 2008, a resident was found 12 hours after he had died in a room strewn with faeces and toilet paper. Three months earlier, hospital staff had raised concerns about his hygiene and nutrition. Around the time of his death, the department had assured the Ombudsman of its initiatives to improve monitoring and compliance at the boarding house. The boarding house eventually closed due to ''unrelated factors''.
Another case involved two residents aged over 80 with schizophrenia, who lived in a licensed boarding house despite having been assessed as needing nursing home care.

Jan Daisley, president of People with Disability Australia, said: "It is abhorrent that people with disability are left to deteriorate and die in these places while all along paying up to 100 per cent of their income to live in this form of housing''.

The Ombudsman, Bruce Barbour, noted the good work of some proprietors but said resident welfare should not depend on the ''goodwill and favour of individual proprietors.''

 Dr Gabrielle Drake, a researcher and lecturer from the UWS School of Social Sciences who completed a PhD study in 2010 on the deinstitutionalisation of boarding houses for people with mental illness and disability. has long called for the closure of the boarding houses.

Dr Drake says many of the current licensed boarding houses came about as a part of the poorly resourced and poorly coordinated deinstitutionalisation process.

"The result of this process is that people use the majority of their pension to live in boarding houses which are located in the community, yet they still have restricted access to that community and are still denied their right to self-determination," says Dr Drake.

"These homes are effectively still institutions, where the residents must conform to structured meal times, closed kitchens, and a lack of coordinated health care and planning. Too many also experience abuse, sexual assault, fear and intimidation."

Dr Drake says licensed boarding houses are an archaic approach to service provision for people with a mental illness and disability.

"The Ombudsman's Report clearly indicates that the NSW Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care's (ADHC) procedure for monitoring the conditions in boarding houses has been unacceptable," she says.

"While I support legislative reform and the need for a cross-agency and partnership approach, at the heart of this debate needs to be the realisation that people with disability have the right to live and participate in the community in non-congregate accommodation."

The gap between Government rhetoric about civil society and the reality

The UK Cameron Coalition Government has made all sorts of policy statements about the importance of civil society and the NFP sector in contributing to the "Big Society", but the sector is being devastated by funding cuts and the privatization and outsourcing of human services and public services to corporations.

A new report publicized in the UK Independent shows that not for profits and charities are set to lose 3 billion pounds in public funding over the next 5 years.

This comes on top of research by False Economy UK, which used freedom of information requests to show that 2,000 charities in England have suffered funding cuts this year and these cuts represent just a small amount of the agencies facing funding cuts.

The gap between the rhetoric of Governments about the importance of the not- for- profit sector and civil society and the reality has never been starker and should serve as a caution to NFP's here in Australia. 

The Independent reports:

"Britain's voluntary organisations face losing almost £3bn in funding over the next five years, according to the first comprehensive report to analyse the coming impact of spending cuts on the public sector.

In a blow to David Cameron's much-trumpeted "Big Society", charities across the UK face the prospect of their funds dropping by £911m a year by 2016, and losing £2.8bn in total over the next five years, according to research by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) published today.

The six-month study, which looked at how cuts to central and local government over the next half decade will hit the voluntary sector, predicts that charities will lose 7.7 per cent of their current public funds by 2016 if government departments pass on their cuts proportionately. Currently, central and local government together contribute at least £11.8bn to charities each year".

Environmental activist faces 10 years in jail for civil disobedience

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I think the opportunity that's here is to build a real resistance movement -- not just a lobby movement, but a resistance movement, that says this path that we're on is absolutely unacceptable, and we're going to use our power as citizens and as a movement to shut this system. I think that's where we need to be right now, recognizing that this is not a matter of lobbying for trivial reforms, but we're at a point where we need to make the path we're on absolutely impossible to continue. Hopefully that's the lesson that people are taking out of this.
Tim DeChristopher

Student and activist Tim DeChristopher found a way to resist corporate power and fight against the damage caused by US oil and gas corporations. But it may cost him a long prison term.

On June 23 the environmental activist and campaigner  will find out whether he will spend the next ten years in a US Federal Prison for an act of civil disobedience against the oil and gas industry.

His case is being seen as yet another example of the serious assault on public protest and dissent that is occurring around the world, whereby governments and corporations are increasingly using whatever means possible, such as anti- terrorist legislation, increased police powers, direct restrictions on public protest, SLAPP suits and arbitrary detention, to prevent and limit the right to protest.

In December 2008 DeChristopher participated in an oil and gas auction of 150,000 acres of public land in Southern Utah. Sale of the land had been fast tracked in the last days of the Bush administration to benefit the fossil fuel industry. It was a last minute land grab authorized in the last days of the Bush administration.

DeChristopher was outraged by the illegality of the land grab and the fact that leases were being handed out in an irregular way. He was also outraged about the ways that the oil and gas companies privatized all their profits and externalized all their costs. His argument was that the oil and gas companies had no intention to pay the full costs of their operations which are offloaded to the public :

"Well, I saw this auction as, first off, a fraud against the American people, that the government wasn’t following their own rules and was locking the public out of the decision-making process for public property. I also saw it as a real threat to my future, because of the impact on climate change that this kind of “drill now, think later” mentality was having, and an attack on our public lands, on our natural heritage, in pretty pristine and irreplaceable areas in southern Utah".

DeChristopher successfully bought (without any money or intention to pay) 22,000 acres of the land in order to save it from fossil fuel extraction. De Christopher had originally attended the auction to protest without any intention of bidding for the land. However, upon entry to the auction he was asked if he intended to be a bidder to which he replied "yes" and he became Bidder No 70. DeChristopher then proceeded to bid and successfully secured 13 leases, thereby disrupting the sale.

De Christopher actually raised the money to buy the land but he was still charged with fraud because at the time of the auction he had no intention to pay. However, that fact and many other issues were not allowed to be introduced into the trial.

In March 2011 he was convicted of fraud and faces a 10 year jail term and $750,000 fine imposed by the Obama administration.

As Tim De Christopher points out his case was prosecuted to scare off others who might consider civil disobedience.

"I was born the year that Ronald Reagan took office. The reality throughout my lifetime has been, corporations and governments are powerful, and people are weak, and there is nothing you can do to change that. Now that paradigm is starting to shift, and all of a sudden, the world is starting to believe in people power again"

Various web sites have been set up to publicize DeChristopher's case (Bidder 70) and  The Trial of Tim DeChristopher and a Facebook site allows you to follow the case. Interviews and stories about DeChristopher can be read here, here, here, here, here and here.

The history of civil society in WA: PhD on the history of the WA forest protest movement

Reading a PhD thesis is not something you do for fun.

But Ron Chapman's PhD Fighting for the Forests: A History of the WA Forest Protest Movement 1895-2001 is an important document of WA  history.

I have long argued that  protest action by ordinary West Australian citizens, in the form of social movements and civil society action, has been at the forefront of most significant social, political, economic and environmental change in this state. This is not reflected in traditional narratives about Western Australian history which largely marginalize or trivialize the action taken by WA citizens fighting for social, economic, racial and environmental justice.

So I was excited to read Chapman's thesis which shows that forest protest has been a major force for environmental and political reform throughout WA history.

Chapman shows how over time small scale protest activity by citizens was transformed into a social movement that had a significant influence on forest policy and practice, culminating in the defeat of the Court Government in 2001 and the adoption of policy by the Gallop Government to protect WA forests

Chapman describes the diversity of protest activities used by WA civil society groups to focus public attention on forest issues and pressure the WA Government to change its forest policies and practices. He shows how protest groups had to constantly adapt organization and strategies to the changing social and political conditions.

Chapman's analyses the campaigns and strategies used by West Australian citizens and civil society groups from 1995 to 2001. He distinguishes a number of distinct periods, firstly from the late 19th century to 1950, and then a second period from 1950 to 2001, characterized by 5 distinct phases:

1. Formative phase from the 1950's-60's which saved urban bushland.
2. Transitional phase during the 1970's which adopted assertive forms of protest.
3. Collaborative phase during the 1980's when campaigners began to collaborate with and influence political parties.
4. Expansionary phase during the 1990's which saw the spread of local protest groups in the South west.
5. Confrontational phase which involved an intensive campaign of confrontational and direct action.

Chapman's research demonstrate the importance of "localism" as an activist and organizing strategy. Chapman shows how the WA native forest protest movement established a network of urban and south-west activist groups which encouraged broad public support.

The eventual success of the forest protest movement resulted from the rise of these organized and effective local groups and campaigns focused on public education, media exposure and local action. The transformation of local action into an influential social movement played a significant role in bringing down a government and protecting  WA forests.

"Counterfeit" communties and the commodification of community

The adverts appear everywhere. Developers adverting their ritzy housing estates claiming that they don't build houses, they build communities. And property developers employ community development specialists to create "communities" in order to sell more houses at higher prices.

And then there are the Government departments and NGO's who describe their top down efforts to impose solutions on people to achieve already defined outcomes  as "community development".

Frankly it is all an illusion.

It is as Australian blogger and writer Bruce Watson rightly points out the commodification of community-  the turning of a complex human and social institution into a commodity that can be exploited for profit and political gain. Watson reminds us that most of what takes place under the banner of "community" has become clouded and easily manipulated for commodification and marketing.

John Freie and  Bruce Watson call it "counterfeit communities" and it is a good description. In counterfeit communities it is less important that communities exist in reality. It is the appearance of community that is important. People are encouraged to see the manifestations and spirit of community without accepting the complex interactions that must occur for it to be realized. As Wilson writes:

"Community has regrettably become a product to be advertised, marketed and sold. It makes no difference whether genuine community exists or not. As long as it appears to exist. Consequently, we are subjected to planned communities that are advertised as “truly a special place”, “we’ve made the dream a reality” and “the tasteful community you deserve” with a “neighbourhood bar and grill” (in the multi-story shopping centre complex)"

As Watson points counterfeit communities, despite all the glossy brochures, promises and hyperbole, are inherently hollow and exploitative. They are never fully satisfying.

And Wilson gets to the nub of counterfeit community:

"Counterfeit community extends the power and expands the wealth of those who create it".