New Start, 10 October 2007.
Single group funding to continue, minister tells integration chief
Ministers have distanced themselves from proposals that could have starved many black and ethnic minority groups of grant funding.
Earlier this year the Commission on Integration and Cohesion called on local authorities to stop targeting funds towards organisations that represented only one community or interest group.
Instead grants should be used to foster links between communities (New Start, 22 June).
But communities secretary Hazel Blears has now said that while public bodies should focus on promoting integration, there is still a case for funding specialist organisations.
In a letter to commission chair Darra Singh, she said funding should balance ‘bridging’ between communities with the need to promote ‘bonding’ within them.
‘New migrant groups, for example, may find the support of other new migrants essential to acclimatising to their life in the UK.
Women within particular communities may need safe spaces to provide support for issues such as domestic violence and healthcare.
And organisations organised around one particular identity may still provide activities for many communities and groups.’
She said the government was ‘primarily interested in the activities being funded rather than the groups delivering them’, and added that single-community groups had ‘often been at the heart of social change’.
Arjumand Kazmi, head of policy at Voice4Change England, which represents black and ethnic minority voluntary groups, welcomed the government’s rejection of the proposals on ‘single group funding’ – a term she said should now be discarded.
‘We’re very pleased to see the recognition of minority groups as agents of social change, and that therefore the government wants to continue to support excluded and marginalised communities.’
But she stressed local authorities must now fully involve BME groups in drawing up cohesion strategies.
Kevin Curley, chief executive of the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action, said Ms Blears’ letter was ‘a significant shift from what the commission was saying’.
‘We’re clearly pleased that the idea of single group funding as the exception rather than the rule has been formally ditched.’
Ms Blears said the government would invest £50m over the next three years to promote community cohesion.