Panel session

The panel session attracted much favourable comment from participants and most people wished that it could have been longer as the panellists had a great deal of experience and insight to share.

The purpose of the session was to enable the conference participants to engage with people who, between them, had a wide range of expertise and experience. We summarise a varied, fruitful and stimulating exchange of views and ideas.

The broad issue of engagement with Third Sector spans party political lines and there is broad agreement on the value of the Third Sector and the need to engage. The public sector and politicians can’t make the changes that are needed without the Third Sector. Politicians want to change society for the better, and for most this is their inspiration for entering public life.

Faith based groups connect the dots, but this, and all that they do is underpinned by their values and beliefs about how human beings should treat each other and the environment. Faith based organisations create cohesion and social capital in communities and this is why governments are interested in them.  For us, it’s part of our values and we should be working in partnership with them and others where we can.

What matters is people, partnerships and participation and also connections, communication and creativity. We need to speak out for people who are at the sharp end; to do this we need to listen to them and to people outside the faith sector.

One worrying factor is that support for the far right is growing – people from diverse faiths and cultures are seen as outsiders. Increasingly it is young people from disadvantaged white communities that are becoming disaffected. We need to reach out and have a debate with them. This will be tough and things will be said that we don’t agree with. The question for us is ‘what are we doing to build the confidence in our communities to engage with this?’ We need to move beyond our safe spaces to do this.

The values of faith groups are reflected in their interest in ethical investment. There is a larger proportion of faith people engaged in voluntary activity and they should not to be embarrassed about what motivates them. One of the problems is the prejudice of local authority officers. Faith communities have many assets for social action, notably, cash, land and volunteers. They are part of the Third Sector, which is the only sector that has free assets because it is largely self financing and in fact this gives it potentially great power for social change. If the faith sector could think about working together through their investments they would have the power to achieve significant change in society. Now is the right time to do this and take a lead.

There is no point in our organisations unless we can model different and moral ways of working. Now is the time when this is particularly important. The Development Trusts that are doing well have 2 main characteristics, firstly, a clear deeply felt social mission and secondly, a good quality business model. Faith based organisations can take this route, particularly in these challenging economic times. But, there is not enough connection between faith based groups and the other organisations in the wider Voluntary and Community Sector that can help them – we need to make better connections. Let’s step this up!

The transfer of community assets and land from public and local authorities to the Voluntary and Community Sector was discussed. There is much helpful information on this on the DTA website.

The relationships between different faith groups are getting stronger and it is important that we maintain this in good times as well as when we are challenged by adversity.

When many in the statutory sector encounter faith they see it, in terms of equality and diversity, as presenting a set of problems. This misses out the social capital argument. To get the best from the partnerships that we have been talking about, officials need to acquire a different set of reflexes when dealing with people of faith. To achieve this we need faith literacy, including understanding of values, and faith needs to be mainstreamed in the local authority agenda. Participants gave some positive examples of where this is happening including Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth and Pendle. They all demonstrate that, though this has taken a great deal of work and time to achieve, the end results more than justify the effort.