Susan Smith argues that the third sector should stay optimistic despite the challenges it faces to support the poorest members of society
It’s not perhaps the most revolutionary revelation that cuts to public services are affecting the poorest people the most. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth pointing out.
The pages of TFN sometimes feel like a catalogue of social injustices perpetrated on the most vulnerable. Cuts to public services, cuts to benefits, cuts to funding for voluntary organisations, sanctions and the subsequent increase in foodbank dependency, and discrimination against disabled people at work are just a few issues that have cropped up this week. From a third sector perspective it can feel like an overwhelming battle with little hope of victory.
Hope lies in the community and voluntary sector services that often through simple and inexpensive ways can turn people’s lives around
However, the average TFN reader is a more enlightened being than many of their neighbours. While the mainstream media (and some if its readers) denigrates poor people as benefit scroungers, unaccompanied refugee children as con artists, and charities as rip-off merchants, TFN readers know that social injustice doesn’t improve society. They have often witnessed first hand the impact of joblessness and the hopelessness that benefit cuts breed.
It’s hard not to get caught up in the public mood and even TFN readers may occasionally incline towards categorising the poor as deserving or undeserving.
It is therefore important that information such as this report from Glasgow and Heriot-Watt universities and the Scottish Parliament Information Service remind us that poverty is still a problem in our society, that generational cycles of inequality are commonplace in some areas, and that charities are a vital resource to improve lives.
TFN readers also know that it’s not all doom and gloom. There is hope in the community and voluntary sector services that through simple and inexpensive ways are turning people’s lives around, providing comfort at times of need and creating confidence, skills and resilience across the country. That’s what give us the energy to plod on up the hill to a more equal society.
Susan Smith is editor of Third Force News.
