Leading Social Entrepreneur calls for new social contract not more cash to solve ‘child well-being’ crisis
15/02/07
- Investment will not see UK climb UNICEF’s league of shame
- The voluntary sector holds key to new social contract
- Expert Spokesperson Steve Chalke available for comment today
Responding to the findings of the UNICEF report into child well-being Rev. Steve Chalke, Founder of Oasis Trust said, “The
findings of the UNICEF report are an alarm call. It is time to wake up.
But the answer will not be yet another round of the investment into our
children and our poorest communities. Instead, we need to rethink our
whole approach. Just doing more of what we are already doing won’t
change anything. We need a new social contract”
“The
church, other faith organisations and the wider voluntary sector have a
key role to play in rethinking the way in which we provide everything
from our schools and hospitals to our GP clinics and children’s and
youth services. Though these have been regarded as core functions of
the state for the last half-century, new solutions are needed if we are
going to get ourselves off the bottom of UNICEF’s league of shame.”
Founder
of Oasis Trust, Chalke has plenty of experience in delivering a wide
spectrum of welfare services to vulnerable and excluded children and
communities both in the UK, as well as a number of other countries
around the world. Oasis is now also sponsoring five of the UK
government’s new academies.
A recent feature in The Guardian
Society claimed that when ‘politicians across the political spectrum
talk of faith organisations taking a bigger role in the delivery of
public services. What they have in mind is 'Steve Chalke’ It also said,
‘Oasis stands in the tradition of Christian social activism that played
such a central role in the delivery of essential services in the UK
before the development of the Welfare State.’ But Chalke suggested there was a problem in the setting up of the Welfare State,
“It
set up a division between government and citizenship that has led to
the decline of the public realm. Democracy used to be about
volunteering. Now it's only about voting. Everything was left to the
state. The church was made redundant, and left us singing and boring
ourselves to death. But the church is an agency of social activism.
Jesus was an activist before he was a preacher.”