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This article explores advocative work of third-sector community food providers in Scotland. The article argues these organisations can contribute to tackling household food insecurity through their advocative work, recognising that state-led policy on household income is needed. Capturing the advocacy of these organisations, rather than focussing solely on their service provision can provide insight that is largely missing from existing community food scholarships. The research adopts a quasi-ethnographic qualitative approach with 16 grassroots community food providers and 5 meso-level support organisations. The findings identify advocacy practices undertaken, targeted at political and public audiences and national and local institutional layers. It highlights the tensions of this work, including fears of exacerbating a failing system. The findings also evidence a complementary, symbiotic, and reciprocally strengthening relationship between service provision and advocacy by third-sector organisations. These contributions demonstrate the potential of this sector to contribute to social change required to address the root causes of household food insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The boundaries between state and charitable activities within the NHS are set out in regulations but are also enacted, blurred, and contested through local practices. This article reports research on NHS Charities– charitable funds set up within NHS organizations to enhance statutory provision – in Scotland. We analysed financial accounts and conducted qualitative interviews with staff in 12 of the 14 NHS Charities in Scotland, where they are generally known as endowments. Our findings suggest that Scotland's endowments are relatively wealthy in charitable terms, but that this wealth is unevenly distributed when population size and socio-economic deprivation are considered. We also identify two diverging organisational approaches to decisions, including those about appropriate and inappropriate fundraising. We argue that these approaches cohere with contrasting 'state' and 'charitable' institutional logics, which in turn imply different attitudes to potential inequalities, and to relationships with local publics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social prescribing schemes refer people toward personalized health/wellbeing interventions in local communities. Since schemes hold different representations of social prescribing, responses to the pandemic crisis will vary. Intersectionality states that social divisions build on one another, sustaining unequal health outcomes. We conducted and inductively analysed interviews with twenty-three professional and volunteer stakeholders across three social prescribing schemes in urban and rural Scotland at the start and end of year one of the pandemic. Concerns included identifying and digitally supporting disadvantaged and vulnerable individuals and reduced capacity statutory and third-sector services, obliging link workers to assume new practical and psychological responsibilities. Social prescribing services in Scotland, we argue, represent a collage of practices superimposed on a struggling healthcare system. Those in need of such services are unlikely to break through disadvantage whilst situated within a social texture wherein inequalities of education, health and environmental arrangements broadly intersect with one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social care services are increasingly provisioned in quasi-markets in which for-profit, public, and third sector providers compete for contracts. Existing research has investigated the implications of this development by analyzing ownership variation in latent outcomes such as quality, but little is known about whether ownership predicts variation in more concrete outcomes, such as violation types. To address this research gap, we coded publicly available inspection reports of social care providers regulated by the Care Inspectorate in Scotland and created a novel data set enabling analysis of ownership variation in violations of (a) regulations, and (b) national care standards over an entire inspection year (n = 4,178). Using negative binomial and logistic regression models, we find that for-profit providers are more likely to violate non-enforceable outcomes (national care standards) relative to other ownership types. We did not identify a statistically significant difference between for-profit and third sector providers with regard to enforceable outcomes (regulations). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Voluntary support organisations increasingly rely on non-state funding. • Offers a rich account of how managers navigate a difficult funding landscape. • Documents how managing care and support organisations is precarious. • Concludes that relationships with local authorities are crucial for sustainability. This paper examines voluntary sector care and support provision under a context of significantly reduced government funding. Whilst geographers have analysed the causes and aftermath of austerity on different populations, our focus is on how managers of voluntary sector organisations have had to learn and evolve through bidding for non -statutory funding to sustain their core provision. Drawing on research with voluntary support organisations in the learning disability social care sector in England and Scotland, the paper examines the effects of the state's continued reliance on the sector for core 'public' services whilst simultaneously withdrawing its funding. Using accounts from managers, the paper offers a particularly novel and potent example of voluntary sector precarity and the deepening unfinished and unsettled nature of care and support that has unfolded in the wake of austerity. Through the empirical research, attention is drawn to three levels of precarity that are experienced by those seeking to sustain voluntary support provision: voluntary sector organisation and structures, the voluntary sector workforce, and individual managers' everyday emotional and affective experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legal constitutions of community football clubs outline their responsibilities as an organisation, their aims for the sport, and their community and charitable works. While football clubs may recognise that they are part of the local football network, their connections to other sectors may be limited. As many community football clubs in Scotland are tackling social delivery, carrying out health initiatives and undertaking public asset transfers, this paper looks at one club and considers the available third sector support networks and Scottish intermediary organisations which could be offering support. The impact of managing clubs within the structure of third sector governance is considered as is the impact of long-term "partner trust". Consideration is also given to how clubs could reach out to the support bodies, how the third sector intermediaries could best position themselves to engage with clubs, and the role of the Scottish FA in supporting community partnerships. This study shows that a football club can be a valuable community anchor organisation and an important place for community development. It highlights the challenges around developing a partnership approach with key stakeholders to further develop social regeneration initiatives and a sense of place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The centrality of the third sector in the co-production of public services is seemingly based on the assumption that it can act as an effective proxy for service users. However, the third sector encompasses a broad range of organisational forms, interests and governance arrangements, which all have implications for the type and nature of relationships between the sector and its constituencies. Through analysis of empirical data drawn from research on a prominent co-production model in Scotland, we construct and present a typology of different approaches to service user involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-sector collaboration has been promoted by government policies in the United Kingdom and many western welfare states for decades. Literature on joint working has focused predominantly on the strategic level, neglecting the role of individual practitioners in putting 'joined-up working' into practice. This paper takes the case of 'social prescribing' in the west of Scotland as an instance of joined-up working, in which primary healthcare professionals are encouraged to refer patients to non-medical sources of support in the third sector. This study draws on social capital theory to analyse the quality of the relationships between primary healthcare professionals and third sector practitioners. Eighteen health professionals and 15 representatives of third sector organisations participated in a qualitative interview study. Significant barriers to collaborative working were evident. The two stakeholder groups expressed different understandings of health, with few primary healthcare professionals considering non-medical sources of support to be useful or relevant. Health professionals were mistrustful of unknown third sector organisations, and concerned about their accountability for referrals that were not successful or positive for the patient. Third sector practitioners sought to build trust through face-to-face interactions with health professionals. However, primary healthcare professionals and third sector practitioners were not connected in effective networks. We highlight the ongoing imbalance of power between primary healthcare professionals and third sector organisations. Strategic collaborations should be complemented by efforts to build shared understandings, trust and connections between the diverse front-line workers whose mutual co-operation is necessary to achieve effective joined-up working. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the importance of the community context for voluntarism within shifting discourses of localism in England and Scotland. Mobilising communities through the encouragement and support of voluntarism is an important policy and practice driver in both jurisdictions, but is non-reserved. In this context, we outline the ways localism discourses have been mobilised, drawing on case study research in deprived urban areas of Scotland and England to explore the implications of these for sustaining voluntarism. We argue it is important to recognise that the social, spatial and economic context in which voluntarism takes place is multi-layered: some acts are undertaken through an organisation, others may be part of one-to-one acts of helping, or through semi-formal or informal neighbourhood/community groups. If expectations of further voluntarism are to be realistic and sustainable, discourses of localism must support this at the local level and recognise the diverse range of both visible and less visible acts which take place over time. Otherwise unrealistic, unsustainable and ultimately unachievable models and amounts of voluntary participation may be asked of communities, posing serious challenges for 'localism' discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scotland's post-devolution government has implemented a number of policies engaging with the third sector. These sit within the UK context of New Labour's welfare reform with its twin emphases on neo-liberalism and neo-communitarianism. Moves by the Scottish Executive to translate these themes into the Scottish context are illustrated by policies on the relation between the state and third sector organizations, on the social economy, and on volunteering. However, as a case study of the sector in Glasgow demonstrates, significant challenges emerge for the realization of policy claims for the development of social capital and citizenship in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]