IOU for CLD: and Wider Skills outcomes delivered by the Voluntary Sector?

When I say IOU I could mean invisible, overlooked and under-resourced, as well as note of record of debt owed for a long standing consumption of CLD outcomes generated for free/under priced to Scotland's skills stakeholders by volunteers and staff of the voluntary sector.

For me the IOU is one that's invisible and hard to cash at present. I hope the CLD independent review will be a catalyst to the reconstruction of the skills landscape and undertaking of a more robust analytical concept and definition for Voluntary Organisations contributions in this space, making them seen, valued and resourced.

In Science, invisibility is the state of an object that cannot be seen due to physical laws, in this context invisibility seems to be more a conscious choice than a reflection of science in terms of the profile of CLD and the voluntary sector in the current skills landscape.??

We seem to be as a sector amongst other things :?

• Culturally invisible here, not seen as having a place at the table not any profile for delivering the goods,??
• Operationally invisible as we don't get access to the funding yet deliver the outcomes and??
• Missing off the map or shall we say spatially invisible, as we are missing from the Skills landscape narrative, in any of last year's big "Skills landscape" reviews, we were missed off and we are barely mentioned in any of the 15 recommendations from Withers especially.??

Each of these facets or intersects (and there will be more than I've mentioned here) of invisibility in this policy area obscures the fact that CLD outcomes are delivered and therefore contributes to its economic devaluation and further invisibility of the sector and its delivery of national outcomes. For me as we do it anyway as a win-win in the unique delivery of a variety of preventative and multi-outcome services in the voluntary sector, further camouflaging our successes to funders and wider actors rendering this part of our success invisible and a free good to be consumed with cost or resourcing.

We need the Learning and development landscape in Scotland to change and refocus on valuing our sectoral visibility and means we can be recognised for our contributions and being included in major decision-making processes on this journey. This is alongside our views on other recent National Strategy for Economic Transformation (NSET) related topics such as the forthcoming CWB and Well-being Bills and the valuation of the Voluntary Sector and volunteers within our sector, which is less than high by others. For me, we need to lever our strengths and seek to change funding and resourcing and operational pathways, so that we can met the aims of our service provision and continue to give volunteers learning and development opportunities that are well-resourced for them personally but also enable them in a professional sense to give back to their communities building community wealth and wellbeing.?

I have real concerns for future generations of community based learners. We are under-resourced as a sector and almost invisible or taken for granted in the CLD and wider skills sector for the outcomes we deliver. The Scottish Parliament is expected to pass Community Wealth Building and Wellbeing/ Sustainable Development Bills over the next year session. In short, we delivered CLD and upskilling outcomes as a “free good” in past less stringent financial times, a by-product of funding our unique volunteer-led, preventative community-based services.

Therefore, other CLD and Skills landscape stakeholders could consume or relay on as much “free” quantity of upskilling by the voluntary sector across Scotland without at times a direct consumption cost, but those times have gone in light of reducing public budgets. However, as demand increases and we are forced by funders to focus on their visible outcomes of service, and not the invisible but welcomed by product skills outcomes this will have an increasing impact on the informal and invisible delivery of CLD and learning/upskilling outcomes in Scotland.

For within the voluntary sector taking away this wider focus, will have a real impact on the capacity to support the volunteer effort and associated upskilling outcomes for those community members. Volunteers don’t just train, upskill and supervise themselves but with less funding for services we will be faced with the choice of supporting community members learning aspirations and supporting community members with cost of living crisis. With either of these choices being a Catch 22 situation as both will result in reduced capacity in a time of ever increasing demand for essential community voluntary services.

This Catch 22 choice is something we need to discuss and make visible and the highlight that the days of upskilling provision as a free good or by product of delivering services in a much tighter fiscal environment of public sector service delivery budgets are gone.

Voluntary sector needs greater access and profile in these skills landscape funds and the one way we can increase visibility is by talking openly about it, as a why to remove the camouflage and I'm pleased the review has asked for views on visibility, so it no longer hides in plain sight and we can discuss how we repay or pay forward our debt to the voluntary sector's for their existing skills contribution in the future landscape of skills development in Scotland.