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The Oasis Foundation – a new think tank associated with the Oasis charity and academy chain – recently launched with their inaugural report, Faith in Public Service.

The report argues that the aspirations of the Big Society remain largely unrealised. Power and budgets have not been sufficiently devolved, the voluntary sector still lacks the capacity to fulfil a more significant role, and local authorities have yet to grasp the opportunities of working with a more diverse range of providers.

Where do churches and other faith-based organisations fit? In spite of the above, the report argues that churches and church consortia are well positioned to do more – indeed they could play a “major role in the delivery of public services”. To get there, Oasis recommend that faith-based organisations continue to work to establish their inclusivity, build their infrastructure, and make the most of denominational assets through social investment funds. In the immediate term, they propose a commission to examine issues in greater depth.

For those familiar with the conversations that tend to happen around the ‘faith sector’ there’ll be nothing too surprising about either the diagnosis or the prescriptions, though we should be under no illusions about the ambitious nature of the goal.

What are the barriers to greater faith-based participation in public services? It seems that one may be public opinion. Oasis commissioned YouGov to carry out polling to the British public to accompany their analysis, which deserves more attention than it has so far received (in my humble opinion). The data are used to support the analysis at various points in the report. The Oasis Foundation kindly let me take a look at the full data, and YouGov have now made the results available online.

As with all polling, it only provides a snapshot, but it is a sobering one. It suggests that large proportions of the public do not have confidence in faith-based provision of social services. Can church groups be trusted to deliver crucial social provisions like education? 55% have not much or no confidence. What about healthcare services? 65% have little or no confidence.  The picture is better when it comes to ‘low level’ services such as foodbanks, debt-advice or youth work – 64% have a little or a lot of confidence. Even here, though, I would have hoped for more than 24% having ‘a lot of confidence’, since – at least when it comes to foodbanks – 99% are run by churches. Doesn’t that count as a proven track record?

Those that expressed little or no confidence were then asked why. YouGov polled six options: a lack of skills, training and/or expertise (58% agreed that this is the case), that these services should be provided by the state (49%), a lack of resources, money and/or infrastructure (48%), that it will be used as an opportunity to attempt to convert people (37%), that people of other religions will be excluded (27%), and that minority groups, such as LGBT people, will be excluded (26%). There are some interesting subplots in the data – those polled in Scotland, for instance, tended to be even more sceptical than the British sample as a whole, as did ABC1s as opposed to people in the C2DE socio-economic grades.

All in all, it's hardly a ringing endorsement of faith-based orgnanisations and there work. Here are three reasons why things might not be as bad as they seem. 

First, and depending on the kind of public service we’re talking about, the public seems to be underestimating the capacity and capability of faith-based providers, discounting examples of where they successfully provide services at scale. The Church of England runs something in the region of 5000 schools, and is the largest sponsor of academies in England. Oasis Community Learning itself operates nearly 50 academies. While there are arguments in principle against faith-based organisations providing education services, there’s no reason to doubt capability. Moreover, examples of successful service delivery could be cited in the fields beyond education. Alongside their longstanding work in the homelessness sector, the Salvation Army have managed supported services for victims of modern slavery in England and Wales since 2011. In that sense, and although it’s absolutely right to accept that the public as a whole is fairly dubious, it might just be that they've underestimated the abilities of at least some networks. 

Perhaps that’s related to a second point – that of those lacking confidence of faith-based welfare provision, around half (49%) saw government as the duty-bearer. For them, it is the state that should provide these services. This stands in stark contrast to what has been orthodoxy since well before anyone ever heard of the Big Society. Most politicians and policy-makers accept that corporate and voluntary sectors can provide a range of services as long as they are appropriately funded and regulated (in fact, in many cases – e.g., international development – governments have no choice but to turn to charities).

Third, those polled were more concerned overall about skills, capacity, funding and infrastructure than they were about issues around proselytism, discrimination against minority faiths and discrimination against people, for example the LGBT community. We should be under no illusions – these are still considerable barriers in public perception (though it is worth noting that those in the C2DE category are less concerned about some of these factors – and we know from other studies that people in this category are more likely to be using ‘low level’ services like foodbanks).

In other words, although there are clearly some specific concerns around faith-based provision being voiced, public scepticism here is rooted in a general anxiety about public services being passed to other agencies in general.

Of course, without comparison polling on perceptions of the voluntary sector, or indeed on big commercial providers such as G4S and Serco, it’s hard to know whether faith-based organisations are trusted more or less than other third party providers of public services. Nor can we know, on the basis of this polling, what kinds of assumptions would lay behind those concerns. Are people worried that uniformity and equity of service can be compromised when third parties are commissioned to deliver? Are they concerned that ‘diversification’ is ploy to avoid proper investment? Are they anxious about a lack of democratic accountability?

To hazard a guess, I think people have a healthy realism about delivery of public services. They know that running a school, still more a chain of schools, still more any kind of healthcare service, is extremely difficult. In which case, they may well prefer some ‘bog-standard comp’ that is nevertheless a known entity to a free school which may turn out to be an outstanding success or a painful failure. Additionally, they want to know what moves people to provide these services. Is it profit? Is it empire building? In this respect the state can be trusted even if it is not loved – it provides services because it has to.

Whatever, it seems to me that you have to persuade people that services can be delivered effectively by non-state agencies before you can hope to convince them that churches should have a part to play.

These are sobering figures, but if my interpretation is fair then things are not as bleak as they initially seem. The biggest barriers to greater faith-based provision of welfare services – in public perception at least – are practical rather than ideological. Therein lays a challenge, but also some encouragement.

Paul Bickley is Director of Political Programme at Theos

All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc.  Total sample size was 1,710 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 5th-6th April 2016.  The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+).

Data tables can be found here.  

Image from Pixabay under Creative Commons Public Domain.