BSSEC » Opinion

Social enterprise: all aboard — new think-piece from Hempsons & BSSEC

October 09, 2017

It’s always a pleasure when old friends stay in touch — even more when they contact you and say, “I’ve got a great idea for something we can write together to go up on your website,” which is what happened to me a week or two back. I was contacted by my o

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Birmingham voluntary sector mobilises against cuts to services for the most vulnerable

January 16, 2017

We wrote in this post about the PUBLIC CONSULTATION currently underway on Birmingham City Council’s proposed cuts to its Supporting People and Third Sector Grant Programmes. This would see cuts of £5m this year, rising to £10m in 2018/9. These reductions com

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Midland Mencap mass lobby against disability cuts

January 13, 2017

The further cuts proposed in Birmingham City Council’s 2017 budget — including cuts across all Supporting People services — will hit the most vulnerable groups in the city hard. St Basils has said, “We absolutely understand the extremely difficult decisions tha

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Keeping track of the quiet revolution in health — a free briefing paper

November 07, 2016

A week or two back we wrote at some length here about the publication of Birmingham and Solihull’s ‘STP’ — its NHS ‘Sustainability & Transformation Plan’. These are the new plans that all 44 NHS ‘footprints’ (i.e. areas) in the UK ha

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Is a ‘social value’ version of Uber possible?

October 31, 2016

The successful court case brought against Uber by two of its drivers, Yaseen Aslam and James Farrar, appears to have scuppered the US taxi-app company’s claim that drivers are self-employed. Employment tribunal judge Anthony Snelson was scathing in his judgement and the finding

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Business, academia, community finance — all mourn Sir Adrian Cadbury

September 08, 2015

The death of Sir Adrian Cadbury on the 3rd September 2015 aged 86 has just been announced. Sir Adrian was chairman of Cadbury and Cadbury Schweppes for over twenty-four years. But in his long and busy life of business, public service and civic activism he was also much more than this.

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Birmingham Changing Futures Together launches with call for more partners

June 25, 2015

by Sally Edwards

Big Lottery Fund, Birmingham Changing Futures Together, BVSC, Colonel Duck, Ian Cuthbert

The official launch of the £10m Birmingham Changing Futures Together project on Friday 19th June was an inspiring event. The eight year project, led by BVSC, has just reached the end of its first year and is aiming to find new and better ways to support people with multiple and compl

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NewStarts Bromsgrove secure future — with help from Charity Bank and Big Issue Invest

June 12, 2015

“People often turn to NewStarts at the point when they have exhausted all other avenues. For us, the reasons they find themselves in a difficult situation isn’t relevant; we will help them if we can.” — CEO Marion Kenyon, NewStarts Bromsgrove charity NewStarts, which pro

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Considering equality in Birmingham…

June 04, 2015

Equality and human rights charity brap has recently published an interesting report reviewing equalities practice — and progress — in Birmingham over the past thirty years. The culmination of a Barrow Cadbury Trust-funded project, From Benign Neglect to Citizen Khan will b

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SEUK to buy out SEWM

May 21, 2015

I suspect many will read with some sadness the report in Third Sector today that Social Enterprise West Midlands is to become a wholly-owned subsidiary of SEUK. Businesses — including social enterprises — sometimes have to do whatever is most likely to gu

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Social enterprise — stairway to heaven?

May 14, 2015

Today we have a guest article by our old colleague Simon Lee, who left Brum for the glamour and riches of London. Simon has written a paper in which he argues that in a climate of continuing public spending cuts, social enterprises will have to scale-up if they are to compete success

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Vulnerability360

February 18, 2015

Vulnerability360 is a new website and community of practice concerned with vulnerability in its broadest sense — of children, families, young people, marginalised groups or communities. The project is interested in making available unpublished research, guest blogs, opinion piec

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“Gerrymandering social enterprise”

January 14, 2015

There are people…who are trying ever so hard to ‘gerrymander’ the word Social – separate it from the word enterprise, better still kill it off altogether… There’s a very interesting and provocative piece over on the Can Cook — The Food Campaign blog about ̵

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Hurd quits in reshuffle with “love and respect” for sector “undimmed”

July 15, 2014

Nick Hurd, who served as minister for civil society for the coalition government’s first term of office, has fallen casualty to what some are calling Cameron’s “cull of the white males”, and others “getting rid of the old lags”. Third Sector refers

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Birmingham Commission for Children calls for views

May 30, 2014

The Children’s Society, in conjunction with the Birmingham Commission for Children has just circulated a call for views. This reads: The Birmingham Commission for Children is an independent group of experts brought together to explore children’s lives and well-being in the city

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Nice Site

April 25, 2013

by Charles Rapson

Well done Alun and your web designers for developing a very clear site. It makes me appreciate just how much information and resources you have produced over the past year or so. Very useful. WordPress is such a cool content management system to You might find the following widget us

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What can be done about the ‘shadow state’?

December 05, 2012

Further to this post on SEUK’s recent report, The Shadow State, there is an interesting article in the New Statesman online, in which journalist Alan White makes the case for buying local, buying social value, and buying social enterprise. It’s heartening to see the social

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Blears says social value act is “weak”

October 04, 2012

Further to this recent post on the Barrow Cadbury Trust-funded work we are embarked on jointly with Birmingham City Council to turn the Public Services (Social Value) Act into practical reality, I couldn’t help but pay particular attention to a story in today’s Third Secto

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Who ya gonna call?

September 21, 2012

Sadly (at least for someone of my generation) the answer is not “Ghostbusters”. Rather, this is just to draw to your attention to something reported in this morning’s Metro newspaper. This was that the first people in the queue for Apple’s new iphone were using

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#notinourname?

September 05, 2012

Recently, SEUK launched the #notinourname campaign to prevent software company Salesforce trademarking the term ‘social enterprise’. Salesforce wanted to use the term to identify businesses that use its social media software services and thus become “social” en

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BIRMINGHAM & SOLIHULL SOCIAL ECONOMY CONSORTIUM C.I.C., trading as BSSEC. A community interest company registered in England and Wales with company no. 07992674. Registered office: c/o Anthony Collins Solicitors LLP, 134 Edmund Street, Birmingham B3 2ES | All rights reserved | Copyright 2013-BSSEC | Created by Citizen Click