Should people 'pay back' for welfare?
Town & Country Planning,
April 2001
There's a very modern dilemma, and it's suddenly very common,
especially in these days when 'social inclusion' is high up the political
agenda. Many agencies face it in inner cities, and most of them either
fudge it or carry on arguing about it instead of doing the real work.
It goes like this. Should we charge socially-excluded clients for services?
On the face of it, the answer is obvious. Usually they have no disposable
income, so if you do charge - as the government is now planning to do
for the computers it was planning to give away to poorer families - they
won't take part.
But of course it's more complicated than that. Because if you give computers
or training or advice or even basic support services away for nothing,
then they will probably not be appreciated or valued. And unfortunately,
that's true both for the recipient and the professionals who do the giving.
We all know the shoddy service you get on free buses. It's the same with
welfare.
That's the dilemma that time banks and time dollars are trying to solve
on both sides of the Atlantic. The new time bank on the Angell Town estate
in Brixton will be charging for its refurbished computers in time credits,
paid off by helping out in the local neighbourhood.
I even know of a support programme in San Diego for women just released
from prison, many of them with serious addiction problems, which has decided
to charge for its services in time dollars. The result is that the programme
has more dignity, the clients appreciate it - and they discover that actually
they have something valuable to offer the community too.
But the best example I've come across recently is in the mountainous country
in the north of the Slovak Republic, around the city of Zilina (pronounced
Joanna, I believe) - where a major local after-school club for children
had exactly the same issue. Should they charge the parents for all the
activities their children were getting?
They solved the problem by charging the children instead - in time credits
- and by setting up six inter-linked children's time banks, run and managed
by children in and around the spa town of Rajecke Teplice.
"We were afraid that if the services were free, people wouldn't appreciate
them or feel they were important," says organiser Zuzana Polackova
of the local NGO Civic Association Culture. "But if we did charge
many of them wouldn't be able to afford it."
The result is a network of six time dollar programs known as Casova Banka
(time bank), with children aged between eight and sixteen acting as bankers
and as members of the bank committee. They take it very seriously, and
sign a contract before joining - and thei parents have to sign too.
It's all a bit of fun, but it works. The children pay off their time debt
- and earn more time credits to cash in for copies of their magazine,
and a range of other goodies too - by helping local disabled people, teaching
English or whatever needs doing locally.
There are now 150 members of the time banks, with - an unexpected bonus
- a list of over 200 adults who are so impressed with it that they want
to join themselves.
I was over there last month, speaking at a conference on time banks organised
by the British government's Knowhow Fund. And going through the usual
rather disconcerting experience of speaking through a simultaneous translator,
and realising that none of your usual stock of jokes raise even an eyebrow.
But I also realised the potential importance of this kind of idea in former
communist countries, where they still have a heavy suspicion of anything
that sounds like volunteering. For many people in Eastern Europe, voluntary
work smacked of the old days of the Iron Curtain and constant exhortations
from the party, when volunteering was compulsory.
This is the International Year of Volunteering, after all. We need to
worry about these matters.
There's a peculiar twist to the story of the children's time bank, with
its amazing Harry Potter-style cartoon instruction manuals, full of kings
and dragons all busily keeping the wheels of the community running by
exchanging time credits instead of cash.
As another bit of fun, the organisers entered the prestigious annual award
for personnel management, run by the Slovak institute of such things.
The award is coveted by all the top companies in the country, but they
seem to have pipped most of them at the post to make the shortlist of
four finalists.
It sounds like they have struck a blow for the emerging voluntary sector
in central Europe.
