Development work as a growing occupation

We traced the history of development work in Chapter Three and in doing so noted the changing nature of this work in Britain and the developing world. As development work has become seen as the answer to a growing number of problems (of governance, economic development and social justice), so more and more practitioners have been drawn under its umbrella.

The number of front-line staff being paid to engage in work with British communities has increased significantly in recent years. Since 1997 a trickle of programmes to involve communities and service users has turned into a veritable flood of initiatives to promote participation, capacity building and partnership working. Precise job numbers are difficult to obtain, as this type of employment is something of a moving target in the current context, characterised by the increasing use of short-term contracts to work in time-limited projects. One recent UK-government supported survey carried out between 2001 and 2003 by the Community Development Foundation (CDF) and the Standing Conference on Community Development (SCCD) estimated that some 14,000 were employed by the beginning of the 21st century, compared with some 5,000 such staff in the 1980s (Glen et al, 2004). In contrast, the National Training Organisation PAULO put its estimate as high as 146,000. The majority of posts in the CDF/SCCD survey were dependent on central or local government funding, either directly or indirectly via special initiatives, although over half the staff were employed in the voluntary sector.

While welcoming this expansion of official support, the survey raised a number of concerns about the quality of jobs being created. Only just over half of the staff had permanent contracts, with some indication that there had been a decline in the proportion of permanent posts. The pay was modest and women were disproportionately likely to be among the lower paid in what was becoming an increasingly feminised workforce (around two thirds of the workforce was female compared with just over half in the mid-1980s). This casualisation – and the associated deterioration in professional conditions – was a cause for some concern. As a participant commented in one of the subsequent workshops, “initiatives come and go so quickly [it] undermines community confidence and community development is harder than ten years ago”.