• Fair Shares in Gloucestershire - Martin Simon•
This paper will provide an analysis of a new method for generating informal community based support systems for individuals and families at risk of long term dependency on welfare services and state benefits. The method has been defined as "time dollars" in the USA and approximates to goodwill barter economies found in many different social settings. Potential areas for applying this approach include:-
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welfare into work |
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community care |
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health promotion |
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youth justice |
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affordable housing |
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quality child care. |
Starting from the premise that people and neighbourhoods have capacities as well as needs, incentives are created to enable people to redefine themselves as assets and co-producers of the improvements that any community and self development programmes set out to achieve. Networks of mutual trust and sharing evolve, and community service is linked with upward mobility.
According to "supply-side" economists there is no such thing as society. In such a world view it is acceptable for more people than ever before to acquire millionaire status whilst the main political debate stays focused on how best to reduce the drain on the economy caused by caring for the elderly, investing in young people or recognising the special needs of single parents.
If you treat people living on state benefits for years as "takers", intent on manipulating the system for their own ends, do not be surprised if they view new initiatives like Care in the Community and Welfare into Work with a profound scepticism. We all know that the income from taxes can never meet the actual costs of such programmes, yet legislators continue with their tough talk, underpinning any welfare reforms with sanctions and penalties for those participants who might fail to be motivated by the programmes on offer. The rest of us, on the other hand, recognise that we are best motivated by incentives and other tangible rewards. Are we all conspirators in some sort of cruel welfare game?
| We pretend to provide for you from cradle to grave, knowing that we can't ever pay for it and you pretend to look for work that doesn't exist, because in a "free market economy" there has to be losers so that most of us can win. |
Hope is the best motivator and we all need incentives.
It is also best if individuals define their own incentive systems, rather than have them imposed by the State. In Fair Shares schemes people, in essence, choose and implement their own welfare systems through a process of voluntary social exchange, one hour at a time.
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WARNING
Continuous and excessive use of this product could render a permanent state of indifference to the welfare of those around you. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK |
The "non market economy" of family and community is under threat. The motivation to co-operate and strengthen the fabric of family and community is being eroded by the more immediate personal rewards and the distractions obtainable through competition and greed.
Money was invented, in part, to make it possible for strangers to carry out transactions without the need to trust each. Cash transactions are one off exchanges without any personal investment in the well-being of the other party.
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Are our minds now so set that we believe that we cannot do anything without money? |
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Are we in danger of leaving something behind in our rush for prosperity, something too valuable to lose? |
It is the fear that we will not have enough of this product called money that sets us in competition with those around us. We could grow more than enough food to feed everybody and there is plenty of work that needs to be done. What is missing is the cash to pay for it all. But this scarcity is a completely artificial consequence of the type of money we have created!
| "We assert
that human beings have the power and the inherent right to declare what
is value, to affirm that value, to validate it and give it an external
reality called purchasing power that we ourselves can validate simply
by honouring."
Edgar Cahn |
The "free market economy" has now infiltrated the provision of most of our social welfare services. Any one service will expand, be seen as relevant and attract funding in direct relation to the number of people found to be in need of that service. This invites the provider to find more and more people in "need" of the service.
| "The result
is a belief that the malady is in the person and the cure is achieved
by professional intrusion into that person."
John McKnight |
Rather, we need to work together on changing self-defeating behaviour and redefine ourselves as assets, each and every one with something special to contribute.
Whether the aim is the growth of awareness within an individual or the overcoming of inequalities or breakdown within a community, without the active participation of the "client" or the "at risk population" we are unlikely to bring about any long term positive changes. The challenge is always to find ways of motivating people to get involved. To find ways in which the "recipient" can play a part in their own recovery and in so doing become a model for others.
| We come into this world alone and we leave alone, the time in-between is for sharing. |
I remember a period of my life when I lived in rural mid Wales and would not think twice about calling on a neighbour if I needed help. I knew that my credit worthiness as a neighbour would be remembered because it had been "banked" over the years by my willingness to lend a hand to neighbours when they had needed it. That was fifteen years ago and I have moved home four times since then. Nowadays it is not such a simple matter to ask for help from my neighbours. The complex life styles of today make it harder to relate to others in the neighbourhood, to help them and to accept help from them. Simple neighbourliness can even be seen as an invasion of privacy.
Only through people working together can we produce the safety, the concern and the interconnectedness that we all need. The fundamental operating system of society, family, neighbourliness and community has broken down in many areas. Fair Shares offers a mechanism to rebuild community, one hour at a time. They reward decency and acts of human kindness as automatically as the market rewards competition and greed.
| "The oxygen of psychological
life is to be found in an affirming, supportive and validating milieu
and the need for such an atmosphere exists from birth to death."
Heinz Kohut |
In the USA, over the past ten years, a movement has been growing that reminds us of the origins of community. Derived from the Latin words cum, which means together or among each other, and munus, which means gift, the word community literally means to give among each other.
Time Dollars or Service Credits provide the discrete building blocks upon which we can relearn to "give among each other".
| "It is not just a
matter of converting time into dollars, it's really a matter of converting
strangers into friends and neighbours into extended family, of rebuilding
community."
Edgar Cahn |
In May 1997 I was privileged to attend the first Annual Time Dollar Congress in Portland organised by the Maine Time Dollar Network and the Time Dollar Institute in Washington DC.
There are over two hundred Time Dollar/Service Credit programmes in the USA, one in Japan and interest in the potential from all over the world. At the time of writing no programmes exist in the UK.
The concept of Time Dollars has evolved from the vision of Edgar Cahn, a civil rights lawyer, and has been championed the last ten years by Ralph Naeder, the consumer rights campaigner.
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Time Dollars/Service Credits operate as a type of service barter, matching needs with resources already present in the community. |
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For every hour spent helping someone else members earn one Time Dollar/one Service Credit. |
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The computerised record of each transaction keeps a tally on the credits earned and acts as a sort of collective memory, (much as that which used to exist in local neighbourhoods and reinforced the ethos "what goes around comes around"). |
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It does not matter what the nature of the service is, one hour is always valued at one time dollar/one service credit. |
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When a member or one of her/his family needs help they can cash in some Time Dollars/Service Credits and receive help from another member of the network. |
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The only debt incurred by the recipient of a service is the obligation that she/he will in turn help others. |
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Time Dollars/Service Credits also function as a kind of letter of introduction, an acceptable framework within which strangers on the same street may meet and help each other freed from the risks of unsolicited "intimacy" or from the fear of having their motives misunderstood. |
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A recent development on some Time Dollar/Service Credit programmes has been the facility to exchange credits earned for discounts at local stores, donated goods and concessions or complimentary access to local events. |
Unlike LETS, a close relation, Time Dollars/Service Credits are backed by a purely moral obligation, they do not involve any commercial transactions and avoid any form of pricing system.
ONE HOUR = ONE CREDIT
As such the exchanges are non taxable and do not put any state benefits in jeopardy.
It is a very simple but powerful idea that gives people the chance to earn time while spending time helping others. As in the "market" this new currency links supply with demand, the difference being that it activates the supply that the market rejects, unwaged people, and the demands that the market ignores, their human needs.
The beauty of the system is that it has an inner growth dynamic and there is no fear of the scarcity that creates greed and hoarding. The more activity there is, the more exchanges increase, so too does the social capital. (Just like the G.D.P.). Time Dollars become worth more the more you spend them!
Anyone involved in voluntary work in this country will be the amazed to learn that Time Dollar Schemes such as the Friend to Friend Scheme in Miami boast a drop out rate of volunteers of less than 5%.
To summarise, Time Dollar/Service Credit programmes validate and record a network of favours exchanged between members of a community and reward decency and human kindness. People re-experience the joy of association and regain the personal satisfaction that we all feel from being useful, from being needed. Participants in the current schemes report that the hours/credits that they build up in their Time Dollars/Service Credits accounts do take on a significance all of their own, people feel their efforts are appreciated and valued. New friendships grow and safe networks develop. People begin to trust each other more, to rebuild informal support systems, to reinforce their work ethic and strengthen community.
"Once upon a time there was a land where everyone was very happy. Each person was born with a magic bag which contained an endless supply of warm fuzzies. When these were handed out to other people, they were like the touch of a small child's hand - so that people felt warmth and caring whenever they received a fuzzy. And because the bags were magic, everyone could ask for and get as many warm fuzzies as they wanted.
One day a wicked witch arrived and started a rumour that there would not always be enough fuzzies in the bags. (The witch wanted to sell potions that bring happiness so the free fuzzy supplies were very bad for business.) People started to hold their fuzzies back in case the rumour was true, so just as in the financial markets they ended up causing it to become true.
Now the land was not so happy. People gave out fuzzies only sparingly, and even then they wanted one in return each time. Someone invented cold pricklies, which stimulated unpleasant feelings but at least reminded people that they were alive. The wicked witch made a lot of money selling misery cures.
Eventually a wise traveller came along, saw what had happened and told people that the bags WERE magic and that the more warm fuzzies they gave out, the more would be generated. Some people started to believe the traveller and began to give out more fuzzies. We are now waiting to see them succeed in changing the fuzzy giving pattern for the better".
Julie Hay (after Claude Steiner)
It is unnecessarily constricting to define Time Dollars/Service Credits in terms of projects or programmes. They act to "shape" programmes and are best viewed as a means to a fundamentally new operating system for society. I have set out below brief details of the type of work in progress in the USA.
Assumption :- Human contact and laughter help more than anything else in preventing depression. People who feel good about themselves are more likely to resist disease. People who volunteer in their local community live longer.
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Peer counselling for and by older people in the community. Older people prefer to be counselled by peers. Training programmes in reflective listening, mentoring and basic counselling available in the community. |
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Intergenerational practical support and caring including shopping for the housebound, telephone reassurance, respite care, minor home repairs, and transport. |
Assumption :- In order to move from dependency to self sufficiency people need incentives to believe in and invest in the future in a meaningful way.
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Community employment agency to help pre-employment skills and work habits, to increase access to employment, to enhance work readiness and to build informal support systems. First neighbour to neighbour tasks, then community service and community building projects and eventually resident owned and managed enterprises. |
Assumption :- The best way to learn anything is to teach it.
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Cross-age peer tutoring programmes in schools where seventh and eighth graders, under the direction of site co-ordinators, tutor fourth and fifth graders who in turn tutor first and second graders. Students earn time dollars while they tutor, learn and mentor and can exchange them for computers and modems (which are donated from commerce), with access to a community network and to the Internet. |
Assumption :- People with a life time of experience are being discounted.
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Home based child care franchise which charges a Time Dollar child development fee and uses grandmothers and mothers receiving state benefits as indigenous child development specialists to deliver high quality child care at an affordable price. |
Assumption :- Peer approval/disapproval influences the actions of young offenders and community affirmation can help overcome disaffection.
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Youth courts in which first-time offenders appear before a jury of their peers who are trained to assist offenders reflect upon the poor choices that gave rise to their arrest. Community service, restitution and other civic duties feature heavily in the sentencing. Time Dollars earned can be exchanged for recycled computers or preferential access to summer jobs. |
Assumption :- The more voluntary activity in a neighbourhood the less crime.
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Two tier mortgages containing an agreement to pay a proportion of the debt in Time Dollars/Service Credits earned helping to build community. |
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Community policing/Victim support/Neighbourhood watch. |
Cash starved welfare agencies at present offering a free or subsidised service could consider charging a notional fee to be paid in Time Dollars/Service Credits. This would transform the helping relationship by giving a very clear message that the agency believes that everyone has something of value to give to others. By so enlisting "users" in a mutual aid network the agency will mobilise the local resources that users (co-producers) so often need. Co-production is the essential contribution to change efforts needed from the ultimate consumer and triggers new behaviours that alter conventional distinctions between professionals and clients, providers and recipients, givers and takers, haves and have nots.
Excellent computer software is now available within the Time Dollar Network in the USA which assists workers to put individuals in need in touch with appropriate other local people. The information fed into the system is, however, primarily task oriented. Relationships, on the other hand, are emotional concerns involving internal beliefs and compulsions.
Modern industry and the caring professions, among many others, are fully aware of the value to staff of learning better interpersonal skills and how to manage these in groups. It would be extremely beneficial to make such training an integral part of Time Dollar/Service Credit programmes.
The concept is not new, Marie Langer was engaged early this century in demystifying therapeutic methods and spreading them out into communities that were not accustomed to think radically or psychotherapeutically.
When Time Dollar/Service Credit type work begins in the UK it would be advantageous, therefore, to explore ways of building into the matching process and training programmes socio-psychological methods that could help to optimise people's abilities and willingness to be open and sharing.
| "We shall not cease
our exploration; And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive
where we started And know the place for the first time."
T.S. Eliot - Little Gidding |
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E-mail : venture.radical@uku.co.uk
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