Mapping Social Enterprise in the Tees Valley
Professor Tony Chapman, Professor Ted Fuller (Teesside University Business School), Paul Keenan, Meryl Dodd (Actif Solutions) and Deborah Forbes (Teesside University Business School)
Sponsor/collaborating institutions
Business Link Tees Valley.
Background
Social Enterprise is a key feature of government strategy to address social exclusion: increase the productivity in the provision of some areas of public service and foster a culture of grass roots and community engagement in regeneration. Enterprises with social goals are very diverse in both the scope of their work and in their size. The numbers of these enterprises, and their scope, is growing nationally in political and social importance and in terms of the economic and social benefits created. But there is very little known about the extent of social enterprise in the Tees Valley.
As the government recognises in Social Enterprise: a strategy for success (2002), there is a need to increase knowledge about the size, spread and strength of the sector at local level. There is also a need to develop the capabilities of social enterprises, in terms of their business or enterprise skills, to enable them to ‘move away from grant dependency’. In this respect, a growing number of organisations are emerging to fulfil that ‘business’ support role.
Aims
- To arrive at a working definition of social enterprise.
- To outline a strategy to map individual social and community enterprises in the Tees Valley sub-region (comprising Darlington,
- Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees and Redcar and Cleveland Unitary Authorities).
- To assess the sources and extent of support for social enterprises in the Tees Valley sub region.
- To assess the extent to which support organisations have a clear understanding of the diverse nature of the social enterprise sector and are able to tailor services to meet the requirements of different enterprise types.
- To evaluate the match between the values of support organisations in the sub region with the needs of social enterprises.
Methods
- To produce a questionnaire to examine the extent and scope of practice in Tees Valley social enterprise.
- To map social enterprise in the Tees Valley.
- To map the extent of support to social enterprise in the Tees Valley.
- To generate policy papers which will provide a basis for the agreement of a social enterprise strategy for the Tees Valley.
