An Interview with Gaba Smolinska-Poffley of the Roma Support Group about their experience of challenging funding cuts:
Edited transcript
We were set up 13 years ago to support Roma people from Eastern Europe with very practical things like welfare, employment and accessing health. We also run activities like football, karate and arts activities for young people, as well as education projects.
Our community has been marginalised and excluded for many decades and centuries. Many Roma children in Eastern Europe have been let down by education so our education support project is very important.
We felt very upset when we learnt last year that our funding from London Councils might be cut. We didn’t feel that the consultation was fair so we approached solicitors we have worked with before and they felt there were grounds to challenge the consultation process.
We went to our management committee, members and service users and told them that our education support project might be cut. Some of the service users felt so strongly about it that they took London Councils to court – we couldn’t afford to do that as an organisation but individuals were able to get legal aid.
We wrote to London Councils about our concerns regarding the consultation process but they didn’t reply, so then we decided to challenge them.
People from different organisations in a similar position to us met and tried to work out what to do. We were the only ones willing to challenge the decision but 14 other organisations gave evidence to show that they felt the same way.
We were concerned that we would be perceived as troublemakers and that would put off other funders. We were also concerned about how much time the challenge took – we are a small organisation and it meant a lot of additional work for staff members. We are used to fighting for our clients so we felt we needed to make this challenge because the unfairness of the process was so clear. And because the management committee and our members supported us we were able to go through with the challenge.
In fact, rather than being seen as troublemakers, our standing went up. Many organisations write to us to thank us. London Councils had to repeat the consultation process and many organisation then kept their funding.
It was empowering for us; realising that if you do what you think is right, it is possible for a small organisation to challenge a big organisation.
