UK: definition of social firm becomes more European

Social Firms UK has announced that the definition of ?Social Firms? should be expanded to be ?market-led businesses that are set up specifically to create employment for people disadvantaged in the labour market? rather than focusing only on creating employment for disabled people as it has previously done.

The decision has come after recent work carried out on developing a Social Firm quality mark challenged the parameters of this limited focus of the original Social Firm definition.

Social Firms UK Chief Executive, Sally Reynolds, explains: ?When Social Firms UK started in 1999 our definition of Social Firms did include the employment of disadvantaged people. However, we soon decided to focus just on disabled people as the emergence of the broader social enterprise sector led us to think we might have been overlapping unnecessarily with other types of social enterprise. This never happened and in many cases the Social Firm model has been increasingly used to create employment for those furthest from the labour market, particularly homeless people, ex-offenders and those with substance misuse issues. Because of this, we have come under increasing criticism from our own members for being too precious about the restriction to disability only. The Social Firm model is really about labour market integration of excluded groups through enterprise and by broadening the definition we believe even more people will benefit from our work and resources.”

The next challenge for Social Firms UK is to clearly define what it means by ?people disadvantaged in the labour market?, and to map the sector based on this broader definition. Both these tasks will be tackled in 2007. In other European countries the term ?disadvantaged? is already used for Social Firms so the move in the UK will make the European perspective more consistent than previously.

www.socialfirms.co.uk