BUSINESS BIO

Where is the enterprise based? Service centres across England

Key business markets: health and social care

Annual turnover: £5.2 million

% of turnover, which is trading income (as opposed to grants): 65%

Number of employees: 140

www.speakingup.org

ambassadors

Craig Dearden-Phillips

Craig Dearden-Phillips
  • Speaking Up

  • 40

  • Chief executive

  • Cambridgeshire

Growth, profit and innovation have been key to the success of Speaking Up, a social enterprise set up by Craig Dearden-Phillips to give disabled people a voice.

People with mental health problems, learning or physical disabilities can be overshadowed in society, but with the help of Speaking Up, they can be empowered.

“We exist to enable people with mental health problems or disabilities to have a voice and be in control of their own lives,” says founder and Social Enterprise Ambassador Craig Dearden-Phillips, whose first taste of the sector was as a care worker.

“We’ve set up things like the Service User Parliament and have become one of the biggest and best advocacy providers in the UK.”

While the mission of Speaking Up has always been clear, the model used to deliver that mission has changed. Just over ten years ago, Speaking Up was a traditional voluntary organisation with a £500,000 turnover. It was reliant on grants for its income. Craig knew that the key to a successful future was to be found in moving away from the traditional charity approach.

Now, Speaking Up is a £5.5 million turnover social enterprise operating across England, and helping more than 4,000 people a year. It still attracts important streams of grant funding, but the larger part of its income is from contracts with both public and private sector organisations.

Services including support, planning, life coaching, user-representation and professional advocacy are delivered through contracts with local authorities, primary care trusts and private care homes, with funding also coming from the provision of training, consultancy and publications.

“We’re a business and we win and fulfil contracts, and we make a profit – that’s what transformed us,” says Craig. “We couldn’t live on grants and we were vulnerable as a charity. As a social enterprise we can deliver quality and keep growing.

They've been so innovative in creating a bespoke service, recruiting talented and committed advocates for vulnerable people in our new services.

We’ve already grown ten fold since 1994.”

Craig says it’s not just the business structure that has led to success, but also the “culture we have created”. “The ethos of the organisation means we are always working towards our social goals,” he says, “as well as that desire for growth and profit. Being profitable rather than just breaking even gives us more options. It helps us be more innovative.”

Innovation is one reason why Professor Philip Sugarman, CEO of the UK's largest mental health charity St Andrew's Healthcare, chose Speaking Up.

"We wanted to revolutionise our service user support. Craig and the team stood out, leading the field through sheer effectiveness," he says. "They've been so innovative in creating a bespoke service, recruiting talented and committed advocates for vulnerable people in our new services."

Part of that innovation is to grow through mergers, and Speaking Up is in the process of merger talks with another major advocacy organisation. Craig explains: “The recession is going to be tough on the public sector and we want to keep providing our quality services. Innovative ways of moving forward are needed,” he says.

“Social care is a huge opportunity. The private sector has, in many areas,  disgraced itself in the social care world, so social enterprise is the model to make a difference.”

Moving Speaking Up forward is not Craig’s only ambition. He is a regular columnist for national magazines and newspapers and has written a book on social business called Your Chance to Change the World. He is also on the investment committee of Futurebuilders, which offers loans to third sector organisations. And he’s recently been elected a Liberal Democrat councillor for Suffolk County Council, which he says is ‘making a difference at a grassroots level’.

Quick Facts

  • 27% of Speaking Up’s employees have either mental health problems or a disability.
  • 78% of the young people taking part in the Speaking Up Youth Parliament’s Activ8 project began to use community facilities like swimming pools, pubs and restaurants, and began to access community activities like those found at local sports clubs.
  • In 2007/08, Speaking Up provided 30 separate advocacy services stretching from Yorkshire to London; 98% of service users and 86% of professionals were satisfied with its advocacy services.
  • Speaking Up helps more than 4,000 people every year, and in 2007/08, the enterprise helped 2,593 people to speak up about an issue which was causing them difficulty.

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