PRESIDENT MICHAEL D Higgins has criticised the use of expressions such as “service users” and “clients” to describe those who depend on the voluntary sector.
He told a conference on advocacy in Dublin yesterday that those in the voluntary sector should adopt a “language of the heart and not of the head” when referring to people who use their services.
There was not a substantial difference between the language of the State and that of the voluntary sector, Mr Higgins said.
He said he kept searching for the word “citizen”, but instead he encountered references to “service users” and “clients” and “client bases”.
“This sets off a certain alert in my own mind. Is the language doing the same damage in all of the sectors, and is it not one of the functions of critical thinking to try to find an appropriate language to deal with the purposes which one is pursuing?”
He believed there ought to be a “language of citizenship” rather than one of bureaucracy. “That in turn is based on a philosophical assumption about the worth of the person you are dealing with.”
Mr Higgins was speaking at the Advocacy Initiative’s first knowledge-exchange forum that was attended by people from about 100 charitable organisations.
The Advocacy Initiative is a project involving organisations such as The Wheel, St Vincent de Paul, Trócaire, the Irish Cancer Society and the Disability Federation of Ireland.
It was founded three years ago to promote social justice advocacy in Ireland and is funded by Atlantic Philanthropies.
The conference concentrated on how to pursue social justice advocacy during a recession.
Former minister Pat Carey also criticised the use of language by some voluntary groups. He said many organisations in the community and development sector used to come into government departments using a kind of language “that only they understood”.
He criticised the use of the word “space” in reference to creating a space to achieve something. “Everyone was using ‘space’, I’m not sure that people have a clue what they mean by it,” he said.
Mr Carey said the voluntary sector got too comfortable during the boom years and was sucked into using a “certain language and dialogue” which they used to get funding.
“There was a lot of effort put into submissions to government departments which focused on funding. People ended up using language which was likely to pass the scrutiny of funders in government departments,” he said.
Mr Carey, who lost his seat at the last general election, is a former minister of state with responsibility for drugs strategy. He has stayed involved in the strategy through the Ballymun Youth Action Project and a drugs rehabilitation programme in Finglas.
He said voluntary organisations had become part of social partnership during the boom years and had got used to a certain level of funding. He believed it was “no harm in a way” that funding had been cut back as it would force organisations to clarify their “key roles and objectives”.
A survey of voluntary organisations carried out by the Advocacy Initiative found that 90 per cent agreed the environment for social justice advocacy, or lobbying for government action to reduce poverty and disadvantage, was getting much tougher. But more than half (56 per cent) said they had not experienced any real or threatened loss.
