PII: Soc. Sci. Med. Vol. 47, No. 9, pp. 1197±1208, 1998 Crown copyright # 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain S0277-9536(97)10020-X 0277-9536/98 $19.00 + 0.00 A TALE OF TWO (LOW PREVALENCE) CITIES: SOCIAL MOVEMENT ORGANISATIONS AND THE LOCAL POLICY RESPONSE TO HIV/AIDS* ROLAND PETCHEY,1{ JACKY WILLIAMS,1 BILL FARNSWORTH1 and KEN STARKEY2 Department of General Practice, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, U.K. and 2School of Finance and Management, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, U.K. 1 AbstractÐIn the ®eld of HIV/AIDS, social movement organisations (SMOs) have been identi®ed as powerful potential catalysts for change through their impact on formal organisational structures and the policy process. In addition, they have the capacity to be important providers of services in their own right, through the community resources they are capable of mobilising. In the United Kingdom, however, their role in policy formation is disputed. Previous studies have concluded that they have been most in¯uential at national policy and ward level. At the level of local policy making, their in¯uence has been found to be patchy and con®ned largely to securing recognition of HIV as an issue. Most previous research has, however, been conducted in high prevalence, metropolitan settings with functional SMOs. This paper presents the results of a comparative case study of two neighbouring provincial low prevalence district health authorities (HAs) in England. We describe the changing national policy context from 1986 to 1995 and use a strategic change model to analyse the local development of care and treatment services for people with HIV/AIDS, in particular the relationship between SMOs and HAs. Despite being demographically, socioeconomically and epidemiologically similar, and sharing an identical national policy framework, the two districts demonstrate completely divergent organisational responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. We conclude that the level of prior social movement mobilisation and the degree of receptivity for change within the HA are the key variables for explaining variations in the scale of strategic change observed in the two districts. Crown copyright # 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Key wordsÐHIV/AIDS, health policy, social movement organisations, strategic change *Although for reasons of brevity and simplicity, the title of this paper refers to HIV/AIDS policy, we must emphasise the fact that our principal concern is with policy aecting speci®cally the development of care and treatment services for people with HIV/AIDS, and the role of SMOs in it. In the U.K., the national policy response to HIV/AIDS has been a dual one, consisting of service provision for those already infected or aected by HIV, alongside a health promotion/education oensive to limit the spread of infection. While the distinction between treatment and prevention is conceptually clear (and, indeed, is enshrined in separate funding allocations), in practice it is dicult to maintain it with any consistency, not least because the two functions have commonly been combined organisationally (especially in SMOs). Nevertheless, the conceptual distinction is worth retaining, since it keeps open the logical possibility that the local response in each of the two areas of HIV/AIDS policy might vary. District A was just such a case. Our characterisation of it as non-innovative applies only to its policy regarding the development of care and treatment services. In prevention policy it demonstrated a high degree of innovation. It pioneered a range of extremely innovative prevention initiatives including an outreach health promotion scheme for women sex-workers (`Prostitute Outreach'). {Author for correspondence. It is salutary to consider that had HIV emerged only a decade or two earlier this century, there would have been only the most fragile institutional framework from which to have launched health promotion and education, since the notion of community was never part of homosexual identity, which was highly individualistic and could not conceive of notions of `community' or similar social and political claims which are so characteristic of lesbian and gay culture and identity today. (Watney, 1993, p. 17) INTRODUCTION The proliferation of terminology around voluntary organisations providing HIV/AIDS services testi®es to the elusiveness of their essential qualities. Weeks et al. (1994) list three variants: Community Based Organisations (CBOs), AIDS Service Organisations (ASOs) and Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs). Altman (1994) contributes Groups Outside Government (GOGs) and Private Voluntary Organisations (PVOs) to the alphabet soup. All of these descriptions are partial, none is entirely satisfactory. For instance, the concept of the CBO reproduces the theoretical confusion sur- 1197 1198 Roland Petchey et al. rounding the concept of community itself, while the concept of the PVO detracts from the importance (in the English policy context, at least) of public funding and the role of paid sta. As Weeks et al. (1994) observe, this terminological confusion re¯ects the diversity and historic variability of HIV/AIDS organisations due to internal processes of organisational evolution (their `natural history'), as well as changes in their environment as the role of the voluntary sector and the relationship between statutory and voluntary agencies have altered in response to government policy. We have preferred to adopt the Social Movement Organisation (SMO) as our unit of analysis, a preference which we justify on three main grounds. First, it problematises the relationship between SMOs and the social movements from which they originated; second, it oers a developmental theory of SMOs (even though the dynamic of their development is contested); third, it focuses on the internal organisational consequences for SMOs of their interaction with formal organisations and state agencies. We are, however, aware that it too is partial: we have endeavoured to use it as a source of questions rather than of answers. A social movement has been de®ned as: a set of opinions and beliefs in a population which represents preferences for changing some elements of the social structure and/or reward distribution of a society (McCarthy and Zald, 1976, pp. 1217±1218). Social movement organisations (SMOs) are the organisational expression of social movements, and it is argued that they constitute organisationally and ideologically distinct forms of organisation (Scott, 1990). Typically, they are characterised by: aectivity (with consciousness raising, group therapy techniques and concern for the quality of relationships tending to be prioritised over instrumentality); direct linkage between personal experience and collective action (`the personal is the political'); and preferences for loose structures over hierarchy and for informal relations over bureaucracy. However, the extent of their desire or capacity to engage in the formal policy process has been disputed. Some theorists (e.g. Touraine, 1981) have stressed their essentially `alternative ` or `oppositionist' character. Others (e.g. McCarthy and Zald, 1976) more pessimistically posit a universal tendency towards the increasing bureaucratisation, formalisation and professionalisation of SMOs. In the ®eld of HIV/AIDS (as in health service settings generally) SMOs perform a dual role. On the one hand, they are potentially important providers of services in their own right, through the community resources they are capable of mobilising. They have also been identi®ed as powerful potential catalysts for change, through their capacity to bring high levels of personal commitment and radical perspectives to bear on formal organisational structures and the policy process (Ferlie and Bennett, 1992). In San Francisco and New York in the 1980s, SMOs were found to have played a key role in the development of policy as well as the provision of HIV/AIDS services through their impact on formal funding and service provider organizations (Arno, 1986; Perrow and Guillen, 1990). In the U.K., however, their role in policy formation is disputed. Moerkerk (1990) and Pollak (1992) characterise U.K. policy making as essentially top± down and determined by the political priorities of the government of the day, with SMOs fragmented and excluded from the policy process. Fox et al. (1989) similarly emphasise the accommodation of SMOs and play down the impact of the gay lobby on national policy. In contrast, Berridge and Strong (1992) stress the role of the voluntary sector in national and local policy formation at least up to 1986 (although Berridge has more recently (Berridge, 1995) emphasised the subsequent resurgence of medical professional values with a corresponding decrease in the in¯uence of SMOs). A case study of two London districts found the role of SMOs to be less evident than had been expected. It concluded that at national policy level and at the level of the immediate service provider/ user interface (especially on issues such as regime which were not resource-sensitive), SMOs such as the Terence Higgins Trust were `surprisingly in¯uential'. At the intermediate level, however, of in¯uence on local policy, they appeared much less eective (Pettigrew et al., 1992). In health authority settings outside London SMOs were found to have made an important contribution to shaping the local response to HIV/AIDS, but even here their role was largely con®ned to the early phase of securing recognition of HIV/AIDS as an issue (Bennett and Ferlie, 1994). At the same time as being agents (whether in service delivery or in the policy process), SMOs are, of course, also themselves acted upon. In the early 1990s they were exposed to three major changes of policy aecting the context in which they were functioning. By the early 1990s, HIV/AIDS was beginning to slip down the policy agenda as it became apparent that earlier projections of an exponential growth of the epidemic (DHSS, 1988b) were inaccurate (PHLS, 1990). The NHS reforms (NHS and Community Care Act, 1991) contributed to this process by focusing managerial attention on reorganisation, and the purchaser±provider split was also beginning to impact directly on the planning, coordination and delivery of services. A highly critical National Audit Oce report on the funding and organisation of HIV services (National Audit Oce, 1991) and the implementation of the Charities Act (1992) resulted in the tightening of the ®nancial and legal regulatory framework within which voluntary organisations were operating and the imposition of greater accountability and a more professional managerial ethos on them. Finally, the implementation Social movement organisations and HIV/AIDS of the NHS reforms ushered in a `contract culture,' which has been seen as contributing to the increasing `formalisation' of voluntary/statutory sector relations (Lewis, 1993). Three characteristics of previous case studies of SMOs operating in the ®eld of HIV/AIDS are noteworthy. First, almost all of the detailed research has been conducted in high prevalence (usually metropolitan) districts (New York, San Francisco, London); low prevalence, provincial settings have been largely disregarded. This metropolitan bias is apparent in HIV/AIDS research generally. As Berridge (1996, p. 287) has observed, in the U.K. HIV/AIDS has essentially been a `tale of three cities'. Second, the existence of solidary social movements and functional SMOs has tended to be taken as a given. The solidarity of the gay community, the nature of gay identity and of gay activism and the relationship between it and HIV/AIDS activism have generally been regarded as unproblematic. There are a few exceptions: changes over time in gay identity have been identi®ed (Watney, 1993) as have intergenerational and subcultural dierences in gay men's experience of and response to HIV (King, 1995). Similarly, Bailey (1995) has problematised the gay constituency for HIV prevention, while Weeks et al. (1994) have drawn attention to the tension between generalist service provision and the targetting of resources on areas of greatest need, especially among gay men. Carricabura and Pierret (1995) have explored the relationship betwen gay identity and the response to HIV, but this study too was carried out in a high prevalence metropolitan setting (Paris) and treats gay identity as unproblematic. Otherwise, the organisational implications of such internal divisions have remained unexplored. Finally, previous studies of HIV/AIDS SMOs have paid little attention to variations in prevalence and their implications for SMO survival. This is striking, since a priori it would appear to be a highly signi®cant variable for organisational development and stability. The viability of HIV/AIDS organisations is likely to be especially problematic in low prevalence areas where the numbers of people able to sustain a leadership role or administrative responsibilities, in addition to the existing burden of their personal caring commitments and/ or their own illness, will be limited. Under these conditions, the problems of leadership succession or of schism within an organisation, or the consequences of organisational failure, are potentially catastrophic since they may occasion renewed internal inter-faction struggle over the identity of the organisation or its successor(s). Even if this is not *`High involvement' meant any practice which had seen more than one HIV-positive patient within the preceeding 12 months. 1199 the case, it seems plausible that metropolitan high prevalence conditions will be capable of sustaining a much greater diversity of specialised SMO provision than is feasible elsewhere. A survey of 546 HIV/AIDS SMOs (Weeks et al., 1994) con®rms that outside London, voluntary activity tended to be delivered via fewer multifunctional agencies, while within it there was a wider range of specialist HIV and generalist organisations responding to particular needs. This paper presents the results of a comparative study of two low prevalence district health authorities (HA) using a strategic change perspective developed by Pettigrew et al. (1992) and Bennett and Ferlie (1994). We outline the changing policy context from the mid-1980s to 1995, and analyse the district policy responses to HIV/AIDS with particular regard to the relationship between HAs and SMOs in their dual role as informal service providers and political pressure groups. We conclude that the level of prior social movement mobilisation and the degree of receptivity for change within the HA are the two most important variables for explaining the variation in the levels of strategic response and service innovation observed in the two districts. METHOD This study was carried out as a part of a twoyear programme of research into patterns of HIV/ AIDS service provision and utilisation in District A. Four other studies were undertaken: a postal survey of the role of general practitioners (GPs) in HIV/AIDS care; in-depth interviews with 11 GPs and 15 sta in `high involvement'* practices; indepth interviews with 20 HIV positive service users (recruited via the GU clinic and a social service-run informal drop-in centre); and a postal survey of aspects of general practice policy and organisation relevant to people with HIV/AIDS. This paper is based on two main additional sources: the analysis of documentary sources (especially the AIDS (Control) Act 1987 annual reports for the two districts from 1988 to 1995) and routine statistics on service provision and utilisation; and in-depth interviews with over 30 representatives of service provider organisations in the two districts (of whom six can be regarded as `key informants'). Interviewees spanned the whole range of provider organisations, including health (hospital and community), social services and the voluntary sector. They included sta at every level from frontline service providers to senior ocials with key HIV/AIDS service planning and management functions. Interviews were carried out between April 1994 and December 1995 and were audiotaped, transcribed and subjected to independent content analysis (RP and JW). 1200 Roland Petchey et al. The research eort was not equally distributed across the two districts, but was concentrated on District A. This was partly a re¯ection of the primary focus of the research programme as a whole, but also of the dierences between the two districts. In District A, the contested nature of accounts meant that considerable eort was needed even to establish a chronology of service development. In District B, by contrast, the degree of consensus among informants permitted the more rapid development of a coherent theoretical account (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). Formal interviews were supplemented, as necessary, by more informal discussions and conversations with informants over the two-year period to clarify particular points and to con®rm our emergent understanding of policy development in the two districts. To validate our analysis, two drafts of the present paper were distributed to two key informants in each district for comment, with a request to circulate them to relevant colleagues. This process led to several minor re®nements of our analysis, but failed to elicit any major disagreements. THE RESEARCH SETTING District A and District B are neighbouring provincial District Health Authorities in England. Both districts contained a mix of urban and rural areas, but with the majority of the population in each district living in an urban area classi®ed by the Oce of Population Censuses and Surveys as a large nonmetropolitan city (Atkins et al., 1996). Health service provision was identical, with both districts possessing a University teaching hospital oering the full range of associated clinical specialties and research facilities. Demographically and socio-economically they were also closely comparable on most of a series of commonly used measures/indicators of deprivation, as shown in Table 1, although District A tended to be slightly more deprived than the English average, and District B slightly less. The most striking demographic dierence was in the proportions of the population of minority ethnic origin: 8.2% of District B's population was Indian. The two districts were also similar with respect to key features of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Both were low prevalence. Between the start of testing in October 1985 and 31 March 1995, 152 cases of HIV infection had been noti®ed among District A residents. Of these, 61 had progressed to AIDS (of whom 44 subsequently died). In District B, testing began a year earlier: by 31 March 1995 there had been 211 noti®cations of HIV infection, with 73 progressing to AIDS and 56 known deaths. On the basis of their AIDS (Control) Act (1987) ®rst noti®cation returns, the incidence of HIV infection in District A during 1994±1995 was 21.5 per million population and 20.7 per million in District B. In that year the U.K. incidence was 29.8 per million population. In both districts, as in the U.K. as a whole, the overwhelming majority of people infected were male (Table 2). However, closer inspection reveals important dierences between the two districts (and also divergences from the national ®gures). In both districts the majority of HIV infection was sexually transmitted, in line with the nation as a whole (but at a somewhat lower level). However, the proportion of infection attributed to intercourse between men was lower than the national average (in District B's case, markedly so). The proportion due to heterosexual intercourse was correspondingly greater. In District B increasing numbers of local people had acquired their infection through heterosexual intercourse with a partner abroad, particularly in countries in East Africa and the Indian Subcontinent. Since 1993 this had been the second greatest risk factor for HIV infection in District B and by 1995 accounted for 24% of all infection. Table 1. District A, District B and England: selected demographic and socio-economic variables Variable Population Total Minority ethnic origin (%) Unemployment (%) Male Female Households (%) Car ownership Home ownership Overcrowding Lone parents r1 person with limiting long term illness District A 603 886 5.9 11 5 63.6 66.8 1.6 4.3 24.6 District B England 867 505 11.1 Ð 6.2 7.9 4 9.7 4.7 71 72.5 2 3.3 21.9 67.6 67.6 2.1 3.7 24.1 Social movement organisations and HIV/AIDS 1201 Table 2. District A, District B and the United Kingdom: cases of HIV infection (cumulative to 31 March 1995) (%) District Aa Total Male Female Probable mode of transmission Sexual intercourse between men between men and women Injecting drug use Blood factor/tissue transfer District Bb UKa 152 131 (86) 21 (14) 211 179 (85) 32 (15) 21 674 18 831 (87) 2843 (13) 111 (74) 85 (56) 26 (17) 18 (13) 12 (8) 153 (72) 102 (48) 51 (24) 24 (11) 16 (8) 17 790 (82) 14 022 (65) 3768 (17) 1694 (8) 1278 (6) a AIDS (Control) Act (1987) noti®cations of infection.bPeople receiving treatment in District B. HIV Information Exchange data for 1994 show that almost 30% of HIV-positive District B residents were Black, with 21.6% from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. These communities were prioritised for HIV prevention work. In District A, there was no evidence that people from minority ethnic groups were especially at risk of HIV infection. Provisional HIV Information Exchange data for 1995 indicated that they represented 7.7% of those infected compared with 5.9% of the population. Injecting Drug Use and Contaminated Blood Factor/Tissue Transfer were the other major routes of transmission in both districts, again in line with national ®gures (but at slightly higher levels). The two districts also shared a national policy framework specifying not just policy aims but the administrative structures and funding for achieving them as well. A ¯urry of initiatives undertaken in the late 1980s in response to the `crisis' meant that this framework was ®rmly established by the early 1990s. As early as 1986 regions and districts had been required to appoint named physicians and to establish a structure of joint planning committees (AIDS Action Groups) responsible for monitoring and reporting the incidence of HIV infection and for implementing the local response. They subsequently became accountable for the expenditure of ring-fenced annual funding allocations for treatment and illness prevention/health promotion which became available from 1988. The Monks Report of the same year ocially con®rmed the lead clinical role that had already been informally established in most districts by departments of Genito-Urinary Medicine (GUM) (Department of Health, 1988), while the Acheson Report recommended the appointment of District Control of Infection ocers with executive responsibility for communicable disease control (DHSS, 1988a). Given this common policy context and identically determined allocations of funding, as well as the demographic, socioeconomic and epidemiological similarities that were identi®ed earlier, the degree of divergence in HIV/AIDS service development in the two districts was striking. District B was characterised by a high level of strategic planning in the provision of care and treatment services for people with HIV/AIDS and a strong sense of local `ownership' of HIV/AIDS policy. There had been multiple innovation in service provision, with services possessing a clear community orientation. A GP Facilitator/Hospital Practitioner in HIV was responsible for integrating primary and secondary health services and supporting Primary Care Teams caring for people with HIV/AIDS; a `Hospital-athome' scheme delivered domiciliary intensive medical care to patients who would otherwise have required a hospital admission; and a Paediatric/ Family Outpatient Clinic provided `one-stop' whole family care to families of children aected by HIV. Above all else, it had achieved the eective integration of the voluntary and statutory sectors. By 1994±1995, BASS (District B AIDS Support Services) was the major provider of practical help, emotional support and counselling to people with, or aected by, HIV/AIDS. The volume of services delivered that year by volunteers was estimated to be equivalent to employing 23 full-time workers. District A, by contrast, was characterised by comparatively low levels of strategic planning and service innovation. Care and treatment services for people with HIV/AIDS had been shaped in line with national policy initiatives with little distinctive local input or ownership evident. Health care was dominated by the secondary sector, with services revolving around GUM and community services, and primary care involved only marginally, unsystematically and unsupported. Crucially, by 1993± 1994, voluntary sector organisations had (as one service user put it) `imploded'. (Chronology follows on the next page) 1202 Roland Petchey et al. DISTRICT A: TRADING WITH THE ENEMY? An outline chronology of the voluntary sector in District A, 1990-1995: 1990-1991: Under the umbrella organisation of District A AIDS Information Project (AAIP), the following services were provided: . the telephone advice and counselling service received 800 calls; . the `Buddy Group' provided support to 22 people and trained 40 Buddies. It was also reported to be planning expansion of its services and reorganisation of its management structure; AAIP appointed a full time Administrator, funded from the Health Authority's Special Fund for AIDS and Drugs, in April, 1990. The `AIDS Bereavement Service' (ABS) provided bereavement counselling to people with HIV/AIDS, their partners, families and friends. Further support was also available through District A Body Positive. Under the umbrella of Drug Dependents Anonymous (DDA), two further voluntary sector support groups were available to drug users with HIV/AIDS, HIV and Drug Dependents (HADD) and Women, AIDS and Drug Dependents Anonymous (WADDA). 1991-1992 AAIP appointed a second full-time worker. Its telephone Helpline received 665 calls. In May, together with Body Positive, it launched a new trust fund, `The Captain's Fund', to assist in cases of ®nancial hardship among people with HIV in District Ashire. It was reported to be reconsidering its internal structure and planning to move to new city centre premises which it would share with Body Positive. The `Buddy Group' buddied 30 people and undertook training for buddies. The Health Authority funded part time secretarial support for ABS, releasing members for bereavement counselling work. ABS was reported to be planning to set up an AIDS Carers' Emotional Support Group (ACES). In September, a Family Support Network Group was set up with its own funding and facilitator as a self-help group for families of people with HIV/AIDS in the region. In November Positive Support was established to provide social, emotional and practical support to carers of people with HIV infection countywide. A 24 hour answering service manned by a volunteer was provided. It received 29 referrals, of whom 12 became ongoing clients. It had 22 volunteers, of whom 6 were quali®ed nurses. HADD and WADDA continued to support drug users with HIV/AIDS. 1992-1993 In May Body Positive was disbanded. Some of its informal support functions were taken on by a successor organisation, the `Tall Trees Club', (subsequently the `Peacock Club'). In July AAIP appointed a part time Administrator and a full time Project Coordinator in August, both funded by the Health Authority from its AIDS Special Funds. In November AAIP relocated to its new premises. Between April and October its Helpline received 311 calls. The service was withdrawn in November due to relocation and a reduction in calls received out of hours. The `Buddy Group' buddied 12 people. Reorganisation of the service (to be renamed the `Befriending Service') started. `The Captain's Fund' made grants totalling £3984 to 45 applications received during the year. In February 1993 AAIP suspended most of its services to allow for internal reorganisation, prior to relaunch intended for June 1993. During the suspension `The Captain's Fund' remained operational and buddying/befriending continued for existing clients. Positive Support received 31 referrals, made 18 home assessments and provided support to 7 clients. It had 19 volunteers. ABS received 94 telephone calls and provided a service for 35 clients. Its 4 volunteers worked 272 hours. The Family Support Network Group continued. HADD and WADDA continued to support drug users with HIV/AIDS. 1993-1994 The Family Support Network Group ceased to operate. AAIP closed. A limited befriending service continued to operate. Operation of the Captain's Fund was taken over by the Health Authority. ABS received 137 telephone calls for help. DDA (HADD and WADDA) closed. 1994-1995 Positive Support closed. ABS closed Social movement organisations and HIV/AIDS Until 1992 the voluntary sector in District A appeared to be thriving (see above outline chronology of the rise and fall of HIV/AIDS voluntary organisations in District A). Under the umbrella of AAIP (District A AIDS Information Project), the range of services being provided was expanding, as was the organisational infrastructure supporting them. Between April 1990 and July 1992 the salaried administrative and secretarial workforce increased from one to four (full-time equivalents) and in November 1992 AAIP moved into new premises. These developments could be viewed as evidence of organisational vitality. With the aid of hindsight, however, symptoms of incipient organisational pathology were already discernible in the form of duplication of functions and a proliferation of highly specialised service provision for sectional interest groups. By the end of 1992, there were (either in existence or under active consideration) eight separate organisations providing emotional and practical support to people with HIV/AIDS, their carers and their families (the Buddy Group, ABS, Body Positive, ACES, the Family Support Network Group, Positive Support, HADD and WADDA). At this time, there were probably fewer than 100 people with HIV/AIDS in District A. Alongside the confusion of aims there was also evidence of overlapping geographical coverage. Some services were district-speci®c, others encompassed the county (Positive Support) or even the region (Family Support Network Group). Moreover, two of these organisations had been established intentionally in opposition to AAIP. ABS had been set up to cater for a need (bereavement counselling) which some service users felt was not being properly addressed by AAIP, while Positive Support was a break-away deliberately intended to `kick AAIP up the backside' (in the words of one service user). Both of these splinter groups were funded by the Health Authority, at the same time as it was funding AAIP. Managing the tension between generic and specialist service provision and prioritising needs have been identi®ed as problems confronting HIV service organisations elsewhere (Weeks et al., 1996). The eectiveness of these organisations is also questionable. A survey of HIV/AIDS service users reported extremely low levels of awareness of voluntary organisations (James, 1994). Only two services were recognised by a majority of respondentsÐthe Befriending (Buddy) Scheme (76%) and the Captain's Fund (56%). Then came the two splinter groups, Positive Support and ABS (34% and 29% awareness respectively). The remainder averaged around 13% awareness. Another warning sign was the dispute during 1992 over the proposal to change the name of the Buddying Group to the `Befriending Group' and to require all existing buddies to submit to retraining and re-accreditation. This was ®ercely resisted by some as an attack on 1203 the status of the buddy relationship, and as a signal of a hostile intent to `de-Gay' (Patton, 1990) the HIV/AIDS epidemic and District A's response to it. This dispute between the `buddies' and the `befrienders' was frequently advanced as an important contributory factor in the eventual collapse of AAIP. So, even before 1993, there were signs that AAIP was already under strain. The diculty it was experiencing in its attempts to hold together these sectional service±user interest groups was con®rmed by its decisions initially to review its organisation and subsequently to suspend operations to allow reorganisation. These turned out to be portents of the organisational `meltdown' which eventually came in 1993±1994. The failure of the voluntary sector in District A can be analysed at a number of levels. Some local observers attributed it exclusively to local factors, particularly the character of the gay community in District A, which was perceived to be unusually ®ssile and fractious: District A has a very old and fractious gay scene, and it has never come together yet as a community to actually start working together. When you've got an illness like AIDS so profoundly aecting a group of people as HIV has aected gay men, and the gay community has had the problems covering District A, then any organisation is necessarily going to have the con¯icts of the gay community acted out in it. (Service provider) The interviews with HIV-positive service users suggested the existence of several lines of cleavage among gay men in District A around issues of gay identity, activism and organisation, and the relationship between sexual politics and the politics of HIV: Two chaps came over from [name of city], from Body Positive, and they frightened the life out of me. I took a cushion and went and sat in a corner. I thought they'd be having me in drag next and collecting on the street, they were soÐnot aggressiveÐwell, they frightened me. I don't mind money raising, but I don't want to do it with a wig on and high heels. (Gay service user) These manifested themselves as a series of disagreements about organisational priorities: between those who were HIV-positive and those who were not; between those who were willing to disclose their HIV status and those who were not; between those who identi®ed the primary role of AAIP as health education and HIV prevention and those who saw its central task as supporting those who were already aected. There were also divisions between the volunteers/ service-users and the paid `professionals'. It was frequently complained that `in®ghting', `petty politics' or `personality clashes' had been allowed to obstruct the eective delivery of services: I suppose it was like my vocation in lifeÐgot to help others. It was important and I wanted to be part of it. I sometimes think that there's too much politics and not enough actionÐit's a shame because there are a lot of people that really care that want to do something. I know 1204 Roland Petchey et al. nothing aboutÐI mean I remember going and we had many meetings and there'd be talks and constitutions and management committeesÐand I'm like, `God, this is really boring. I just want to be out there doing something.' (Gay service user) However, although local conditions are undoubtedly a necessary factor, they are unlikely to be a sucient explanation. The fact that AAIP was not the only HIV/AIDS voluntary organisation to have experienced collapse suggests the operation of more general organisational processes over and beyond purely local circumstances. The terminal crisis of `Frontliners' in 1990±1991 (Moreland and Legg, 1992) and the near-fatal crises of the Terence Higgins Trust in 1987 (Schramm-Evans, 1990) and Body Positive in 1994 (Williams, 1995) con®rm that the stresses imposed on voluntary organisations during the process of transformation from self-help groups or groups campaigning on behalf of sectional service user interests into service providers can be intolerable. These more general organisational processes need, in turn, to be located in the external environment in which AAIP was operating. It is not just the manner of the collapse that should be regarded as signi®cant but its timing also, coinciding as it did with the changes in the national policy environment which have been noted above. In District A, these changes had two main consequences. First, the imposition of greater accountability exacerbated the existing internal strains in the relationship between paid and unpaid sta, as attempts to introduce professional standards of assessment and evaluation were resisted by (some) volunteers: when A came in she wanted it (AAIP) restructuring and admittedly there weren't constitutions, there weren't policies and if the Charity Commission knew this, they would have had a dicky ®t. Because it was a charity and of course you have to have all these things to run as a charity. So people were asked to go for selection, people who had been buddying for years. And there was an awful lot of bad feeling. (Statutory service provider) ®nd premises. If you can arrangeÐerÐget the constitution together.' And I'm like, `Hang on a minute. We're doing all the work, we've all got jobs as well.' You know, we've got 9 to 5 jobsÐand then having to come to two or three meetings a week or a meeting every week to try to keep something together. And I used to get pissed o with it. (Gay service user). Given that the relationship between the HA and the voluntary sector was already characterised by low trust, mutual misunderstanding and wariness and/or suspicion, such requirements were likely to be perceived as illegitimate impositions or as deliberate obstructiveness. This in turn reinforced the perception of the HA as part of the problem rather than of the solution: Oh yes. These clients were sort of hyping up. You know, `We've got to get this money. We've got to do this. And the Health Authority are crap and X (HA ocial) is a tight old git.' (Service provider). When we ®rst joined the voluntary service we were very naive. We didn't understand the interplay between voluntary services and the statutory sector which can be very frictional. (Gay service user). Under these circumstances, the pre-existing tendency towards voluntary sector oppositionism was reinforced by the response of the health authority. As a result of their instability and perceived unreliability, voluntary organisations found themselves marginalised or excluded from the formal policy process, and forced to compete for resources among themselves and against the HA from outside the system. Their inability to in¯uence the distribution of resources in turn sustained the oppositionist character of their relationship with the HA which further intensi®ed their factionalism. At the same time their inability to provide the services which were needed by their members (actual as well as potential) detracted from their capacity to sustain and renew their membership. In turn, these repeated membership and/or leadership crises provided oc- Second, they led to a change of Health Authority policy towards the voluntary sector as it sought to initiate a more contractual relationship in keeping with its purchaser role within the newly introduced internal market: Of course, it's very dicult for X and Y (HA and SS purchasers) to give out phenomenal amounts of money to a group that wants to start up. We need something that's established and has a good track record. (Service provider) In this respect, AAIP's experience closely parallels that of `The Landmark' (Bebbington and Gatter, 1994). It con®rms that the contractual requirements of purchasers in the shape of increasingly explicit and detailed service speci®cations, could prove a fatal additional load: like when it started to disband, it's like, `Oh, the Health Authority are willing to purchase a buddying service, if you can do this. And if you can do that. And if you can Fig. 1. The dynamics of voluntary sector/HA relations in District A: a vicious circle?. Social movement organisations and HIV/AIDS casions for on-going internal dissensus which further stoked the cycle of instability. From the HA perspective, this lack of reliability was a powerful factor in its reluctance to engage closely with the voluntary sector and contributed to its marginalisation in the formal policy process. Insofar as there had been interaction between the voluntary sector and the HA, it had assumed the character of arm's-length `trading with the enemy'. The complex of internal and external pressures which began to build up from 1992 onwards meant that even this relationship entered a spiral of decline, culminating in the collapse of AAIP and the majority of the services beneath its umbrella, and in the HA decision ultimately to withdraw funding from those few organisational fragments which had managed to remain operational. These factors and processes are presented graphically as elements of a `vicious circle' (Fig. 1). DISTRICT B: `SPANNERS' IN THE WORKS? If the relationship between the voluntary and statutory sectors in District A can be characterised as a vicious circle, District B in many ways represents its oppositeÐa virtuous cycle. Where AAIP struggled and ultimately failed as an umbrella organisation, its District B counterpart, BASS, succeeded in sustaining a much wider, more varied and more demanding programme of voluntary activity. More than that, it also proved a key in¯uence on District B's response to the epidemic. We attribute this largely to the fact that in District B the component elements of the gay community had already been mobilised and organised prior to the arrival of HIV in the early 1980s. More important, perhaps, than the fact of their mobilisation, was the manner, through the formation of a federation of Lesbian and Gay groups: W, early 1980s again. `I know,' he says. `We should form a federation of Lesbian and Gay groups in District B Ð all dierent sorts of Lesbians and Gay men together, with dierent interests and dierent focuses, and we should start to be more politically active....'. (BASS worker) Out of this campaigning group, Lesbian and Gay Action, developed `Gayline' and ultimately the Lesbian and Gay Resources Centre, with a city centre coee bar and premises, and 20 volunteers receiving over 4000 calls a year. When the HIV/ AIDS `crisis' emerged in 1983, a crucial factor in District B's strategic response was the existence of a gay community which, through the alliances constructed around these earlier projects, had begun to function as a solidary social movement and had already experienced the advantages, both political and organisational, of collective action in pursuit of its goals. Much of this achievement was attributed to the eorts of an individual local activist, W. From being instrumental in the creation of the Resources 1205 Centre, he went on to play a central role in mobilising the voluntary and statutory sectors and constructing a multi-sectoral response to HIV/AIDS in District B. He was sole founder member of District B Body Positive, a founder member of the Black HIV and AIDS Forum (BHAF) and of the HIV Voluntary Sector Forum, a founder of BASS and an early member of the Joint Planning Group for AIDS which was responsible for the strategic development of services across agency and sector boundaries. However, over and above his personal contribution, his career demonstrates a further important dierence between the two districtsÐthe receptivity of statutory organisations to change. From his role in mobilising the voluntary sector, he moved across the statutory/voluntary divide to become AIDS Coordinator for the City Council between 1988 and 1990 and subsequently the health authority's AIDS Coordinator. The network of intra- and interagency alliances which he was able to create and sustain through this succession of roles was locally acknowledged as pivotal in the early development of HIV services in the district: He was working as a volunteer on the local Lesbian and Gay line when they started to get calls about this strain from America, you know. So he was really in there right at the very beginning and was the ®rst person to be appointed to an HIV-speci®c role in District B... and so he'd been through it all with District B right from the word `go'... He had very, very good relationships with the clinicians, with the voluntary sector, withÐand he bridged all of the sort of traditional historic gaps that there are between the service providers. (HIV/AIDS Coordinator) W's career as activist and administrator thus displays all the hall marks of the `boundary spanner', which has been identi®ed as one of the hallmarks of organisational receptivity to change and an important mechanism facilitating working across boundaries (Bennett and Ferlie, 1994). Nor was he the only instance of organisational boundary spanning to emerge from District B. The Diocese of B's Chaplain for people aected by HIV was another voluntary/statutory sector boundary spanner, having chaired BASS for three years before taking up the chaplaincy. In a similar fashion, the GP Facilitator spanned the boundary between the secondary and primary health services for people with HIV/AIDS. This concentration of boundary spanners in key positions not only facilitated intersectoral collaboration, it also indicated the high degree of permeability of organisational boundaries in B. The degree of interpenetration of the voluntary and statutory sectors and the closeness of the partnership between them were such that (unusually) the voluntary sector came to be directly involved in the allocation of resources as well as the determination of policy. W's career possesses a further signi®cance in that it intersected with that of the then Director of 1206 Roland Petchey et al. Public Health (DPH). Prior to her appointment, she had been a public health physician with responsibility for HIV/AIDS since it was recognised as an issue in 1984. She appointed W and subsequently acted as his sponsor: She was the person who promoted W to post as district HIV coordinator. You know, when around the country lots of other districts were tending to appoint management professionals, or the post was going to a CCDC [Consultant in Communicable Disease Control] in a sort of nominal way. Whereas W's background was about his in-depth knowledge of HIV, his in-depth local knowledge about services and his sheer commitment and enthusiasm for it all. I think he must have been something of a risk for the health authority to appoint him to that role, at that time. (HIV/AIDS Coordinator) Patronage of this sort has been identi®ed as crucial to the success (or failure) of this new breed of specialist HIV/AIDS liaison workers (ibid.). Although occupying relatively junior positions with little authority or status in their own right and no independent access to resources, they were still expected to work across entrenched agency boundaries and to tackle vested service provider interests. Where they succeeded, a major factor was sponsorship of a supportive power ®gure. This was the case in District B. In addition, the DPH's combination of specialist experience in HIV and ocial status made her a key agent of change in the HA. The role of public health doctors in moderating the empire-building tendencies of hospital-based clinical product champions and promoting community models of care has also been noted (ibid.). As noted above, this community orientation was a de®ning (and continuing) feature of B's HIV/AIDS treatment and care strategy. The voluntary sector in District B was not entirely immune to organisational failure. In August 1992 its Body Positive branch was dissolved by its members, while in November 1993 the Steering Group of BHAF decided to cease operating, following a period of internal organisational and management diculty. The HA response to these failures is indicative of the closeness of the working relationship between the statutory and voluntary sectors in District B. In the case of Body Positive, a National AIDS Trust consultation led to the establishment of a new post within BASS, funded jointly by the HA and the Social Services Department of the local authority, to develop peer support initiatives. The response to the closure of BHAF was similar. Consultation with the remaining agencies working with the Black and Asian communities on HIV/AIDS-related issues resulted in the creation of two new posts to meet the needs identi®ed as being left un®lled by BHAF's discontinuation. (In District A, by contrast, by the time the National AIDS Trust was called in, the situation had degenerated beyond recall.) An indication of the stability of the formal intersectoral arrangements was the nature of voluntary sector representation on the key Joint Planning Committee. Not only were representatives elected (from and by the HIV Voluntary Sector Forum, membership of which was open to all voluntary agencies concerned with HIV/AIDS in District B); voluntary sector representation was increased (from two to three) in 1994. Furthermore, the boundary spanning committees which coordinated HIV/AIDS service delivery and integrated the statutory and voluntary sectors all survived the introduction of the purchaser-provider split into District B's health services. The stability of these formal structures during a period of organisational upheaval was, in large part, due to the strength of the pre-existing network of informal relationships which underpinned them. In District A, by contrast, the HIV/ AIDS Coordinator's post was an early victim of the reforms, with the purchaser±provider split being identi®ed by several providers as responsible for disrupting inter-agency coordination and communication. Where District A has been characterised as a circle of fragmentation, marginalisation and SMO failure, District B can be regarded as a virtuous cycle of cohesion, incorporation and stability, as represented in Fig. 2. CONCLUSIONS The most striking ®nding to emerge from these case-studies is the marked contrast in the development of HIV/AIDS care and treatment services (both voluntary and statutory) in the two districts. As large non-metropolitan cities with similar HIV prevalences, operating within an identical national framework of policy and accountability and with identically determined allocations of ring-fenced funding, it might have been expected that their responses to the HIV epidemic would have been similar also. The fact that policy evolved so Fig. 2. The dynamics of voluntary sector/HA relations in District B: a virtuous cycle?. Social movement organisations and HIV/AIDS independently and so divergently in two neighbouring health authorities is signi®cant for two reasons. First, it con®rms that, as a learning organisation, the NHS remains considerably less than the sum of its parts (Bennett and Ferlie, 1994). The failure of innovation to diuse across authority boundaries (even between immediate neighbours) indicates that learning across the whole organisation is still problematic. Second, it underlines the degree of local variability of policy response that is possible within the same national policy context and the need to incorporate this into national or cross-national comparative analyses of HIV/AIDS policy. We do not claim that these two districts are in any way generalisable (indeed, it is conceivable that subsequent research might reveal them to be polar extremes). What is signi®cant about them is the unexpectedly stark contrast they provide. Underlying this variation in service development were entirely diering dynamics of HA/SMO relations, which we have traced to the diering trajectories of the social movements in the two settings and the diering degrees of receptivity to change within the health authorities. In District A the incomplete and fragmentary nature of the mobilisation of the constituent elements of the gay community denied it a coherent voice in the policy process, while its lack of reliability in the eyes of the HA prevented genuine dialogue and ensured that the two became locked into a spiral of estrangement and declining trust. These existing strains and tensions were exacerbated by the process of formalisation of statutory/voluntary sector relationships from 1992 onwards. Once it had begun to fray, the entire voluntary eort unravelled with alarming rapidity. District B, however, demonstrates that these processes are not inevitable. The alliances which had been constructed within the gay community around earlier projects concerned with rights, recognition and resources provided the organisational basis for a more coherent response to HIV/ AIDS, which in turn legitimated its claim to a role in the policy process and facilitated a stable relationship with the HA. These case studies thus reproduce at a local level the observation at the cross-national level that the most eective responses seemed to occur in areas where the gay movement had already secured recognition as a legitimate pressure group (Altman, 1988). They also con®rm the suggestion that it is inappropriate to treat the gay community as a homogeneous social movement with a singularity of purpose in its response to HIV/AIDS. Rather, it is more helpful to view it as a complex community with a varied constituency and an equally variable, contested, and constantly evolving relationship with the epidemic, but with the capacity to mobilise in provisional alliances around speci®c projects (Padgug and Oppenheimer, 1992). Since the focus of our research was service development and the 1207 inter-relationship between the voluntary and statutory sectors rather than the voluntary sector per se, we acknowledge that our understanding of the gay communities in the two districts and their internal dynamics is limited. Nevertheless, we are con®dent that the processes and mechanisms generating con¯icting perspectives on local priorities in District A are consistent with the tensions and dilemmas identi®ed by Weeks et al. (1996): self-help vs altruism; campaigning vs service delivery; volunteer leadership vs professional management; generalist vs specialist services; autonomy vs coordination; and service norms vs eciency norms. Finally, they con®rm that the processes of alliance formation and social movement mobilisation are not exclusively internal. They occur within a framework of relationships with external agencies and an external policy context. Previous work has focused on national contexts. These case-studies suggest that even within the framework of a centrally funded and centrally determined national policy response to HIV/AIDS, there can be a surprising degree of local autonomy and variability of implementation which appears to be independent of social, demographic and epidemiological variables. 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