CHARITIES are competing with each other in a cut-throat struggle for funding and even clients, a report has revealed.

The lifeline organisations working to provide early help to struggling families and children say their funding is insecure and rather than working together, many organisations are engaged in a tense turf war, with "unpleasant dust-ups" as they try to protect their own interests.

John Downie, policy director at The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations said the current system for funding meant the sector was highly competitive and change was needed.

Meanwhile, attempts to help families and save money by helping before things to to badly wrong are being undermined as funding cuts are leaving only crisis-intervention work untouched.

The Scottish Government study asked about the experiences of more than 100 charities which had won support from a fund totalling £14m, designed to help children and families, support adult learning and empower communities.

Most described it a successful, saying it had paid for successful work and helped give them stability.

But the authors, Clark Consulting, highlighted a series of comments revealing a sector facing an ongoing funding crisis, exacerbated by regular demands that charities compete for funding.

Quotes from charity leaders reveal a charity sector where rivalry for funding is preventing development and growing demand has coincided with reductions in funding.

One charity told researchers of "enormous tensions within the sector, between organisations, because they are in an absolutely cut-throat competitive environment. There are some very unpleasant dust-ups that go on between organisations”.

Another seemed to suggest charities are even competing for vulnerable people to offer support to to bolster their position, saying: “It is a sad fact that we are in competition with each other, not just for funding, but sometimes for families as well.”

Charities reported that with fewer funds available, they were having to protect their own interests, meaning many rejected working in partnership with rivals.

Regarding the early intervention work the government funding was designed to support, one charity which received cash is nevertheless pessimistic about the prospect of such efforts, saying: " In practice [early intervention] is being more and more difficult as funding is being pulled from less crisis-management projects”.

Another adds that the problems families face often go wider than the work that is funded: “Early intervention services are seeing drastic funding cuts and at the same time organisations are being funded to work with a family on a set of problems but in reality they have a much more protracted and serious set of problems."

Mr Downie said: "These comments are no surprise", and added that some commissioning processes resulted in charities bidding so low to win contracts that they had to subsidise the work from other resources.

He said that while charities would always welcome more money, there was a downside to competitive procurements and government and other funders should find ways to award more contracts to charities that work together.

"The way the current procurement system and funding environments are designed means what you get is a competition rather than collaboration. We need to change our approach to one promotes collaboration rather than competition," he said.

Andrew Horne, Scotland director of the drug and alcohol support charity Addaction, backed the call for rethinking the way councils and government commission services, with much charity work put out to tender when it didn't need to be.

"You win a tender and the language frames it as a competition," he said. "Competitive tendering leads to constant upheaval."

A spokesman for the Scottish Government said 118 third sector organisations had been awarded money under the fund, to help improve the lives of children, young people and families in Scotland.

She added: “One of the key aims of the support programme being delivered as part of the Fund is to encourage closer working relationships between third sector organisations.

"We have already brought together a group of organisations with an interest in Early Learning and Childcare, including the Scottish Childminding Association and Early Years Scotland, to explore how they can better work jointly together.”