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By mirroring other jurisdictions and including multi-year spending plans in our annual budgets, Stormont could have avoided the tension and uncertainty that is plaguing Northern Ireland in 2017.

Direct Rule in Northern Ireland is a distinct possibility. Scope examines Theresa May’s commitments to Civic Society, and asks what that might mean for the Third Sector. 

Faith-based charities receive a combined annual total of £16.3 billion in funds across the UK, one third of all monies raised by the Third Sector. 

Professor Roger Austin from Ulster University tells Scope how online interactions can be a huge help to shared education - and allow the educational model, designed to help heal social rifts and increase educational choice, to flourish.

The Department of Finance has been considering a rates liability on charity shops as part of its sweeping Rates Rethink. Scope examines the issue.

Back in 2006 the then Secretary of State Peter Brooke said that his government had “no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland.” 

In the latest in our series on education, Scope speaks with Prof. Joanne Hughes from QUB's Centre for Shared Education, about how sharing can offer practical positives for our local system in a number of ways.

Health reform is moving slowly and faces many difficulties - but it is still moving and there are huge opportunities for the community and voluntary organisations to improve people's lives within the changing structures.

The economy is there to serve the public and not the other way round. Scope looks at the inversion of this relationship and why a revolution in economic thinking could have huge benefits for local people.

The past few weeks have been challenging for the Sector. In past weeks we have looked at some of the consequences of not having a government in place. 

This week also saw the collapse of talks aimed at forming a new Executive, without a budget being agreed. 

It has been possible to discern a few shards of hope in what has been a difficult and turbulent few days for Northern Ireland. Scope reviews an historic week, firstly Brexit. 

The publication of a ground-breaking report into the state of democracy in Northern Ireland this week could not have been better timed. 

In the week Martin McGuinness passed away, Scope examines the nature of redemption by looking at another man's story - double murderer Erwin James, who spoke in Belfast on Monday - and asks what society wants from its prisons.

In the second of two articles on important legal judgments in the news this week, Nick Garbutt examines the implications of a Twitter libel case. 

There were two landmark legal cases of great interest to the sector this week.  Here Nick Garbutt examines the case of a woman who left all her money to charity, disinheriting her daughter. 

Integration is an oversubscribed aspect of our education system but continually faces barriers to growth. The burial of a new, independent and departmentally-commissioned report is just the latest example.

It is time that quieter voices were heard in the current political debate. 

Shannon Yee suffered acquired brain injury nearly a decade ago, before composing a show that puts the audience through her experience. She tells Scope about recovery and some of the direct benefits of artistic expression.

Northern Ireland is missing out on hundreds of millions of pounds of regeneration money, partly as a result of the refusal by Stormont to devolve power to councils.