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Social care writer Terry Philpot warns that the voluntary sector should guard against losing its independence.

Nothing concentrates the mind like a spending review, as the voluntary sector is about to learn. But this is not about some reordering of the community fund or even about how local authority spending impacts on the sector. No, the sector's collective consciousness is being brought sharply into focus by the government's decision to look at voluntary organisations' contribution as part of the 2002 spending review.

The fact that the government wants to look at the sector in the context of public service delivery may be an encouraging indication that it is being treated more seriously than is customary for politicians. But it also suggests that the government may want to see the sector even more fully integrated into service provision than was implied in the NHS and Community Care Act 1990, which ushered in the mixed economy of care and the contract culture.

Is this a good thing? One might have believed that Labour meant more than Conservative business as usual when Best Value emphasised public and voluntary partnerships. Then in November 1998 came the Compact, which aims to build the partnership between government and the voluntary sector, and, last January, chancellor Gordon Brown spoke of "the biggest transformation in the relationship between the state and voluntary action for a century". Tony Blair's warm words about faith communities in recent months only serve to underline the point.

Thus, the spending review's wish to look at the sector's contribution is about how geared up the sector is to deliver the government's agenda on public services. And there's the rub - is that what the voluntary sector is here for? Alas, we are not really sure why it is here beyond the usual bromides that it and others issue about adding value, offering a qualitatively different contribution and so on.

And so, while responding to the government's wish to draw the broader picture as part of the review by March 2002, the sector needs to think about what those vague congratulatory and self-congratulatory statements really do and can mean in a modern welfare state. How much does it wants to be painted with the brush of "public service" as opposed to the colours of its own distinctiveness? How can it protect its independence? Does a seat by the No 10 fireside imperil its advocacy role? This is not so much a matter of biting the hand that feeds you, as being aware that the hand that feeds you might also be that which suffocates you.