Voluntary Action Lewisham

The Charity Commission - in collaboration with Mencap - has published a guide for trustees with learning disabilities.

The guide covers much of the material in the Charity Commissions guide CC3 and is available from the Charity Commission website.

More details can be found either on the Charity Commission website or in an article for Third Sector

Funding of up to £10,000 a year for three years is available to organisations working with young people

Deadlines: 15 April, 15 July and 15 October 2010

Any not-for-profit organisation working with children and young people under the age of 18 can apply, with some exclusions such as projects carrying out medical research or promoting religion. Decisions are expected to be made within 14 weeks of the closing date of each round.

For more information www.bbc.co.uk/pudsey/grants/smallgrants

LVSC is having a learning and networking event to help Trustees, Managers, Advisors and HR officers implement better HR practice in the voluntary and community sector.

This event aims to help trustees, management committee members, chief executives, managers, development workers and advisors  implement better HR practice in the voluntary and community sector.

Hear from experts in employment law, HR and management

Benefit from practical workshops on topics ranging from employment status and tax, supporting and managing employees with mental health problems, recruitment, developing your skills as a manager, to avoiding redundancy

Speakers and workshop leaders include Victoria Cook of Bates Wells & Braithwaite, Cathy Busani of Happy Ltd, Helen Elliott of Sayer Vincent, Shirley Briggs and Clare Knights of the PEACe advice service .

One-to-one advice surgeries with the PEACe team are also available (bookable in advance, subject to availability)

Share experiences and network with colleagues from other frontline and second tier organisations.  For more details contact 020 3349 8911 www.lvsc.org.uk/peaceconference

Following on from the insert with the February edition of Grapevine we are pleased to report that work on the project VAL is undertaking for Lewisham Council is now underway.

Bids will be invited in two categories of up to £2,000 and up to £10,000 to support activities that bring together people from different social groups, ethnic backgrounds or communities of interest, and intergenerational activities. 

Application Procedure

The grants will be awarded using a participatory budgeting process during which groups develop their projects and present their project proposals at an event to be held for participating groups in June.  In between groups submitting expressions of interest and the participatory budgeting event VAL will be working with groups to develop their proposals and their presentations for the event.

More Information

VAL is now inviting groups to contact us for more details and guidelines and an expression of interest form.  We will be holding an information event in March which will give groups an opportunity to find out more about the process, the support  available and meet the project team.

For further information, an expression of interest form and details of the information event in March please contact Elaine Sammarco.  Alternatively leave a message and your contact details for Elaine at VAL on 020 8314 9411 e-mail: elaine@valewisham.org.uk

The London Voluntary Services Council (LVSC) are repeating their survey of the effects of the recession on the voluntary and community sector in London.

According to their website:

Last year’s survey found a strong increase in demand for charitable services and a great deal of fear and uncertainty as to how the capital’s voluntary and community groups would cope.

LVSC and its partners used this information to raise the profile of your work with government and other funders in the region, including London Councils, the Mayor, Government Office and London Funders.

Since publication of our July report many of its findings and predications, including psychological affects and other examples of social fallout, have been borne out by facts on the ground.

This year we revisit the original survey themes - but we will also begin to map how widely-anticipated reductions in public expenditure will affect London’s charities and their ability to support Londoners.

Click here to access the survey and to see the findings of last year's survey.

The survey closes at the end of February and the results will be released in March.

The Lewisham Compact – an agreement between the Council (and other statutory agencies) and the voluntary & community sector about how we work together was agreed and launched in 2001. It continues to form the foundations of our relationship.

The on-going development of the Compact and oversight of Compact activity is led by the Compact Steering Group, administered by VAL.

The Steering Group comprises representatives from Lewisham Council’s various Directorates, NHS Lewisham and voluntary and community sector organisations. It meets bi-monthly, normally at 2pm on a weekday (day varies).

At present we are short of voluntary & community representatives – and would welcome 2 or 3 more volunteers. At a time when the partnership between statutory and voluntary agencies is becoming ever-more important, it is vital that we have strong VCS representation. A revised National Compact has just been issued and we will need to look at this early in 2010.

If you would like to volunteer to be part of this group, or want to find out more information, please contact Martin on 020 8314 8876 or martin@valewisham.org.uk

The School for Social Entrepreneurs have added a list of the top 10 podcasts for entrepreneurs to their website. Although some are very much business orientated, there are also some - such as the Social Innovation Conversations - that are much more socially orientated.

See:
Top Ten Podcasts on Social Entreprenership

Lewisham Pensioners' Forum launched their new website on the 3rd December. They can be found at www.lewishampensionersforum.org.

The new Joint Director of Public Health Dr. Danny Ruta has recently visited VAL and shown a keen interest in spending a day meeting some of the VCS groups who work within the health and social care field.

We have arranged Wednesday 20th January 2010 for Danny to meet 4-5 groups.

Would you like your group or organisation to be visited on that day? If so please send the following details to me by noon on Monday 21st December 2009

• Name of contact person
• Name and address of group 
• Who your service users are
• The services you provide

We hope to see a different range of services on the day and will let you know by Wednesday 23rd of December if we will be visiting you.

If you are interested contact Rosalind on 020 8314 9841 or rosalind@valewisham.org.uk

Please consider nominating yourself as a Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) Rep on Lewisham’s Children and Young People’s Strategic Partnership for 2010!

This is an exciting opportunity to engage in strategic decision making in Lewisham on behalf of our sector.

For detailed information about the Partnership, the Rep’s role and the time commitment you would need to make, please see the attached Guide.

Nominations are open to all individuals who work or volunteer in a VCS organisation in Lewisham. Your organisation MUST be a full or associate member of VAL (for more information on this please see www.valewisham.org.uk).

Partnership Boards

There are fifteen Boards and Panels for which you could stand:

• Children and Young People’s Strategic Partnership Board
• CYP Joint Commissioning Group
• Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB)
• 14-19 Strategy Forum
• Children’s Centres and Extended Services Board
• Integrated Youth Support Services Board
• Child Poverty Working Group
• Disability Multi-Agency Group
• Emotional and Mental Health Working Group
• Healthy Eating/Healthy Lifestyles Working Group
• Family Support and Parenting Board
• Play Partnership Board
• Teenage Pregnancy, Parenthood and Sexual Health Programme Strategic Board
• Youth Crime Management Board
• Children’s Workforce Development Working Group

Each Board/Group has spaces for two VCS Reps, except the LSCB, which only has one.

You may nominate yourself as a Rep on more than one Board. Please complete a separate nomination form for each.

Nomination Procedure

To nominate yourself, please return completed Nomination Forms to Kate English by 23rd November 2009. Reps will be elected by secret ballot at our next CYP Forum meeting on 9th December at the Albany, Deptford.

Please don’t hesitate to contact Kate by phone to discuss this opportunity further, if you wish. Tel: 020 8314 7018.

From April 2010, voluntary and community organisations that play recorded music at events, or in public places, will be required to pay for a license. This is intended to cover the rights of music producers and performers.

Update: 25 August 2009

Unfortunately the VAL website was not available for most of yesterday due to our hosts needing to carry out work on our web server. They have carried out temporary repairs, but will need to carry our more permanent repairs meaning that our website may be temporarily unavailable towards the end of this week.

Update: 28 August 2009

The problems we experienced at the start of the week seem to be ongoing. We apologise for any inconvenience this causes. We are in ongoing discussions with our host and hope to resolve these problems as quickly as possible.

Update: 02 September 2009

We have now been told that our website host will be replacing the server at some point during this week. This is likely to mean that the website will not be available for a number of hours, but we hope to minimise this as much as possible.

THE LEARNING PARTNERSHIP PROJECT

The Learning Partnership Project was launched by Voluntary Action Lewisham in August 2008. Its aim was to develop a partnership approach which would use resources more effectively to deliver a package of support to the voluntary and community sector (VCS) in Lewisham.

The project had two key elements; to facilitate access to training and learning opportunities for VCS staff that could enable career development and aid organizational sustainability. This involved working with other voluntary and community organisations in the borough as well as statutory and private training providers.  The project also built on previously developed relationships and actively engaged with and fostered relationships with appropriate agencies, working to implement referral processes and systems to meet individual needs.

The second was to promote economic growth within the VCS by encouraging the sector to be more enterprising. Working with Simple Business Solutions and the London Borough of Lewisham a comprehensive programme of support to Lewisham’s VCS was established and delivered to equip organisations in maximising their resources and reducing their dependency on grant funding.

The Training Programme

The Training Programme was designed to provide a wide range of courses that would provide learners with personal development opportunities for learners, capacity support for organisations and important legal information for the VCS. Courses offered and the numbers that attended have been included in the table below:

Learner’s Feedback

1. How to Win Funders Attention
   • Learners felt that more courses should be offered in this area.
   • That detailed documentation should be provided for reference.
2. Reaching the Hard to Reach
   • All learners joining this course did so in order to widen the reach to more excluded groups
   • The course attracted a number of staff from the statutory organisations whose role it is to work with harder to reach groups.
3. Managing and Sustaining Community Buildings
   • The course was described as one of the most ‘helpful courses ever attended.’
   • Participants felt that information given would help to improve their organisation.
4. Quality Assurance
   • After attending this course participants felt better equipped to choose the appropriate quality mark for the organisation.
   • Most participants said their immediate course of action after completing the course was to apply for funding to carry out their quality assurance.
5. Roles and Responsibilities of a Management Committee
   • Course was attended entirely my management committee members all of whom stated they were unaware of most of their roles and responsibilities as the course had highlighted.
6. Train the Trainer
   • Some attendants expressed the desire to pursue an accredited qualification on the subject.
7. Marketing Master class
   • Attendants felt that they had gained tools they could bring back to their organisation.
   • Some felt that the subject was too large and needed to be broken down into smaller modules.

Promoting Economic Growth by being more enterprising

VAL commissioned Simple Business Solutions to run a Community Organisations Capacity Building Pilot Project. The objective of this project was to practically help 5  targeted voluntary and community sector organisations (VCSOs)  in Lewisham to become better positioned and equipped to maximise their resources and eventually reduce their dependency on grants. The pilot project started in August 2008 and ended July 2009. Simple Business Solutions (SBS) has been providing support to the following VCSOs:

A number of areas that required attention were identified and an action plan drawn up. For each group offering them a menu of support, advice, and assistance.

This came in the form of :

• 1-2-1 advice and coaching sessions
• Management document review
• Financial reviews
• Ideas generation sessions
• Business support
• Signposting to: other organisations, courses and training opportunities (e.g. custom or offered by VAL, commissioning or funding opportunities).

This work brought to light the different types of problems and challenges that the organisations were facing.

These included:

Resource – time, money and people. All of the organisations claimed to suffer to some degree from a shortage of these three things. Funding and the need for income diversification was a factor in the creation of this pilot. In some organisations, much of people’s time and effort is focused on identifying and performing paperwork for small-scale grants thus preventing any form of action towards developing a strategic direction.

Some organisations have human resource in the form of volunteer staff and yet are unable to make the most use of them. Often the reason for this is that operational management is focused on the low level detail of day to day activity and are therefore unable to take a step back and actually manage the organisation.

Fear and apathy. Many of the problems stem from people’s fear of the unknown. Management sometimes seem reluctant to try something different. This fear can come from a lack of experience, knowledge or skills to take on what is required. There can also be a reluctance to delegate as this may feel like a loss of control. SBS have adopted the approach of taking small steps so as not to overwhelm management.

Decision Making. The decision making process in most of the organisations is slow and sometimes over cautious. The level of change that will move these organisations forward requires less risk averse management or boards. SBS have taken a bottom up approach by helping with some fundamental processes to make the overall running more efficient. This will need to be complimented with a top down initiative that works directly with the boards to get things done.

Jacqui Henry
Learning Partnership Officer
August 2009

The Greater London Authority have launched a new website providing statistics on a wide range of social and economic issues from population size and life expectancy to which underground lines carry the most passengers.

Interesting facts about Lewisham include:

Voting for the LSP elections closed at midday on Tuesday. Joel Hartfield from the LSP team supervised the ballot count.

As a result of the ballot, the 5 organisations with the most votes were: