Compact Voice, the body charged with representing the voluntary and community sector in England on the agreement with government, has produced a pack to support participation in the debate on the Compact. ‘Framing the debate on the future of the Compact’ is in pdf, 76KB, at http://www.compactvoice.org.uk/module_images/Framing%20the%20Debate2.pdf, and an online questionnaire is at http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/compactquestionnaire. Respond by 10th November. The Commission for the Compact’s discussion document (pdf, 47kb) is at http://www.thecompact.org.uk/shared_asp_files/GFSR.asp?NodeID=101783. It has also just published research findings, ‘The State of Independence: A research study into independence and the Compact’. This finds that while The Compact has created an environment which encourages and supports central government departments to respect the independence of the third sector, there are still challenges ahead.

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2 October 2008
© VoluntaryNews

More than 70 organisations from the voluntary sector, business and government are collaborating on a major new volunteering initiative. The organisations, which include the National Trust, the Institute of Directors and the Department of Health, will attempt to implement the recommendations made by the Commission on the Future of Volunteering. The commission, chaired by Baroness Julia Neuberger, was established in March 2006 to develop a long-term vision for volunteering in England. Its final report in January said government could do much more to encourage people to make volunteering “part of the DNA of our society” and made a series of far-reaching recommendations. Volunteering England, the body that is leading the implementation of the commission’s recommendations, has invested £100,000 of its reserves in setting up six action teams (see box). Each organisation involved will work with whichever team focuses on their areas of expertise. Justin Davis Smith, chief executive of Volunteering England, said the teams were “swimming with the tide” because volunteering was high on the political agenda. “It’s a golden opportunity to make some changes,” he said. “The overall ambition is to make a fundamental change to the future of volunteering.” Each team will set its own targets, but these will not revolve around recruiting volunteers. “I’m not interested in setting targets about numbers,” said Davis Smith. “It’s more about getting the framework right to help volunteering move forward.” He said Volunteering England’s £100,000 investment was a one-off payment to take advantage of a 12-month window to build on the momentum created by the commission. “It’s about action now,” he said. “We don’t want to deliberate for the next 12 months and come up with more recommendations.”

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6 October 2008
© Volunteering Merseyside

Sometimes the question needs to be asked: is your health or wellbeing partnership actually leading to improved health for local people and communities? Durham University’s School of Health, supported by the IDeA’s Healthy Communities team, is researching into the effectiveness of partnerships. The focus is on how partnerships are improving health and tackling health inequalities through local area agreements (LAAs). Researchers at Durham University have conducted a systematic literature review into partnerships in public health. A summary of this review has just been published. The findings will interest anyone who has responsibility for, or sits on, a local health partnership. Most literature on partnerships focused on processes and structures, not outcomes. Area-based partnerships did not achieve better improvements to population health in contrast to comparator areas. Constantly changing priorities and structures may have a detrimental impact on partnerships. Some partnerships suffer from not having appropriate or adequate financial or human resources. In some partnerships, many of the targets focused on partnership processes, not health outcomes.
Local ‘champions’ were seen as crucial in partnerships. Over the next two years, the project will follow up this review by studying a number of council and primary care trust (PCT) health partnerships. The team will be looking for evidence of actual improvements in health outcomes for local people and communities. Partnerships in Public Health: A Healthy Outcome? (PDF, 6 pages, 38KB): http://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/public.health/news/PartnershipWorkinginPublicHealth-SummaryLiteratureReviewFindings.pdf

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2 October 2008
© IDeA

Senior civil servants and sector figures agree that more collaborative working, alliances, acquisitions and mergers in the sector are inevitable in the current economic climate, according to Stephen Bubb, chief executive of Acevo. Bubb was speaking after an ‘away day’ he helped to organise last Friday that brought together 14 permanent secretaries of Government departments, cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell and 15 prominent Acevo members.

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1 October 2008
© Paul Jump, Third Sector Online

Ordnance Survey has pledged to raise £75,000 for the British Heart Foundation through a series of sponsored events organised by the charity. The partnership began last weekend when Ordnance Survey staff took part in the British Heart Foundation ’s Heart of Surrey Walk. The mapping agency will support a series of walks, intended to boost heart health, until December 2009. Sarah Townsend.

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18 September 2008
© Third Sector Online

The British Red Cross is to support a two-year partnership to improve first aid and citizenship skills in young people. Involving 18 charities, Girlguiding UK’s Changing the World scheme will see young girls work to learn more about issues facing today’s communities. The British Red Cross is to contribute a series of eight downloadable resources, entitled The Power of Humanity, which will cover topics such as responding to emergencies, first aid skills and humanitarian citizenship. Mairi Allan, head of schools and community education at the charity, commented: “We want to mobilise the power of young people to be humanitarian citizens wherever they are - and the Girl Guides share our vision.” Charities which are involved in the Changing the World programme include Asthma UK, Friends of the Earth, the National Deaf Children’s Society and the World Wide Fund for Nature. Each organisation will supply Girlguiding UK with activity packs to educate them on a topical issue and teach them ways to take more effective action.

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22 September 2008
© RISE

Three charities have combined to stage joint events at this year’s party political conferences - a move they say will save them two-thirds of their usual costs. Scope, Age Concern England and Mencap are collaborating on fringe events at each of the main political party conferences. Each charity is paying £4,000 for the venture, instead of up to £12,000 each if they went individually.

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18 September 2008
© Third Sector

The Local Area Agreement (LAA) set out priorities for a local area, lasting 3-years aiming to ‘deliver sustainable communities through better outcomes for local people’. LAA’s aim to improve central and local government relations, enhance efficiency and strengthen opportunity for partnership. LAAs are intended to devolve decision making from Whitehall to the local area and reduce bureaucracy. Successful LAAs: Simplify central funding; Join up public services more effectively; Allow greater flexibility for developing local solutions and targeting funding towards local priorities. Local Area Agreements are in part about enabling grassroots community projects to collaborate with larger organisations, the local authority and the public sector: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=QxIBww28z5BzZ8Deg2AuiA_3d_3d

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12 September 2008
© Church Urban Fund

The Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) and partners in the Region, including Making Space,  Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP), LSC, Job Centre Plus,  and a number of NHS organisations including pct’s and mental health provider trusts and the TUC have today launched the Regional Mental Health Leadership Group. Poor mental health is one of the greatest causes of social exclusion in the region and you are significantly less likely to be in employment if you have a mental health condition. Out of the 410,000 people claiming incapacity benefits in the Northwest, 40% are recorded as having a mental health problem and up to 165,000 people are claiming benefits primarily because of a mental health condition. The new Leadership Group will look at ways of reducing this and getting people into or back to work. The group will operate at a strategic level working with partners and taking responsibility for three strands of dealing with mental health and worklessness in the Northwest. The three strands are: People with severe and enduring mental health problems e.g. Bi Polar Disorder; People with less severe and shorter term mental health problems e.g. depression
; Workplace Health i.e. reducing the number of people having to leave employment.

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11 September 2008
© NWDA

This document provides guidance to councils and their community planning partners on how to improve outcomes for looked after children and young people and care leavers, through better fulfilling their corporate parent function.

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5 September 2008
© Scottish Government