Agenda item

To receive a presentation on how the VCS Alliance can work with the public sector to ensure better engagement with the voluntary sector and communities resulting in better outcomes for both. 

29.1           The Mayor invited Mr Matt Lennard and Dr Claire Mould of the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) Alliance to make their presentation to the Council.

29.2           The presentation covered the following main points:

·               Alliance and the VCS – independent voice for the VCS community in the County. Could be challenging at times due to the diverse nature of the 4,000 organisations which included 2,500 registered charities and 1,500 informal community groups. The VCS was an independent advocate for the sector with the sole aim of providing a voice for the voluntary and community sector in Gloucestershire – the organisation included 12 Trustees; four Board Directors; and three staff members. The Alliance worked well in effectively establishing a relationship between the voluntary and community sector and the County Council, the Local Enterprise Partnership and the Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group. In terms of staff, the Head of Operations and the Project Coordinator were paid for by Gloucestershire County Council and the Health and Wellbeing Officer was paid for by the Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group.

·               Our Function – through advocacy and representation – this meant attendance at meetings throughout the County and acting as a conduit for the voluntary and community sector; through information provision - using newsletters, local regional and national bulletins; and targeted consultation; and through partnership building – this was the hardest part of the Alliance’s function with one of the consistent themes being to ‘work better together to survive and thrive’.

·               Forums - there were quarterly forums which VCS members attended to listen to people that commissioned services e.g. health and wellbeing; stronger, safer communities; children and young people; and art and culture.

·               Future Work – the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner had recently joined which was great news for the VCS in terms of relationships. This had provided an engagement officer, the Police and Crime Plan and sought to link up projects like the Aston Project. The Alliance was also looking at better engagement with District Councils and it was working with a team at Tewkesbury Borough Council to create a model for this.

·               Benefits of Engaging the VCS in Enabling Active Communities – VCS could help reach those who experienced the greatest health inequalities with particular emphasis on engagement with those people who were less frequently heard. The VCS could also often have an impact well beyond what statutory services could achieve alone as it understood specific local needs, had high levels of trust and engagement with local communities and had the ability to work across multiple services. The VCS was not just about providing services as it was expertise that was needed and tapping into that could have just as much impact. There was often misunderstanding of what the VCS could provide as it was not only about volunteers but also about people that were at the top of their chosen field, with an absolute understanding of their particular area of expertise, and that type of knowledge should not be underestimated.

29.3           The Mayor thanked the VCS representatives for their informative presentation and indicated that he regularly received emails from them about funding lists which he passed onto smaller groups within his locality; he felt this was a reminder that there was some funding out there which was a great help. He invited questions from Members.

29.4           During the discussion which ensued, a Member questioned where the funding for the VCS Alliance came from and how the District Councils could be sure that the expertise was valid and that there were no conflicts of interest. In response, the VCS Operations Manager advised that he and the Project Coordinator were paid for by Gloucestershire County Council and the Health and Wellbeing Officer was paid for by the Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group. In addition, Dr Mould advised that the Alliance had a very low cost base which was helpful; however, it should also be borne in mind that it could not operate with a “slush” fund so any additional money, after salaries were paid, was fed back into the service. In terms of expertise, it was not possible to ‘vet’ everyone specifically but there were some organisations which had a particular remit and were considered experts in their field e.g. there was a quality kite mark system in place for social prescribing so anyone the GPs referred to had to have attained that. As a general rule, the VCS Alliance could say whether an organisation had an interest in a particular area and that organisation would then go to the relevant forum; once all parties were in a room together it would be down to the individuals to discuss and see if any information they shared was helpful. In terms of how the VCS worked in practice, the VCS Operations Manager explained that it worked closely with the teams at Tewkesbury Borough Council, both via the Communities Forum and on other County-wide groups on which the VCS was represented. Part of the reason that the VCS was starting to build its relationship with Tewkesbury Borough Council first was that those links were already in place with the Community Development Team and it was considered that this would offer the best platform from which to launch a closer relationship with the Districts.

29.5           The VCS Chair, Dr Mould, explained that the Alliance was not a new initiative and she had chaired it since its inception six years ago. In terms of the information being provided to the Council through the current presentation, she explained that the idea was to share the exciting things that were already happening. No other Districts hosted Forums as yet so Tewkesbury really was leading the way and the idea was that the model would be taken to the other Districts in the County so that relationships could be improved across the board. The Chief Executive explained that the VCS included a large number of organisations which worked to support the community and were highly valued. Some worked without much contact with anyone except those they served; whereas others worked a lot more with the Council - the Alliance represented all of those organisations and helped to get their work known across the County. He felt the Alliance offered the Council a great way to improve its relationships with those organisations that worked ‘on the ground’ within the communities and he was of the view that Tewkesbury Borough should be pleased that it had been chosen as the first District Council to work with the VCS in this way.

29.6           In response to a Member’s request for an example of the achievements made by the VCS Alliance, the Council was advised that the Alliance had been instrumental in getting millions of pounds of funding into the County from growth deal funding – the funding had been secured as the bid had shown independent and clear examples of how the VCS would make a social impact with the funding. The ‘Building Better Opportunities’ initiative had been set up and the project was going really well.  On a more local basis, the VCS Operations Manager explained that he sat on a drug and alcohol briefing group for the County Council; recently the contract had been renewed but there had been no one local organisation that was large enough to bid for it; instead the VCS groups had collectively bid for the tender and, whilst the bid had not been successful, the VCS groups had formed a sub-group which was still influencing the project.

29.7           The Mayor offered his thanks for an extremely interesting and informative presentation and, accordingly, it was

                  RESOLVED          That the presentation from the Voluntary and Community                                   Sector (VCS) Alliance be NOTED.