Thursday, 9 November 2006

Another early start

There’s a lot to do following last night’s trustees meeting. I am out of the office all day tomorrow (Friday), and I am so looking forward to a relaxing weekend free from worry about outstanding work. So, despite arriving home at nearly 10:00 pm last night, I arrived for work at 7:30 am this morning. I’m not looking for Brownie points (what would I do them?), but I am determined to have a relaxing weekend.

Local services for local people

I had a welcome call from Jim, Chair of Watford Shop Mobility. He explained the funding issues ShopMo faces, particularly related to their funding, from Watford Borough Council (WBC). Like many charities, Watford ShopMo has seen its support from the local authority gradually fall as despite rising costs, they have received no grant increase for four years. Now they are facing an actual reduction in funding.

It would be unfair to go into specific details but the general issues are common to many groups in Watford and elsewhere: past lack of clarity about exactly what ShopMo is funded to deliver, questions over how activities should be measured, no existing agreement on how community benefits is assessed, and so on and so forth. One recurring issue is whether WBC should fund services that are accessed by people from outside the borough. This is a particularly thorny issue in Watford, which draws in many shoppers and workers from neighbouring local authorities that simply do not live up to their responsibilities toward their local voluntary sectors.

But it must cut both ways: The local major shopping centre, Harlequin, provides ShopMo with free premises because they recognise that the scheme attracts into Watford people who would otherwise shop elsewhere. Indeed Jim himself lives outside the borough yet freely devotes a vast amount of his time to providing services within Watford.

Meanwhile, ShopMo is in the difficult position familiar to voluntary organisations since time immemorial: do you organise a campaign to protect your funding and so alienate the authority whose support you most need?

We ourselves have a WBC six-monthly monitoring visit in early December. In the summer, just as I took up my post, WBC did undertake to treat CVS’s grant outside the main funding programme, and then involve us more in their general grant programme. I thought that this would mean early agreement on CVS’s grant, discussions on general funding criteria, the sharing of information, the development of agreed terms and conditions, and joint monitoring arrangements. But no. CVS seems to be in the same boat as its member organisations, and we know no more about the overall picture than any other group does. We are reliant on our members keeping us informed, and of course few have the time as they are locked in intense discussions with their funders.

WBC are taking their decisions at their cabinet meeting on 20 November, and they have promised that we will receive a copy of the full detailed proposals five days before the meeting, when the cabinet papers are anyway released to the general public.

Jim was not asking for CVS intervention, and nor did he have a specific question; he’s smart enough to know there are no easy answers. I think he just wanted to talk through the issues with a sympathetic outsider. I hope to learn much more about local experiences at our Voluntary Sector Alliance meeting on 22 November.

I spent most of the remainder of the day following up yesterday’s trustees meeting. Most of this work related to a new contract we have with Connexions to provide Information Advice and Guidance (IAG) to 13-19 year-olds from minority ethnic groups. This project was delivered by another charity that is now closing, and the contract is passing to WCVS – at least for the time being. I signed the contract approved by the trustees, met with the existing worker who is transferring to WCVS (lots of TUPE legal issues), sent a “confirmation of appointment” letter to a lady in Luton, spoke to another potential employee for who we are awaiting CRB clearance, chased up Herts County Council for the CRB clearance, spoke to CVS staff about accommodating the new workers, arranged a meeting with the Connexions contract manager, began organising telephones and computers for the project staff, and made some changes to the network to accommodate new work groups.

Partnerships

I also spent some time reviewing our bid to the Big Lottery’s Reaching Communities fund. WCVS is leading this bid, but it is a partnership bid between ourselves, the YMCA, and Watford Learning Partnership. The aim of the project is to deliver a range of informal community-based education over five years including: training for voluntary groups, training for voluntary groups taking over the management of local authority community centres, short informal courses for “hard to reach” groups, and courses targeted at young people not in education, employment or training. The bid has passed the first stage of scrutiny and now we are reaching the deadline for submitting our second stage bid.

Outsiders may perhaps not appreciate that one of the great strengths of the voluntary sector is its ability to accommodate a large number of flexible partnerships. This programme could really help consolidate relationships between local voluntary and statutory agencies, and fits perfectly alongside our new Connexions contract. Co-ordinating five-year budgets between three major partners is always a bit tricky, but was managed with help from our fundraising advisor Anne, and from Roger of the YMCA.

Untypically, I managed to leave the office about 6:30 pm, leaving our Volunteer Centre organiser Helen still working hard preparing for a volunteering workshop she is holding on Friday.

Reading and puzzles

At home I finally finish reading The Conquest of Peru, a long and comprehensive study of the last days of the Inca empire and its conquest by Spanish adventurers. The book was written by William Prescott, and was originally published in 1847. Having finally arrived at p602, I thought I still had another 40-odd pages to go, but discovered that the last 40 pages were appendices all presented in the original Spanish. I excused myself the task of attempting these. I soon lost count of the number of revolutions and counter-revolutions that the early Spanish settlers inflicted on each other and on the indigenous population. Strangely, what sticks in my mind most is the short biography of William Prescott in the introduction. He appears never to have visited Peru. He was an American, and was bound for a career in law until he was blinded while at Harvard, by someone throwing a bread roll that struck him in the eye. I wonder if this is the incident that is held in the collective memory of so many teachers and parents and Health and Safety advisors and which has spoiled so many a food fight.

Before turning in, Jackie and I tackled another Daily Telegraph crossword. Lately, there always seems to be one clue that completely confounds us. I invested 20-30 minutes to tackle a crossword because it’s a form of relaxation. It’s a little frustrating to fail to complete a crossword, but I feel ok if my failure arises just from my own stupidity or lack of imagination. But I feel cheated if I discover that the answer to 26-across is xanthemia (what?) or that the clue “Blue elephant reads the classics” is somehow meant to suggest the answer night watchman (why? how?). It’s like watching an hour long episode of Midsummer Murders only to discover that the postmistress did, after all, die of natural causes. Or reading Agatha Christie and finding that the character of the murderer is only introduced in the final few pages. What’s the point? Where’s the satisfaction in that? There ought to be some national quality standards for crossword compilers. Or perhaps compilers who frustrate should be forced to publish an apology, or to carry a government health warning. My wonderful lovely partner Jackie tells me there is a simple solution. It’s called “Get a life”.