Wednesday, 31 January 2007

I arrived at the office about 7:30 am with Brian who has come in to help fill a skip with rubbish.

I had some things I needed to run through before the 9:30 am Voluntary Sector Alliance meeting. The meeting had a good turnout and my presentation on WCVS’s strategic plan was well received. I highlighted our four key aims:
- making our services more accessible;
- being a “one stop shop” for local voluntary organisations needing advice and support;
- developing key strategic relationships;
- providing a “coherent development framework” for the local VCS.

People understood what we are trying to do and there was an intelligent discussion after the presentation. I proposed that the “informal” Voluntary Sector Alliance meetings evolved into more of a task-focused structure that acted as a sort of clearing house for voluntary sector strategies for quality assurance, carers, voluntary sector training, community cohesion, fundraising, community transport, and so on.

There was widespread support for the overall WCVS strategy. But there was also a consensus that the VSA should remain as a sort of informal “meeting place” for voluntary groups and that WCVS itself ought to co-ordinate the strategic development work recruiting specific interested groups as necessary.

I think this was meant to be a vote of confidence in WCVS. We will only find out for certain once I try to recruit “specific interested groups as necessary”.

At some point during the meeting, Bobby arrived and helped Brian fill the skip. After the meeting, I received an e-mail from Mary Green (CEO at Three Rivers CVS) about her lottery bid. Only on Monday I was urging Mary to prepare herself for (yet) another delay from the Big Lottery. What do I know? Well, I don’t know the fate of our Lottery bid yet. I called our Grants Officer at the Big Lottery (the lovely Fiona) but she said that she herself couldn’t access the information and I’d have to wait for the letter to arrive. I am eager to find out, but it seems I have to be patient a little longer: maybe the letter will arrive tomorrow. Fiona promised that if the letter doesn’t arrive tomorrow she will find out for us “one way or another”.

I suspect that Fiona does know the fate of our bid and simply didn’t want to tell us over the telephone because it was bad news. I do hope I am wrong.

Meanwhile, I received a letter from Home-Start confirming their cut in funding from Herts County Council. I called Vivienne there to offer commiserations. I also arranged a meeting with her for next week to pilot our mini “health check” process.

By 3:00 pm, the boys had finished loading the skip. We all drove off back to WGC and I took the train into London for my trustees’ meeting at the Disability Law Service. By the time I reached Whitechapel, I felt distinctly unwell and briefly considered returning directly to WGC. But I persevered and was rewarded by a very good meeting. DLS is a “niche” charity providing specialist legal advice and representation to disabled people and their carers. I learnt a lot about the problems DLS faces with the Lottery (Advice Plus) and changes to Legal Service contracts etc. Our usual chair, Joanne, was absent and in her stead I managed to complete all the business by exactly 8:00 pm.

But I now felt much worse. About 10:00 pm I arrived home and immediately felt much better. Then I saw the Spurs / Arsenal result and immediately felt much worse. Then Jackie fussed over me a bit and put me to bed and I felt better again.