Tuesday, 6 November 2007

After yesterday’s excellent WOW meeting, this morning started with a meeting of Watford CVS’s accommodation working group. The last few meetings have promised great things and this morning we took another important step forward.

After the meeting I had expected to attend a meeting of the Watford LSP but instead I drove to Wheathamstead. There, I attended a selection panel for a tender we had submitted to Herts County Council to provide a county-wide advocacy and support service to children who have experienced racist discrimination or racist bullying.

The process was very thorough and there were elements of the process I enjoyed. But toward the end, it seemed that more and more expectations were being placed on the contract without any additional resourcing.

Could we undertake to provide cover if the recruited worker is absent through illness? We’ll do our best. Could we guarantee it? No, we couldn’t I admitted.

Could we undertake to provide interpreters for the service? No, we couldn’t. Why couldn’t we?

Could we ensure that every parent in Hertfordshire is aware of the service – including those with no children currently at school? No, we couldn’t. Why couldn’t we?

Could we also address the problem of children who simply aren’t attending school? Isn’t this another whole big area?

These people are expected to deliver the best possible deal for HCC and its ratepayers, so I forgive them.

But it was a bit disconcerting. At one point, I thought the mood needed lightening and I made a joke about poor people being more racist than the educated middle classes. In the circumstances, this was foolish; far from lightening the mood I noticed several faces becoming distinctly thunderous.

It was a valuable learning exercise and I wait with interest to learn the outcome of the tender process. The advocacy service is of course very important and very serious. But the contract will have an almost entirely neutral impact on WCVS: it would be nice to extend our range of expertise and our funding base, but the contract is not highly profitable and it certainly has the potential to create new demands on our resources. I hope it doesn't sound flippant to say that I won't be losing any sleep over the outcome.