Thursday, 29 May 2008

The local PCT has a total of £20k in the current year to support community-based health initiatives in Watford and Three Rivers.

Rather than designing a grants application system and have groups bid competitively, I suggested that we try to run workshops where interested groups could themselves help assess different options and decide on projects. I am pleased that the PCT responded very positively to this suggestion and today we met to consider how this scheme might actually work.

We considered the Participatory Budgeting models put forward by the Department for Communities and Local Government and these were rather daunting and for such small amounts (initially at least) we wanted something more streamlined and eventually we reached agreement on a simple workshop model - hopefully there will be more on this later!

In the afternoon, I met with our Treasurer John Casstles to talk through our trustee report and at the end I promised to e-mail a draft report to John later in the day. But then I received a call from one of our member organisations facing a funding crisis of sorts and I spent the rest of the day and early evening working with them to see what might help overcome their difficulties.