RAISE’s flagship project, “A Healthier Perspective”, run in partnership with NHS South of England, the Big Lottery Fund and 3 Councils for Voluntary Service, has reached the end of the initial survey phase. Data has been collected to “map” the voluntary sector providers in the 3 test areas (West Berkshire, East Hampshire and Southampton).

Workshops with local VCS providers are being held over the next month to unpick the findings, and to understand the range of potential solutions to address some of the issues that have been emerging: changing funding patterns, the challenge of demonstrating the impact and value of services, marketing services to commissioners, building relationships with commissioners.

We are also meeting directly with a range of commissioners to understand their perspective of the sector, and to explore what can be done to involve voluntary sector providers in the design and delivery of services. All of this will be consolidated at an event at the end of May for those in the 3 pilot areas, and disseminated more widely at a final event in London on 13th July.

If you would like to know more about the project please get in touch with Jo Cookes, Project Manager, on JoCookes@raise-networks.org.uk or 01483 608343.

BIG – Fresh Thinking

The Big Lottery Fund has set out its renewed strategic framework to guide their activities to 2015. ‘Fresh Thinking’ details BIG’s funding priorities and identifies their thinking with regards to developing initiatives. Also included is the method by which they will accommodate the reduction in their core costs to 5% by 2014. A key message within the document is that those in greatest need will be the key priority.

Much concern and public debate regarding the reduction in BIG’s core costs has centred around the relatively large number of projects funded as a ratio to the total pot of funding available when compared to other lottery funders and the high level of support provided to applicants and funded projects.

More information on Fresh Thinking can be found on BIG’s website.

Charity Commission Consultation

In May the Charity Commission will publish a consultation looking into the information it seeks from charities. Currently, charities with incomes of more than £10,000 must complete an annual return. All charities with incomes of more than £1m must also complete a summary information return, which summarises information held in their accounts.

An idea being considered by the Commission is to collect information which will be able to separate different types of charity (e.g. grant-making trusts as opposed to other charities). The classification system will not be amended but the extra information sought will supplement this dataset.

Other types of information such as whether they work overseas, own property, or are members of a regulatory or umbrella body might also be recorded. Further information might be voluntary in the form of a free text.

Summary information, currently only supplied by charities with a turnover of more than £1m might be extended to organisations with a turnover of more than £5m, kept, or scrapped altogether.

Charities Act Review

The Charities Act 2006 has been reviewed after 5 years and the deadline for submissions to Conservative Peer, Lord Hodgson has now closed. The government has asked Lord Hodgson to cast the net as widely as possible, beyond the 5 questions mentioned in the Act itself which included public confidence in charities, the level of charitable donations and the willingness of people to volunteer.

Additional considerations will include a definition of public benefit, charity tribunal, transparency, social investment, mergers, legal forms and red tape.

SpeakUp Hosts Fourth Annual ‘Big Event’ in East Sussex

The fourth annual Big Event took place at Eastbourne Winter Gardens on March 13th, attracting 190 people. The conference featured 5 speakers, including Katherine Atkinson (CEO at RAISE South East), round table discussion groups and an Advice Fair with 30 stalls offering information about free and low-cost services available to organisations.

Feedback has been excellent, with delegates describing the day as ‘really informative’, ‘useful’ and ‘a great chance to make contact with other organisations’. Delegates voted ‘networking’ and ‘updating current knowledge of current national policy’ as the two most useful aspects of the day. People from 102 different organisations were present and over 90% said they would like to attend the Big Event annually.

This year’s speakers focused on national policy changes within Health & Social Care and Welfare & Legal Aid.

SpeakUp has made resources from the event available online, including the Powerpoint slideshows used by speakers Katherine Atkinson (RAISE), Julie Eason (East Sussex Advice Plus) and Sue Hennell (Brighton Housing Trust).

Surrey Minority Ethnic Forum Recruiting Trustees

Find out more about the recruitment process and how to request an application pack.

Additional considerations will include a definition of public benefit, charity tribunal, transparency, social investment, mergers, legal forms and red tape. Some of the key responses submitted can be found here.

Trustees and Governance

Payment of trustees – support by ACEVO but opposition by organisations including NAVCA, DSC, Small Charities Coalition and Association of Charitable Foundations.

Voluntary registration of charities with incomes below £5,000.

Barring new organisations whose purpose duplicates that of existing organisations – broad resistance from sector bodies.

Fundraising

Universal system of self-regulation of fundraising should be introduced but not be replaced by statutory regulation.

Bad fundraising behaviour should be dealt with more robustly with stronger sanctions.

A unified system for public charitable collections should be implemented.

Finance

There should be no move away from filing accounts with the Charity Commission – proposed by the Institute of Chartered Accountants and the Charity Finance Group.

Removing the barriers to merger would help, but the changes needed cannot be achieved through charity law. However pensions and employment law are often barriers to merger but both fall outside the scope of the Charities Act.

Clearer legal framework is needed to support social investment, especially “mixed-motive” investment.

Smaller charities should not be exempt from filing accounts with the Charity Commission – various accounting bodies.

A clearer legal status is needed for ‘mixed-motive’ investment, where a charity invests for profit and a social return. Commission guidance indicates that this type of investment is acceptable, but the legal position is unclear – Social Finance.

30th April 2012

23rd March 2012

9th March 2012

25th January 2012

23rd December 2011

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After a long and turbulent journey the Health and Social Care Bill has finally made its way to the end of the legislative tunnel, not unscathed. This was marked by a good round of table thumping by the Cabinet. It is expected to pass into statute very shortly despite a last ditch attempt in the Commons by Labour.

The net result is that:

• Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) replace primary care trusts
• CCGs decide on care for patients, advise them where to go for treatment and pay the bills
• Some of the day-to-day control of the NHS passes to the new NHS Commissioning Board, which will manage the CCGs at a national and local level
• Responsibility for public health issues like obesity, smoking and alcohol abuse is handed to local councils
• All hospitals become foundation trusts and compete for treatment contracts from CCGs
• The cap on how much hospitals can earn from private patients rises from as little as 1.5% to 49%

For more information on RAISE’s Health and Social Care activities, click here.

A Healthier Perspective – Update

RAISE’s health and social care project, “A Healthier Perspective”, being delivered in partnership with three Councils for Voluntary Service and funded by NHS South of England and the Big Lottery Fund, is progressing well. We are entering the last fortnight of data capture, mapping the VCS organisations providing services in the three test areas. Workshops with providers are scheduled for April and early May, and detailed conversations with commissioners in Local Authorities and Clinical Commissioning Groups will run in tandem with these workshops, digging down into the information gathered about the local provider scene and exploring what that means for commissioning processes. We will then be pooling the collective learning and developing actions, and then looking to share our findings much more broadly across the South East and beyond at a final event on Friday 13^th July in London. If you have an interest in commissioning of health and social care services from the voluntary and community sector, please put this date in your diary now.

2012 Budget – Do you want the bad news or the bad news?

I’m sure by now you’ve seen the highs and lows of the 2012 Budget headlines. From the ‘Granny Tax’ to a possible negative impact on philanthropic giving, there’s something to interest everyone involved in the voluntary and community sector.

To view RAISE’s budget overview, click here.

Call for Interested Members – Who does what, where and how?

What would help you better demonstrate to commissioners the importance of their increased consideration of voluntary and community sector providers of public services?

How well can you demonstrate the real added value that your members deliver to communities and the local economy?

Have you considered measuring the reach and impact of your members’ activities but been discouraged by the cost and complexity?

RAISE is developing a project for our members, with our members which will be of benefit to infrastructure organisations, frontline providers and commissioners which will enable you to find the answer these questions and position yourselves to win more business.

If you are interested in finding out more or would potentially like to be involved in this project, we are hosting a meeting in April to outline our work to date and identify interested parties. For more information, email john@raise-networks.org.uk.

Police and Crime Commissioners – The strong arm of the law

On 15^th November 2012 each of us (apart from Londoners) will be able to vote for a new civic leader whose role will impact on our work in a number of ways. The Police and Crime Commissioners will arguably be the most powerful directly elected individuals in the UK outside of the Mayor of London.

For more information click here.

Ian Chisnall who was a Faith representative on the Regional Assembly from 2002-2009 is standing as PCC in Sussex and at the moment is the only candidate who has a strong record of working within our sector. He is hoping that the VCS organisations in Sussex will be able to promote his work and recognise he will be a more approachable candidate and commissioner than many of the others who have expressed interest in this post so far. However he would also want to encourage other folk from the voluntary sector to consider standing in this contest (although hopefully not in Sussex!) Ian@Ian4PCC.com www.ian4pcc.com

Much of the post Budget coverage has dissected and analysed the likely impact on a squeeze to future pension recipients, ‘middle’ income earning families’ child benefit changes and whether the tweaking of taxation of the most wealthy will actually result in more money being made available for those less well off, or is this just in fact a ‘perk’ for those who did not really need one. As for the last point, only time will tell if the reduction by 5% in the highest rate of income tax from 50 to 45% on pay over £150,000 will incentivise some people to actually pay, rather than avoid their tax liabilities altogether. We are told that avoidance will be stamped on and the ‘mansion tax’ amongst other initiatives will yield 5 times the exchequer revenues than previously possible via the 50% income tax rate but you could argue that the “mere £100 million” the 50% tax rate generated is still worth having.

The ‘flat rate’ old age pension proposal has been broadly welcomed by parts of the sector, bringing simplification to the system and equating to payments of around £140, based on contributions. What is less clear is the level of consensus over the likely impact of this. What has been dubbed the ‘Granny Tax’ however will, according to some analysts, result in a reduction of £83 per year for 4 million pensioners as a consequence of a ‘£3 billion pension raid’ in the form of a frozen tax threshold. Osborne counters with the assurance that the over 65s will be better off however and that no one will actually lose any cash at any point in time. Call me a cynic but not ‘losing cash’ is not the same as not getting cash. Maybe my glass is just half empty, but it certainly won’t get any fuller; in reality in the future will it be less than half empty as the amount of water in it might stay the same but inflation will increase the size of my glass? Let’s not forget that the state pension is increasing also.

We are told that the ‘cliff’ has been avoided; that child benefits won’t be withdrawn entirely at a given threshold (unless you count the £60,000 threshold that is). Just have your calculators ready however to work out what your family is entitled to if you fall into the £50-60k band and need to deduct 1% of benefit for every £100 of income over £50,000. And surely it will be more costly to government to have to administer these varying, and shifting, amounts for hundreds of thousands of families.

More sector specific budget news includes:

Final thought

Osborne said   “Britain is going to earn its way in the world.

There is no other road to recovery.

This Budget supports working families and helps those looking for work.

It unashamedly backs business”.

Does “business” include Civil Society George? It doesn’t feel that way. And does the budget support the families and people you want to help in the same way that civil society supports them? You know, with one hand tied behind its back?

Health and Social Care Bill: the final furlong…?

Proponents of the Health and Social Care Bill this week enjoyed some light relief with the safe passage of a flurry of amendments tabled in the House of Lords. Meanwhile, the Royal College of Surgeons yesterday stopped short of calling for the Bill to be scrapped, setting it apart from many of its collegiate colleagues. But Andrew Lansley shouldn’t relax into his weekend just yet – the Liberal Democrats meet in Gateshead this weekend and are being wound up by the Labour Party to strengthen their opposition to the Bill. Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham has written an open letter to the Liberal Democrats, urging them to join forces to scrap the Bill.

At RAISE we work on the basis of what we know today. We have recently participated in meetings of the Local Involvement Networks (LINks) Chairs, Hosts and Local Authority leads, thinking about what needs to happen for Local Healthwatch to be up and running in just over a year from now. As a member of Regional Voices RAISE is a strategic partner to the Department of Health and we have been running a survey on voluntary and community sector engagement with Health and Wellbeing Boards in the South East.  If you haven’t already responded, please do let us know how things are going in your area; the link is http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QKJ93P2

A Healthier Perspective”: RAISE’s project to enhance commissioning opportunities for the VCS

We held an event for commissioners and voluntary and community sector organisations in the three localities in February.  We shared the early findings from the data collection and explored further information needs. You can see the presentations from the event, or to find out more about the project please contact Project Manager Jo Cookes at RAISE: Jo@raise-networks.org.uk

With the Health and Social Care Partnership South East we ran a learning event on 2^nd March on commissioning health and social care services and the voluntary sector at which we showcased, and then dug around in, examples from a number of commissioners and providers including East Sussex County Council and Solent Mind. The presentations are available from Jo Cookes as above, and will be on our website next week.

Big Lottery Fund’s Building Capabilities discussion paper

Last chance to have your say on the proposed approach by the Big Lottery Fund to supporting capacity building activity over the next few years. RAISE drafted a response to the paper, which takes a slightly different tack to that of NAVCA, so please let us know by Wednesday 14th March what you think of it.

Charities Act Review

The Charities Act 2006 is currently being reviewed by Lord Hodgson on behalf of the Cabinet Office. The main purpose of the review is to establish whether further changes to the legal and regulatory framework for charities are desirable.

The review will gather evidence from charity sector representatives, the public and other stakeholders and will report before parliament’s 2012 summer recess. In essence, the review will consider:

• The need to maintain public trust and confidence in charities;
• The need to maintain the independence and diversity of the sector;
• The need to ensure the sustainability and resilience of the sector;
• The need to facilitate innovation and growth in the sector.

There are events for charities to discuss some of the issues in more detail:

• Taunton (5 March, 4-6pm) – places available
• Newcastle (7 March, 4-6pm) – places available
• Cardiff (15 March, 4-6pm) – places available
• London (29 March, 4-6pm)

If you would like to attend one of the events, please email charitiesactreview@cabinet-office.gsi.gov.uk, clearly stating the location of the event.

Call for evidence closes on 16^th April. For more information or to respond to the review, an online survey for both charities and the public is available here.

Events

Equality Delivery System, run by the Department of Health strategic partners, NCVO, London, 23^rd March

Awards for All training sessions

Would you like to know more about the Big Lottery Fund’s Awards for All programme? Are you a voluntary or community group based in the South East and currently looking for funding between £300 and £10,000?

If so the Big Lottery Fund is running a series of webinar training sessions for voluntary and community groups on how to apply to Awards for All. The sessions will be delivered by BIG’s Pat Cook, a Regional Development Officer based in the South East, and will last about one and a half hours.

By taking part -

• You will have a better understanding of the Big Lottery Fund and of the current funding environment.
• You will have an increased understanding of the Awards for All programme and how to strengthen your application.
• You will have increased confidence to apply to Awards for All.

The training sessions available are:

• Tuesday 13 March, 2pm – 3.30pm
• Thursday 12 April, 2pm – 3.30pm
• Thursday 10 May, 2pm – 3.30pm
• Tuesday 12 June, 2pm – 3.30pm

The training sessions will be delivered via web based training known as a webinar. Webinars are interactive seminars run over the internet. You will need access to a PC or laptop with an internet connection, headphones and a microphone (optional).  For further technical information, please click here.

Additional Information:

• All attendees will be required to complete a brief evaluation form at the end of the training session.
• Information and technical guidance is provided to those attending.
• Places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

To book a place on one of these training sessions, you will need to complete an online booking form.

For further information please contact: gemma.pearce@ccberks.org.uk

The Department of Health and its Strategic Partners would like to invite you to a learning event on :

Integrating Care:  The role of the voluntary asector

Date : Monday, 19th March 2012
Time : 10 – 3.30 pm , including lunch & networking
Venue : Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre, 108 Stamford Street, London SE1 9NH.
Cost : FREE

This event will provide a learning and networking opportunity for statutory, health, social care and Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) professionals. We will share knowledge and views on the different ways in which the VCS can contribute to integrated care.  Speakers include GP commissioners, local VCS and NHS providers; DH policy Leads and representatives from NHS Commissioning Board, local government, Future Forum and National Association of Primary Care.

Participants will end the day with a clearer sense of:

Examples of current good  practice

The potential of the VCS, obstacles and solutions

Implications for policy and practice

Participants:  Drawn from DH, NHS, local government and the voluntary sector.

We are planning a day with an emphasis on short inputs and plenty of time for interaction, rather than lengthy presentations. The Programme will be confirmed soon.

To book, simply email vcsmail@dh.gsi.gov.uk. Places are limited and awarded on a first come, first served basis.

If you have any queries about the event please call Helen Ramsbottom, Age UK, on 020 303 31079.

Adult Learners’ Week

Would you like some help planning an event, taster or celebration for Adult Learners’ Week?

Come along to a FREE workshop on “Planning and Delivering an Adult Learners’ Week Taster on a Budget” and get help with:

• Ideas for events and tips for planning
• Budget and resources – ideas and free resources that can help you make the most of your budget, no matter how small it is!
• Branding – make the most of Adult Learners’ Week branding and publicity
• Celebration and Evaluation – keep your potential learners and value those you already have
• Partners – how to make new friends and share

There are three (identical) workshops running across the South-East. To book a place, please email Amanda with which workshop you want, your name and contact details.

Workshop One (last few places available)
Tuesday 13^th March 2-4pm
Totton College, Totton SO40 3ZX

Workshop Two
Thursday 15^th March 2-4pm
Keynes College, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NP

Workshop Three
Thursday 22^nd March 2-4pm
Slough Central Library, High Street, Slough SL1 1EA

Book your FREE place on one of these workshops by emailing Amanda on pavonlopez@msn.com with your contact details.

To book your place, please click here

View our Youtube video here

Twitter: @NCVYS/#EyeoftheStorm

For more information on the Catalyst Partnership, please click here

The review will gather evidence from charity sector representatives, the public and other stakeholders and will report before parliament’s 2012 summer recess. In essence, the review will consider:

• The need to maintain public trust and confidence in charities;
• The need to maintain the independence and diversity of the sector;
• The need to ensure the sustainability and resilience of the sector;
• The need to facilitate innovation and growth in the sector.

There are events for charities to discuss some of the issues in more detail:

• Taunton (5 March, 4-6pm) – places available
• Newcastle (7 March, 4-6pm) – places available
• Cardiff (15 March, 4-6pm) – places available
• London (29 March, 4-6pm)

If you would like to attend one of the events, please email charitiesactreview@cabinet-office.gsi.gov.uk, clearly stating the location of the event.

Call for evidence closes on 16^th April. For more information or to respond to the review, an online survey for both charities and the public is available here.

RAISE wants to hear your views on these plans.

Read about BLF’s plans here.

Read and respond to RAISE’s draft response here.

Please send us your comments by Monday 12th March.