The rural proofing guidelines help policy makers to minimise such challenges including:

Economic

• Lack of access to markets due to distance & costs
• Lack of fast internet
• Variable mobile phone services
• Lack of access to business skills development & training opportunities
• Lack of access to research & development
• Lack of access to finance

Access to services

• Public transport can be limited (only 42% of households in the most rural areas have a regular bus)
• GP surgeries (21% of rural households have to go 2.5 miles or more) & other health services can be several miles away
• There are disproportionately more older people (the average age is 6 years older than in urban areas), with associated demands on health services
• Demand for health services is growing
• Health, waste collection and other services can be more difficult and costly to provide

Quality of life

• [Nationally] Over 1.3m people live in poverty but are spread across small pockets of deprivation which can make them difficult to identify and help
• Household incomes can be lower due to part time or seasonal working
• The Job Centre can be many miles away, and lack of public transport makes it difficult for the unemployed to access new jobs
• Disproportionately more households are in fuel poverty
• Two in five homes are off the gas grid and many will depend on more expensive fuel
• House prices tend to be higher in rural areas (on average £19,000 more than in urban areas)

In the 2013 Queen’s Speech, the Government announced that a Pensions Bill would be brought forward to “create a simpler state pension system that encourages saving and provides more help to those who have spent years caring for children.”

The Pensions Bill 2013/14 was introduced in the House of Commons on 9 May 2013. The main elements of the Bill are to:

• Introduce the single-tier state pension for future pensioners from April 2016. This will replace the current basic State Pension and additional State Pension and be set above the level of the Pension Credit Standard Minimum Guarantee
• Bring forward the increase in the State Pension age (SPA) to 67 to between April 2026 and 2028 and to provide for a periodic review of the SPA
• Reform benefits for bereavement by introducing a new Bereavement Support Payment, with support focused on the period immediately following bereavement
• Provide for a system of automatic transfers of small pension pots so that an individual’s pension will follow them to their new pension scheme whey they change jobs
• Make amendments to Pensions Act 2008 in relation to automatic enrolment in to workplace pension schemes, which started to be introduced from October 2012
• Make other amendments related to private pensions, including the abolition of “short service refunds”, the introduction of a new objective for the Pensions Regulator; and provision for regulations to be made to prohibit the offer of incentives to transfer certain pension rights

This report used information from the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP), an annual programme which measures the height and weight of over 1 million children in England in Reception (4 to 5 years) and Year 6 (10 to 11 years).

There are similarities between these findings and the POLAR (Participation in Local Areas) data set that shows how likely young people are to participate in Higher Education (HE) according to where they live. There are large differences in participation rates by where young people live: fewer than one in five young people from the most disadvantaged areas enter higher education compared to more than one in two for the most advantaged areas.

The POLAR maps provide a good, visual indicator of HE participation, but should ,as with all data, be treated with caution. Living in a ‘low participation area’ does not mean your son or daughter will not go to university; it is simply an indicator that their chances may be lower than in other areas.

Using the data

Data sets can be useful for managing ever-diminishing resources so that activities are carefully targeting to areas of the greatest need. Voluntary and community sector organisations can and do use this data to target activities and resources for building educational aspiration and attainment-raising programmes. In areas where there is a high correlation of obesity and social deprivation, there are opportunities for local communities, including schools to collaborate in designing appropriate programmes around fitness and health eating programmes.

And a staggering 166,363 children in England are caring for their parents, siblings and family members. This is up by a fifth from when the last Census was conducted in 2001.

Nearly 15,000 children up to the age of 17 are providing more than 50 hours of care every week.

The Children’s Society research, Hidden from View, analyses government data tracking 15,000 children across England. It shows the significant long-term impact that caring has on a child’s life.

Findings include:

• Young carers are one and half times more likely to have a special educational need or a long-standing illness or disability
• One in 12 young carers is caring for more than 15 hours per week
• Around one in 20 miss school because of their caring responsibilities
• Young carers have significantly lower educational attainment at GCSE level – the equivalent to nine grades lower overall than their peers
• Young carers are more than one-and-a-half times as likely to be from black, Asian or minority ethnic communities, and are twice as likely to not speak English as their first language
• Young carers are more likely than the national average to be ‘not in education, employment or training’ (NEET) between the ages of 16 and 19

The Children’s Society is calling for support for these children and their families to prevent them from caring in the first place. It is working with a range of organisations through the Young Carers in Focus (YCiF) partnership, to provide a platform for young carers to be heard and provide them with better access to practical advice and support.

The Government tasked Dame Mary Marsh with reviewing the kind of leadership and skills evident among voluntary groups and her findings are revealed at Leading Social.

If organisations are going to be able to overcome challenges and grab opportunities, they need to build skills and leadership abilities, Dame Marsh said. She added that there was plenty of talent and experience out there and Leading Social is intended to be a place where best practice can be shared.

She highlights three key improvements:

• making young people personally responsible for their own personal development
• the need for the sector to spot potential and help staff development
• finding what skills gaps need filling

Dame Marsh wants to see the sector build a graduate scheme like Teach First, the charity that provides work-based teacher training to encourage young people to consider and begin careers in education.

How to influence

The approach for the presentation was to use a framework of four simple questions that could be used as a tool to help you to prepare to interact and to influence and a framework to help you to prepare you for that first conversation:

1. How will you get their attention?
2. How will you put your message across?
3. How will they respond?
4. How will you respond?

Of course, one obvious question missing from the outset is – who should I be influencing and therefore with whom should I have that first conversation? This is very much dependent upon what you are wanting to achieve as an organisation – in other words ‘what are you wanting to influence?’. If we take a classic commissioning cycle (assessing needs/designing services/sourcing providers/delivering/monitoring and evaluation), then there are a number of ways through which the voluntary sector can exert influence. For example you might want to feed in evidence of your community’s needs or offer support in helping your community participate in the assessment of needs and the design of services; alternatively you might be able to provide support in the development of pathways of services, or simply have an innovative or niche service to offer?

Your starting point will also be dependent upon the sector in which you are working – in health and social care, you may well be wanting to target the health and wellbeing board, or more locally your Clinical Commissioning Group.  Let us not forget the new kids on the block – our Police and Crime Commissioners.

When considering how to get the attention of the person or department you want to influence, there are of course a number of extreme routes – shouting from the rooftops, wearing a silly costume, setting up camp to name but a few, but ideally these should be considered last resort! A suggested starting point is research. It’s about finding out what the priority outcomes are in your area and using that information to think how you can make a contribution.

Most local authorities for example have websites that are rich in information with strategic plans and action plans for each of its core areas.   It is likely that there too will be web pages dedicated to the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment exercise; the  Health and Wellbeing Board should have uploaded its strategy outlining its priorities. These are just a few examples.

If you are still not sure where to begin, use local resources such as your Council for Voluntary Service or other fora or networks in the area to help you.

With some preliminary research under your hat, it is then about using the information that you have found out to find a hook to switch them on, to grab their attention and to make them want to talk to you. This means interpreting your research and thinking about your own offer as an organisation and whether, for example, you want to contribute by means of offering evidence of your community needs, or through the offer of innovative services to meet the identified priorities. Or both.

In the new landscape, that might mean holding up a mirror to yourselves as an organisation – perhaps being honest about how well you are adapting to the needs of the new landscape in which we are operating. Thinking about those aspects of your organisation which might need to change and equally those which are non-negotiable (your sacred cows).

As you use your research to formulate your ideas, you need to think carefully about how you will express your contribution. Most importantly you need to make it clear that you are credible.

If you are presenting evidence of community needs, then that evidence needs to be sound and robust. That might mean developing your research skills – possibly from within the organisation, or through peer review or through some form collaboration with another organisation.  Your evidence can be a mixture of quantitative as well as qualitative evidence, but should not be just a handful of anecdotes.

If you can offer services and can contribute to service design for specific outcomes, then you need to be able to demonstrate your impact.  This does not need to be a costly social return on investment exercise: there are different ways of demonstrating your impact and your CVS should be able to offer support to you in this area. Seek out examples of what other organisations have produced.

When I do workshops using the four-question exercise we sometimes use role play to test things out. Occasionally the ‘how will they respond?’ question does result in some unprintable suggestions, and we do have a lot of fun.

There is consensus nonetheless that often the best way to predict the response is to step into the shoes of the person we want to influence. This is a useful exercise because it can help you find common ground – a way of starting your conversation.

As an example, we stepped into the shoes of a Clinical Commissioning Groups and I reminded the delegates of the sheer volume of paperwork that have kept them busy in recent months, of how the pace of change has been rapid and not always welcome and that for many GPs, this has meant a significant change in mindset. Nonetheless there is an awareness of the need and potential benefits of engaging with the voluntary sector, albeit with a certain nervousness about how to go about it

We also stepped briefly into the shoes of the Local Authority and I shared the now well-known Barnett County Council ‘Graph of Doom’ which shows that cuts to local authorities allied with higher costs of children’s services and adult social care will squeeze the discretionary income councils can choose to deploy down to a very small percentage.

So the response of the commissioner you are looking to influence is likely to take into account this context. All the more reason therefore to respond by showing off your assets (yes, sell yourself!) and demonstrate how you can make a difference, given said constraints.

This might mean upping your game when it comes to your own marketing and communications.

It is useful nonetheless to be mindful of areas for improvement – and hence of what we might be ‘accused’. For example that we are not always tied in to bigger plans and strategies, that we are not always ready to demonstrate impact, that we are sometimes reluctant to collaborate – or at least, we find it difficult.

In the closing moments of the presentation I took the opportunity to remind delegates that the voluntary and community sector is responsive and nimble, largely unbureaucratic, pragmatic – (wet know what works for real people), used to being cost conscious, eking out maximum value for money, well-resourced in terms of staff commitment, volunteer hours, trust with the public, Imaginative and innovative.

Helen Rowland
RAISE Partnerships Manager

At the Voluntary Action Within Kent (VAWK) Annual Conference ‘Hang on in There’ which looked at building resilience, RAISE used recent experience in working with commissioners and its intelligence from national networks to present to frontline providers how they can access the opportunities afforded by new commissioning markets. A particular focus will be on CCG engagement and RAISE presented insights into the regional and national picture.

‘Communicating and Influencing Effectively’ was the theme of the Big Event in Eastbourne led by Speak Up, a forum for countywide organisations and networks in East Sussex. RAISE’s keynote address considered how the voluntary sector can better exert influence with commissioners in the design of services and policies. A four question framework was proposed as a tool to support voluntary sector organisations in preparing for that first conversation with a commissioner.

You can read the advice that Helen Rowland, RAISE’s Partnerships Manager, gave in her presentation on how to influence commissioners.

Charities currently make 150,000 claims per year and will be able to submit these more quickly and efficiently online. Find out how to use the system at hmrc.gov.uk/charitiesonline

The Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme (GASDS) has also gone live this month. It allows charities to claim top-up payments on cash donations of £20 or less without the need to collect Gift Aid declarations. Charities will generally be able to claim payments on small donations of up to £5,000 each year.

As charities may need time to adapt to the changes involved in claiming online, HMRC will accept the existing R68(i) print and post claim forms until 30 September 2013.

The impact of the reforms varies from place to place. There is significant imbalance reported between areas with the worst affected places facing financial losses that are twice the national average and four times as much as the least affected places. This interactive map demonstrates the impact area by area.

Now, although this research makes for stark reading, is it the whole picture? There are a number of factors to consider alongside the headline findings:

Are people claiming, or even aware of the benefits to which they are entitled?

• Previous findings suggest that a significant level of benefit entitlement goes unclaimed – BBC News source. Voluntary and Community support groups need to get to grips with the challenges posed by welfare reform changes and their undoubted impact on people and communities.

Welfare reform is a process and not an end result – given the coverage welfare reform has received, one might be forgiven for thinking that the sole purpose of the reform is to save money by punishing welfare recipients.

• The losses reported in the research are absolute figures and do not take account of baseline income, or changes to the taxation system. Both of these have an effect on the overall level of disposable income per individual/household.

Of greatest importance is the legacy left behind by the welfare reform process, rather than the headlines it generates.

• If in years to come, we are left with a legacy of low unemployment, a fair tax system, benefits which are accessible and sufficient, and strong local support structures, then maybe it can be said that the welfare reform played a role in bringing about a stronger and better quality of life. But it must not be seen as the silver bullet.