Untapped potential: Bringing the voluntary sector’s strengths to health and care transformation

New Philanthropy Capital was commissioned by the Richmond Group of Charities and a wider group of partners to conduct an evidence review to inform their Doing the Right Thing project, which aims to shape health and care system reform by showcasing the voluntary and community sector’s added value. The Untapped Potential report is now available.

The research involved the assessment and aggregation of 175 findings from evaluations submitted by the project partners, qualitative research to understand how to integrate the voluntary sector’s offer into the future health and care system and the design of frameworks for a shared language - to help charities describe their work and its value, and to give commissioners and policymakers a way to identify the aspects of charities’ work that most clearly match their needs. The priorities of the NHS Five Year Forward View were central to all aspects of the research and analysis.

The research shows that charities can add value to the health and care system in a range of ways and that charities have a legitimate role in the transformation of the NHS and the wider health and care system in the coming years. However, to achieve this, both the VCS and the statutory system must change their behaviour.

The full report is available from the NPC website - http://www.thinknpc.org/publications/untapped-potential/

EU referendum: NCVO guide

The EU referendum result could have implications for the people and causes you support, your mission, and the work that you do.

NCVO have produced a new guide for trustees and senior managers which highlights elements of the current debate that they think are particularly relevant to charities.

It also contains some of the key questions to consider if your charity is considering entering the referendum debate:

EU referendum: A discussion paper for charities

Response to Cutting Red Tape Consultation

The Cutting Red Tape review of local authorities is a government review led by the Cabinet Office, DCLG and BIS, working together with other government departments and regulators. They want to identify and remove unnecessary regulatory barriers to growth and associated costs placed on businesses by local authorities, while ensuring necessary protections are maintained, and also gather evidence of where regulation imposes unnecessary or avoidable burdens and costs on local government. More information on the consultation can be found on the Cabinet Office website.

NCVO are planning to submit a short response focussing on procurement barriers, applying for discretionary business rate relief, and volunteering issues. If you have any evidence or examples that you would like them to include, please contact Nick Davies at Nick.Davies@ncvo.org.uk by the end of play on 22nd April. The final deadline for submissions is 28th April.

If you would like any more information on this work, please contact Ann-Marie on 01928 593 111 or at alawrenson@haltonsthelensvca.org.uk.

VSNW and Compact Voice survey into cross-partnership working

Last summer, we conducted a short survey looking at cross-sector partnership working in the North West, in association with Compact Voice. We are now asking VCS organisations to complete a follow-up survey to assess if the level of partnership engagement has changed.

The five minute survey has seven questions and it will provide us with a valuable insight into the extent to which charities are engaged in the commissioning of public services, and how they are working with different commissioning bodies.

Commissioners include not only local authorities but also newer bodies such as Clinical Commissioning Groups, Police and Crime Commissioners and Local Enterprise Partnerships. The results of the survey will help us to identify the changes to partnerships with these bodies and the continuing support and guidance that is required to further improve their effectiveness.

The survey is available via the following link - https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/KPWVSX5. The deadline for completing the survey is 5pm on Wednesday 6th April.

Launch of Equality Delivery System for the NHS (EDS2): Guide to Engagement with the Local Voluntary Sector

The Race Equality Foundation, in partnership with the LGBT Foundation, Disability Rights UK, and Men's Health Forum have launched the Equality Delivery System for the NHS (EDS2): Guide to Engagement with the Local Voluntary Sector. This guide was commissioned by NHS England and was developed in collaboration with service users, voluntary and community organistions, and key stakeholders from Foundation Trusts, Healthwatch England, NHS Employers, CCGs and the Care Quality Commission.

This guide explores how the local voluntary and community sector can help NHS organisations to engage communities and, by extension, implement EDS2 better. The voluntary and community sector are often well-placed to help NHS organisations as they have links and expertise with specific communities that health services may have difficulties in engaging with.

An official launch of the guide is planned for April and a copy can be downloaded now from the Race Equality Foundation website.

Compact at Work - Creating a space for cross-sector dialogue in Warrington

In seeking to improve their relationship with the local voluntary sector, Warrington Borough Council created the new post of Third Sector Partnership Development Officer. The new role, managed jointly by the council and Warrington Voluntary Action, coordinates a Third Sector Network Hub, which hosts meetings of strategic importance to cross-sector relationships and ensures a positive dialogue is maintained between the council and the voluntary sector. 

This work led to a Local Compact Partnership Award nomination at the 2015 Compact Awards.  

If you have other stories or evidence of similar work, please let us know by contacting Helen Walker, Communications Officer at helen.walker@vsnw.org.uk. 

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Compact at Work - Creating a space for cross-sector dialogue in Warrington
 

Better Data - Making the Third Sector Case for Health Improvement

The report of the Better Data research into how the third sector and public sector partners can effectively utilise and share data has been published. It calls for a national approach to help third sector organisations to use data resources to meet the needs highlighted by the NHS England Five Year Forward View. The Better Data agenda was developed in conjunction with Public Health England and Regional Voices delivery partner One East Midlands to help third sector organisations use publicly available data sources.

In the current financial climate, the need for organisations to demonstrate their worth to commissioners has never been greater. The key recommendation, based on telephone surveys with the Regional Voices network of third sector infrastructure organisations and Public Health England colleagues, is the development of a national approach to equip third sector organisations to access, understand and apply available tools and resources including the PHE knowledge and intelligence gateway and NICE guidance. This could be achieved through awareness raising sessions, sharing of good practice and information, and building the capacity of the third sector to engage with public sector partners. 

Download the Better Data report.

New IPPR North Report - Too small to fail

How are smaller charities faring in the current climate, and how can they be helped to evidence their impacts and continue to serve their communities? Small and medium-sized charities are a vital part of civil society in Britain today, and with an income of around £7 billion in England and Wales alone they account for one-fifth of the sector’s income.

This report, the first in our programme of research on 'The Future of Civil Society in the North', reviews the available evidence on the value of small and medium-sized charities (those with annual incomes of between £25,000 and £1 million), and on how recent changes to public policy have impacted upon them. It draws upon evidence published by academics, thinktanks and third-sector organisations, as well as material gathered through a wider call for evidence issued as part of this project.

Smaller charities have considerable strengths: many are rooted or embedded in their local areas, and play a key role in building and nurturing social networks. They also boost local social capital by building local capacity and developing links both within particular communities and between them and other networks and bodies, and are considered uniquely well-placed to engage directly with those who are hardest to reach.

However, despite its valuable work, successive reviews have found little evidence of a distinctive ‘offer’ from the voluntary sector as a whole, or from small charities in particular, and there is a lack of rigorous evidence to support many of the claims that are made for it. Furthermore, while smaller charities can develop their own frameworks of evidence to help attract funding, their often limited capacity makes this a challenge, and there are limits to how some aspects of their work can be usefully quantified in any case. Those that are able to produce the most reliable and comprehensive evidence base are not necessarily those that are most embedded in their communities.

Against a backdrop of rising demand and the long-term reduction in grants in favour of contracts, the income that the voluntary sector as a whole receives from government has fallen, and smaller organisations have been hit particularly hard. At the same time, the nature of public service delivery has changed significantly since 2010, with a shift towards the use of competitive commissioning models in which all types of provider compete to deliver public services. There is compelling evidence to suggest that large organisations, including some large charities, are increasingly dominating the market for public service provision, to the detriment of small and medium-sized organisations.

Given these findings, this report presents the following recommendations.

1. Small and medium-sized charities should be offered more and better support from umbrella organisations to help them evidence their impact, and develop their capacity for monitoring and evaluation.
2. Commissioning and procurement teams within local authorities, clinical commissioning groups and other public agencies should be made more accountable for delivering social value.
3. In-keeping with its commitment to prioritising diversity of scale in its general procurement agenda, the government should pledge to increase the proportion of central government spending that goes to small and medium-sized charities, as it has done already for smaller private companies. Local authorities could also benefit from setting their own similar targets for contracting with smaller organisations in both the private and voluntary sectors.
4. Those organisations that have moved or are moving away from grant-giving in favour of commissioning or more complex forms of social finance should review the impact that this has on small and medium-sized charities that might not be able or willing to engage with such forms of funding, but may still provide greater social value-for-money than those that are more adept at bidding for funding and providing formal evidence of outcome improvements.

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Too small to fail: How small and medium-sized charities are adapting to change and challenges