Support Service Redesign - Focus on Partnerships and Leadership

Over the last 3 years, CVS has held two contracts with Cheshire East Council:

  1. The capacity building support service that CVS delivers to the voluntary community and faith sector (VCFS) in partnership with Cheshire Community Action and 
  2. The Community JSNA which provides insight from people in our community – specifically from those who provide Voluntary Community and Faith Sector services, and the people who use them.  

​These are both due to end on 31st March and Cheshire East Council have been consulting with providers, like us and beneficiaries like you, and other statutory partners to develop the specification for the new service. 

We recently promoted some events and a survey that Cheshire East Council ran for this under the title, Community Capacity and Resilience.  We were pleased that many VCFS organisations attended the two events and we hope that you fed in your views on what was important to you.  

At these events the service was renamed Social Action Partnership Service.  

 

The vision for this service is:

To develop a strong local social impact culture through effective social action, which is underpinned by a thriving Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise Sector

 

Some highlights from the presentation were the service should:

  • Support with the development of a Social Action Charter - A partnership agreement between all sectors
  • Increase connections and partnerships between the Voluntary Sector, Statutory Sector and Corporate sectors - by mobilising individuals, and making the right connections, the public sector and the VCFS can maximise social impact together
  • Have a strong VCFS leadership model
  • Most importantly be delivered with the VCFS not to the VCF

You can read the presentation and the notes from the event 

 

What this means

Currently the contract funds many of our team including our development officers and the focus of the service is on the 1-2-1 support, training and events and our work on the Community JSNA.  We also work in partnership with Cheshire Community Action who delivers support for rural communities and rural buildings through this contract. 

With the change in focus, we are reviewing how we fundamentally deliver the service. 

The funding for the contract has been reduced by around 25% against the current values (the new service is bringing together the 2 contracts into 1) and so we are also reviewing how we fund the service so that we can, if possible, maintain the same amount of resources we have available. 

We recently sent out communication about our change to a geographic focus for delivery, to have some of our team working in the community and to refurbish our Crewe office and make this more of a hub.  These plans are all still in place and we are continuing to move forward with them. 

 

We want to hear from you 

We are aiming to involve you in all stages of our planning. 

  • We have an initial group which a small number of members are attending to help start the process
  • We are holding 2 focus groups (21st October Macclesfield and 24th October Crewe) Book here
  • We will be releasing a survey shortly
  • During November we have a range of events at which we will also have a session to collect views, these include our Trustees Network and Volunteer Managers Network

Don't have time to attend an event or complete a survey? - Tell us the 1 thing you want to keep/have, what would enable you to deliver social impact?

 

The timelines for this are quite short which is why some our dates are quite soon.  We expect the tender to come out on 1st November and close on 2nd December; we need to have an outline model for mid-November to give us time to complete the bid. 

Due to the nature of this contract on this occasion CVS is unable to provide support to any organisations wishing to bid for the service e.g. finding other partners or reading through tenders, as this funds a significant number of our team we feel all staff and volunteers would have too much of a conflict of interest.  CVS is currently planning to work in partnership with Cheshire Community Action.  If you wish to find partners, you can email Cheshire East Council and they will put the details on the Chest portal for you. 

If you have any further questions about this, please do not hesitate to contact your account manager or our CEO directly on caroline.whitney@cvsce.org.uk 

 

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