Hands

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Every Voice Counts VCS and Every Child
Matters Peter Holbrook Sunlight Development Trust
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• An holistic response to children and young people
• Be healthy
• Stay safe
• Enjoy and achieve
• Make a positive contribution
• Achieve Economic Well being
• Where are we already?

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• At Sunlight
• We work across sectors to realise this vision
• Recognise the need for individual responses
• Listen
• Work closely with our partner organisations
• Create stigma free service delivery which
  encourages access for all
• Work holistically with families to tackle root
  cause, not just symptoms
• Review and reflect on service delivery and never
  stagnate
• Deliver multiple outcomes at every opportunity
• Innovate quick responses to community need /
  demand
• Create holistic responses through volunteering
  opportunity

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• In Medway
• Excellent links between voluntary sector
  organisations
• Provide visibility and access in every corner,
  every neighbourhood and every community of Medway
  
• 500 1000 constituted organisations, many more
  unconstituted
• 100s of 000s of volunteering hours committed
  every year
• Working in specific areas of need that the
  statutory sector services do not cover
• Demonstrable innovation
• Cross sector partnerships already in existence
  All Saints, Sunlight, Parentis, Medway Futures,
  Sycamore Youth Clubs, Melville and Brompton
  Community Centre, Action Borstal Community, CFM
• New shared resources and information sharing
  PPN, council bidding team, health promotion team

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• Empowerment
• Section 10 of Children Act 2004
• Places a duty on local authorities and relevant
  partners to co-operate to improve children and
  young peoples well being. co-operation should
  extend to other bodies that are involved with
  delivering services to children and young people
  - that clearly includes the voluntary and
  community sector.
• Working together to improve outcomes will be a
  key indicator of effective services under the new
  integrated inspection framework for childrens
  services.
• In addition
• the local authority should ensure that certain
  vol / comm sector partners are able to
  participate in co-operation arrangements on the
  same basis as better resourced partners by taking
  a strategic approach to supporting capacity
  building and infrastructure provision

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• Empowerment
• Change Up from Active Communities Unit - 29M to
  help us prepare
• Childrens services grants from DfES to local
  authorities can be used to support this capacity
  and infrastructure development.
• Local Investment through Local Strategic
  Partnership, Children and Young Peoples
  Strategic Partnerships
• Local Area Agreements
• Childrens Trusts Most areas should have them
  established by 2006 by the latest 2008.
• Local authorities are expected to involve
  voluntary and community organisations at all
  levels in childrens trusts from governance to
  integrated service delivery.
• the VCS can play a crucial role in the
  development of the trusts commissioning
  strategy, and can lead parts of the agenda for a
  trust.

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• Challenges
• No agreed COMPACT
• Usual suspects syndrome
• Larger voluntary organisations swallow allocated
  resources from smaller community organisations.
• Larger voluntary organisations monopolise
  opportunity uptake from smaller, local community
  groups.
• Information dissemination to VCS
• The lack of a single representative voice
• The process of representation Council for
  Voluntary Service Medway, Vol Sector Forum, Youth
  Parliament, Council for Voluntary Youth Services,
  Medway Ethnic Minority Forum etc.

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