Cumbria County Council Third Sector Strategy 2007 2010

Cumbria County Council Third Sector Strategy 2007 2010

Cumbria County Council – Third Sector Strategy

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Third Sector Strategy
2008 – 2011 /

1.The Purpose of this Strategy

This strategy sets out the future relationship between the Council and Cumbria’s Third Sector[1] and the approach the Council will use when supporting or allocating resources to the sector. It explains the need to reassess existing arrangements with the sector and proposes the approach the council will need to use to achieve its aims.

Cumbria County Council wants to be able to respond better to the challenges presented in matching scarce resources to deliver the community aspirations of our urban and rural communities. In the context of this community leadership role the Council wishes to engage closely with the third sector.

The Strategy is intended to set a framework for effective and ongoing engagement. It starts with the assumption that the County Council and large parts of the third sector are each working to deliver strong, prosperous, inclusive and cohesive communities. The County Council acknowledge that we can do more, and achieve more, through effective engagement with the sector – but that this requires coordinated action.

This strategy has been developed over 9 months initially utilising a small group of third sector organisations, to advise us before going out to full consultation. We were also influence by government reports and local and national learning. This background to the strategy along with more detailed information and explanation are found in the appendices.

2.A thriving third sector

The Third sector is large and growing, and that it plays an increasingly vital role in both society and economy. But both locally and nationally evidence has often been anecdotal. It is difficult to fully understand both the scale and influence of the sector in Cumbria. There are about 3000 organisations registered with the Charity commission and several hundred that aren’t. A number of these play a significant part in service delivery – particularly in social care, leisure and recreation. But for every large organisation such as the National Trust or Age Concern there hundreds of small ones.

Many are needs driven, founded by a group of like-minded individuals with common goals and aims who are driven by a desire to make a difference to their beneficiaries. It is common for special interest groups to have service users as part of their management structure and combined with a strong volunteering ethos this enables them to keep a clear focus on their aims and objective and be responsive to the changing needs and demands of their communities of choice.

The diagram below outlines how the sector understands their scope and diversity in Cumbria.

Of these organisations, there are about 450 social enterprises employing 4500 people, development trusts, industrial and provident societies, co-operatives and more who between them play a significant role in economic development in Cumbria. A recent Government document highlighted that up to 17% of Cumbrians were either employed or volunteered in the third sector, making it a significant player in economic development in Cumbria. It is large and growing but sustainability is a key issue.

The sector therefore covers a full cross section of society. Their impact on society is very varied: they engage with large scale environmental projects, supporting schools, police and health care services; they provide specialist self-help and expert advice and support; they run community events, sports, culture and arts projects; they also provide localised resident support and activism. They can be geographic, special interest, single purpose or a combination. For example a group of parents of disabled children in the Carlisle district who joined together to raise awareness and campaign for accessible playground equipment then went on to gain funding for a family centre employing staff and delivering services to the local community.

This gives the sector a perspective that is different from statutory organisations and enables it to take on roles such as:-

  • a partner in innovation - For example, many of the most successful approaches to preventing young people offending have been pioneered with the sector
  • a partner in designing services - For example, the Royal National Institute for the Deaf has recently worked closely with the Council of Health (DH) to develop better audiology service
  • a campaigner for change - For example, nationally third sector organisations have been instrumental in ensuring greater service access for those with disabilities and the development of services such as better childcare
  • advocacy – acting as a voice for marginalised or hard to reach groups and individuals
  • a partner in delivering services
  • a communicator and interpreter for the sector

Volunteering

In addition to employing staff many Third Sector organisations rely on volunteers who help with the management of the organisation or by providing services or support to beneficiaries. All volunteers, like staff, need to be supported with appropriate training. Many third sector organisations use their volunteers in the same way that public or private sector organisations use their paid staff. They are well trained and deliver high quality services. An example of this is the many journeys that are run by the community transport organisations.

Currently it is difficult to be accurate about the number of people who volunteer in the county but from the Cumbria Quality of Life survey 2006 we do know that about 30% of people over 16 years of age claim to have given their time without pay last year. It appears that volunteering is most prolific in the over 55’s, most common amongst residents with better than average academic qualifications and who own their own homes. This of course is only representative of the sample who took part in the survey and further investigation shows that the number of people who say they are formal volunteers for at least two hours per week drops to 22%. It is fair to say that there are many people who, for example village hall committees, do not consider themselves to be volunteers and in many communities the overwhelming majority of social activity is dependant on volunteering. Volunteer centres can provide data on the number of individuals registered but that does not give us the full picture. For example Age Concern in Cumbria have over 1000 volunteers; there are over 4000 school governors, social enterprises in Cumbria are supported by 5000 volunteers, and around 15,000 residents are members of Neighbourhood Watch schemes: all contributing to community life in Cumbria.

Nationally the statistics look at formal and informal volunteering. Formal volunteering is defined as giving unpaid help through groups, clubs or organisations to benefit other people or the environment. Informal volunteering is defined as giving unpaid help as an individual to people who are not relatives. Work by the Dept for Communities and Local Government in their Citizenship Survey 2005 points to the link between volunteering and community cohesion suggesting that regular participation in voluntary activities was connected with positive views of the neighbourhood on several measures including the perception of trust, sense of belonging and it being a good place to live.

3.The County Council’s relationship with the third sector

The County Council is responsible for community leadership and delivery of a range of services in areas where Cumbria’s third sector is active. This includes children’s services, social care, environment, regeneration and area based community work to build safe and inclusive communities. A strong working relationship with the third sector helps us deliver on these policy areas.

Many of these areas are specifically referred to in the Local Area Agreement (LAA) and many third sector organisations are engaged in the LAA delivery. Within this context the County Council engages with a range of third sector organisations through key development bodies including:

  • Children’s Services third sector reference groups
  • Social Enterprise hubs
  • Cumbria Third Sector Forum
  • Cumbria Third Sector Infrastructure Forum

These bodies support the Council around specific aspects of policy, advocating for the sector more generally and acting as advisors. We acknowledge that there is potential for the County Council to enable the sector to do even more.

The Strategy recognises the proposals in the Local Government White Paper (Strong & Prosperous Communities) that are intended to strengthen the role of the sector as a partner for local government. Strong local relationships between the sector and local government are essential.

4.The County Council’s Vision

The County Council wishes to develop an effective and on-going relationship with the third sector that helps to achieve their common goals whilst contributing to an environment in which the third sector can thrive. The actions in this strategy deliver key objectives in the council plan.

The Strategy acknowledges the importance of the sector’s independence, whilst recognising the potential to contribute to the new local government landscape. We see a role for the sector in local representation, engagement and involvement and in reaching diverse groups and communities.

We wish to use this strategy to reassess the way we support the Third Sector to deliver services for the Council and more generally to help us to support communities.

5.Delivering on our vision

The Strategy sets out the County Council’s plans to improve our relationship with the sector in four areas:

  1. Improving how we work with the sector
  2. Enabling the sector to work more effectively locally in ‘place shaping’ (Place shaping is a term currently used within Government. It was defined in the Lyons Inquiry Report as ‘the creative use of powers and influence to promote the general well-being of a community and its citizens’).
  3. Becoming more strategic in their relationship with and funding of the sector
  4. Supporting sustainable investment

a.Ways of working

The Strategy recognises the need to lead by example and build on existing good practice. This does happen in some areas of the County Council’s work but we concede it is not consistently applied across the Council. Our aim is to ensure that the Compact principles are more effectively applied across the County Council. We plan to do this by; raising awareness of the Compact among staff (including commercial and public sector partners), involving the sector in early policy formation and ensure the sector has adequate time and opportunity to respond to consultations.

b.Local Partnerships in Place Shaping

The sector should be a key partner to local government, playing a number of roles: representation, advocacy, influencing policy and shaping, designing and delivering services.

Local government and their partners should also actively work with the sector in order to engage local people in deciding and delivering local priorities.

The strategy recognises the importance of the contribution the community sector has to play in Local Area Agreement (LAA) and Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs). The County Council wants to raise the standards of partnership working between LSPs, our partners and the third sector, so that good practice is the norm and not the exception.

The Local Government White Paper sets out provisions to; give citizens and communities a stronger voice to help shape services and places, encourage local authorities to provide stronger leadership, offer local areas flexibility to respond to local needs and circumstances. It reinforces the expectation that grant funding should be at least three years and that grants are as important as contracts, particularly for small community groups.

c.Partnership approaches

The County Council has a range of responsibilities that have traditionally had quite different approaches to engaging the third sector. The County Council works with hundreds of organisations across its different policy areas, many specific to particular projects and places. The County Council wants to be more strategic and coherent in its approach in order to develop long-term, meaningful engagement, but stresses that this should not be at the expense of diversity.

This Strategy aims to develop a network of strategic partners to provide a link with local action and ensure the views of smaller groups are heard. Strategic partners will be used to inform on specific policy areas and the overall vision.

d.Sustainable Investment

Supporting the sector to become more sustainable and enterprising is a priority for the County Council.

The Government’s Local Community Sector Taskforce highlighted the need for support to enable those community groups who want to, to develop assets and move from grant dependency to independent income generation. The Third Sector review consultation also highlighted the importance of developing community assets to enable groups to generate their own income, deliver services and strengthen engagement. Services delivered by local community organisations can help keep funds within a deprived community by re-investing them in the area.

The County Council recognises the concept of ‘anchor organisations’ as key to achieving this priority. Anchor organisations are independent, community-led organisations with multipurpose functions that provide a focal point for community organisations and services, including encouraging a more strategic approach to asset management by the public sector, developed in partnership with the third sector. Asset transfer to communities should be a serious option and public funds invested in developing community led asset building.

The Council wishes to work with the Third Sector Infrastructure Forum to develop this in Cumbria.

Actions to deliver on our vision

To improve our ways of working we will:

  1. coordinate consultation and engagement activity through the Council’s Community Unit : Councillor Gary Strong, Portfolio holder for Safer & Stronger Communities is the Council’s Third Sector Champion supported by the Third Sector Programme Manager
  1. promote and recognise the voice of the sector : we will do this with regular liaison with the Cumbria Third Sector Forum
  1. develop the activity of the internal third sector programme board : bringing together people from across the Council with responsibility for key aspects of engagement with the sector
  1. engage with Scrutiny Management Board : to take a continuing interest in Council support for the development of the third sector.

To strengthen effective partnerships between the sector, the Council and our partners, we will:

  1. Clarify roles for individual directorates in working with sector: through the Third Sector Programme Board
  1. engage with the sector to determine how it can best be involved in the local government ‘place shaping’ role : both thematically and geographically
  1. work toward three year funding (at a minimum) : support capacity building work to ensure local government is able to deliver funding and support effectively to the sector
  1. continue to work with Cumbria wide bodies : such as The Third Sector Infrastructure Forum to develop how the sector is represented on the Cumbria Strategic Partnership and wider public life
  1. promote volunteering within the council and with key partners : recognizing the role of infrastructure support in the development of volunteering, developing a council employee volunteering policy and the Cumbria Community Awards

Appendix 1 should be deleted. Other appendices should be referenced but not included in the strategy

To improve on Financial and other support to the sector we will:

10. continue to support third sector infrastructure delivery: to ensure that the third sector has an appropriate voice to be able to speak out and represent

11. embed social clauses in a policy led procurement approach: by piloting national models in Cumbria

12. commit to £0.5m small grants budgets : to support the overall capacity and diversity of the sector

  1. recognise the economic contribution of the sector and support the delivery of the Cumbria Social Enterprise Strategy : encouraging ‘social enterprises’’ – businesses with social and environmental aims - by promoting awareness of the social enterprise business model, investigating areas for social enterprise delivery and managing grant programmes
  1. Benchmark and roll out best practice models for support and commissioning : removing any identified barriers and building the capacity of Third Sector organisations who wish to contract with the Council
  1. propose a stronger focus on third sector research : as part of the development of the LAA and the Cumbria observatory including monitoring the spend in the terms of purchasing, investing and grant aiding.

In implementing the Cumbria Compact we will:

  1. Audit practice and embed principles: through the Third Sector Programme Board,
  1. Regularly review the Codes of Practice: through the Third Sector Programme Board
  1. Insist all council initiatives and funding streams are Compact-proofed: through the Third Sector Programme Board,
  1. build the capacity of the Council to understand third sector organisations: through a learning and development programme
  1. Encourage our commercial and public sector partners to apply the Compact principles: through the Cumbria Strategic Partnership
  1. respond to breaches of the Compact :Through our participation in the Cumbria Compact Steering Group monitor and eliminate these breaches.

To improve sustainable investment we will

  1. Identify and develop longer standing relationships with the third sector: through the Third Sector Programme Board
  1. support asset development in the third sector
  1. encourage our commercial and public sector partners to take similar actions : through the Cumbria Strategic Partnership

The County Council will measure the success of the strategy in the following ways;

  1. Assess stakeholder views : to agree how well the County Council can evidence its support for the sector;
  1. annually monitor progress : in the delivery of this strategy through-
  2. Third Sector Programme Board
  3. Scrutiny Management Board
  4. LAA Safer & Stronger Thematic partnership
  5. via the Third Sector Champion reporting to Full Council
  6. via the Infrastructure Forum to the Third Sector

Leading the delivery of this strategy