1292328883 Community Action Ham

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SUSTAINABLE MODELS OF SUPPORT SERVICES: CASE STUDY

Positioning the consortium as

the “Gateway to the sector”

COMMUNIT ACTION HAMPSHIRE

Hampshire Voluntary Sector Consortium

(HVSC) is a county wide partnership of third

sector support bodies, including Community

Action Hampshire, eleven district Councils

for Voluntary Service, frontline third sector

organisations (TSOs) and statutory partners. It

has a clear view of how to use Capacitybuilders

funding to build sectoral sustainability: for

HVSC, the sustainability of Hampshire’s

support organisations comes from increasing

their reputation among statutory partners

– individually and as a group. This strategy,

set out in the Consortium’s Infrastructure

Development Plan, has guided its work to

create a county-wide consortium and position

it as the primary “gateway to the sector” in

Hampshire.

The newly established

Hampshire Voluntary Sector

Consortium is already

showing its potential tobuild sustainability among

the county’s voluntary and

community organisations

by increasing their

reputation among statutorypartners – individually and

as a group.



What Capacitybuilders funding was

received?

Hampshire Voluntary Sector Consortium is theChangeUp consortium for Hampshire. Its lead body isCommunity Action Hampshire, whose Chief Executive isChair of the Consortium. Having been awarded £99,000consortium development funding from Capacitybuilders

in 2007, the Consortium appointed a senior ofcer tolead consortium development work.

From the outset the focus was on establishing theConsortium’s reputation among partners by investingin relationship-building at the senior level, not simplycreating new structures. The overarching aim of the seniorofcer’s role is “to be able to co-ordinate strategically-focused activity”, as opposed to piecemeal projects.

According to the Chair, the new Consortium “enables usto be seen as the gateway to the sector” and has alreadyled to the creation of a HVSC seat on the HampshireSenate, the county-wide strategic partnership.

How can one Consortium ‘represent’

10,000 organisations?

Hampshire is England’s third largest county bypopulation, and has some 10,000 third sectororganisations. The sheer size, geographic spread,and diversity of the sector therefore presented a bigchallenge at the start of the consortium developmentproject. The Consortium uses a ‘network of networks’model, with each network themed around the service

areas in which Hampshire’s TSOs are involved. So farthese include: children and young people, adult healthand social care, equality and diversity, social enterprise,district CVSs, Citizen’s Advice Bureaux, volunteercentres, and skills and learning. The networks are a mixof new and existing groups.

Each network has been invited to send a representativeto the Consortium. In order to ensure that the network isrepresentative of a wider group of TSOs, the Consortiumrequires that members accept the responsibility forcommunicating feedback to members of their networkand are accountable to them.

The Consortium member that takes the HampshireSenate seat must serve for two years and reportagainst success measures agreed with their Consortiumcolleagues. This is a standing agenda item at Consortiummeetings, alongside written reports from each of thethematic networks. The seat is currently taken by theChair of Hampshire Citizen’s Advice Bureaux.

The Consortium has also worked to ll ‘gaps’ insupport and involve groups that had not previouslybeen represented. For example, Community ActionHampshire’s Diversity Support Project has set up anetwork as part of a series of linked activities. Partfunded by the Big Lottery Fund, its objectives are closelyconnected to consortium development as they includeassembling an independent equality forum to workwith the Consortium (there has been no Race EqualityCouncil in the county). However, the Consortium knew

there were gaps in the existing support to organisationsserving the County’s minority communities andsimply setting up a forum in isolation made no sense.The forum was therefore complemented by a skillsprogramme to train staff in voluntary organisations onhow to implement a diversity toolkit and carry outdiversity audits.

The forum was formally launched in November 2009after a broad and inclusive consultation process. This hasalso provided spin-off benets such as the recruitmentof forum members who had no previous experience of joining formal civic activity. For instance the forum hasrecruited one member from a small informal group of adults with learning difculties who meet for meals anddiscussion.

Engaging strategically with partners

The Health and Social Care Network has beenparticularly successful in thematic representation – it now

has over 260 members from around 190 organisationsacross the county. It has also been used to engage theboard of the Primary Care Trust in an on-going strategicdialogue of a kind that had not existed before. TheHVSC Chair made contact with the PCT board earlyon, explaining how the network could help the PCT inachieving its aims - for instance by convening cross-sector discussion about the likely impact of budget cuts,or identifying how the sector could help the PCT wherepressure was greatest.

The strategic dialogue with the NHS is now maturing andsenior gures in NHS Hampshire believe it is valuable

and has come at a good time. As NHS Hampshire’sdirector of performance and standards put it:

“The value of this dialogue will be particularly important going forward into the most challenging nancial climatethe health service has seen for many years.”

In the short time it has existed he believes theConsortium has already been

“incredibly valuable in helping NHS Hampshire developa collaborative relationship with the sector,”

as well as supporting the delivery of the PCT’s strategic

goals. It is also a ‘gateway’ for on-going engagement inthe future around commissioning intentions, as well asfor more in-depth consultations on specic services. TheConsortium’s lead ofcer agrees:

“The public sector needs to make sure they cancommission good services that meet people’s needs,and we’re seen as critical to doing that. They also need a mechanism for engaging with the sector, which isdifcult to engage otherwise because it’s so disparate.”

The lead project ofcer for the Consortium has alsobeen tasked with other projects which will contribute tosustainability and reputation.

These include the development of a guide for managersin the statutory agencies, describing how third sectoractivities support delivery of the Hampshire Local AreaAgreement (LAA), exemplied with case studies. TheConsortium felt that while statutory agencies are aware of



the large role of third sector organisations in contractedsocial care delivery, they are much less aware of smallscale (and nancially less secure) social support - whichoften contributes tangibly to achievement of LAA targets.

Engaging with the LAA and statutory partners in this wayhas helped to ensure that the support provided fromthe public sector is relevant to the local third sector. Forexample, as more public sector resources were being

put into advice and guidance around resilience, theConsortium was able to ensure that the sector’s needswere taken into account. The Consortium is also able toidentify opportunities for local TSOs around new policyagendas, such as personalisation of social care.

“It’s made us more sustainable because our support services are relevant… identied by public sector partners as supporting a shared agenda, and by frontlineorganisations as what they want.”

LEAD OFFICER, HVSC

So how has Capacitybuilders fundingadded value and made support services

more sustainable?

Getting the Consortium operational and being offeredthe Senate seat have in themselves been a major part of building reputation, stability and sustainability, as well asopening up new opportunities for the sector. They havealso led directly to better working relationships betweenstatutory partners and Hampshire’s 10,000 TSOs.

The sum of all this work means more third sectororganisations participate in events and consultation.

Involving a broader range of local TSOs means theconsortium can act as the ‘gateway to the third sector’. In alarge county such as Hampshire this is invaluable to publicsector partners looking to engage with the sector. TheConsortium now regularly has statutory bodies wantingto attend or present at its meetings. The PCT in particularviews working with the Consortium as one of the ways itcan meet its obligations to engage with the third sector.

This, combined with pro-active promotion of the workof third sector organisations, has increased statutorypartners’ recognition of the value of the third sector, andthe importance of the consortium’s work. Over the long-

term this recognition means the consortium is betterplaced to make the case to statutory partners for thirdsector support services in the county in the future.

An additional benet is that the Consortium savesvaluable time and energy for smaller organisations by

building relationships on behalf of the whole sector. TheHealth and Social Care network does this very effectivelyand efciently through a simple email mailing list. Forexample, it recently alerted organisations to a PCTstakeholder event on developing the commissioningspecication for stroke rehabilitation enabling enoughof the ‘right people’ to get involved, but withoutduplicating effort around communications.

Finally, there is real value in engaging a wider cross-section of individuals in governance of the Consortium.Over time, it is expected that this will improve thethird sector’s ability to identify needs and continuouslyrespond to an ever-changing context.

The real test of whether the Consortium is sustainablewill be when the Consortium Development fundingperiod ends in March 2011. With the basic structuresand relationships now in place the Consortium membersand support staff have already turned their attention tothe challenge of sustaining the Consortium. CommunityAction Hampshire as the county-level member and

accountable body is taking the lead. One option alreadyidentied is for Consortium members to share out themanagement of the Consortium between themselves –not putting in cash, but making ofcer time available. There might also be further opportunities to seek grant-funding to support the Consortium. Discussions are alsoin train with the Consortium’s statutory partners.

What the Consortium members hope is that thereputation and recognition they have clearly builtwithin the county, and the value they have begun tooffer to partners and consortium members, can now betranslated into sustainability.

Learning points

• Partners value single county-wide structures throughwhich to engage with the sector, for strategic reasonsand for practical reasons (it’s more efcient for them)

• Operational initiatives to support sustainabilitysuch as training, must be accompanied by strategicleadership level relationship-building

• Transparency and good management has beencrucial in setting up structures that can act to

represent thousands of different dispersedcommunity organisations

• Explaining TSO activities in terms of their contributionto Local Area Agreement priorities has been veryeffective in engaging ofcers in statutory agencies.

This case study was prepared by Shared Intelligence for the Sustainable Models of Support Services report, which wasfunded by Capacitybuilders. To read more case studies like this please visit: www.improvingsupport.org.uk

http://www.improvingsupport.org.uk/

http://www.improvingsupport.org.uk/

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