Peter Drucker, the man known as the ‘Father of modern management & marketing’, one wrote:

“The best nonprofits devote a great deal of thought to defining their organization’s mission. They avoid sweeping statements full of good intentions and focus, instead, on objectives that have clear-cut implications for the work their members perform—staff and volunteers both.

The Salvation Army’s goal, for example, is to turn society’s rejects into citizens – and they do it very well.

The Girl Guides & Scouts help youngsters become confident, capable young people who respect themselves and other people.

Nonprofits start and end with the community – in other words – the “customer”; they do not, as businesses and the public sector tend to do, start with the inside, that is, with the organisation or with some variation of financial return.”

He wrote that in 1989.

What he was refering to was the devotion that many Voluntary & Community organisation put into making things better (aka “delivering positive outcomes”) for their service users. In business speak, its called excellent Customer Service – something all corporate organisations talk about but very few do well. Voluntary & Community groups seldom talk about it; they just do it.

The 2011  Queens Award for Voluntary Service have recently been announced with a number being awarded to organisations in the West Midlands.

2012 is the 10^th anniversary of the Award, The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, as well as the Olympics, so interest in volunteering will be at its highest.

If you know of a group that may be deserving of an award in 2012, nominations are now being taken.

For information about this year’s winners and how to  nominate a group for next year please visit:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/UKgovernment/Honoursawardsandmedals/TheQueensAwardforVoluntaryService/index.htm

Let’s make 2012 the year Solihull voluntary groups and volunteers get the national recognition they deserve!

In the final Blog entry of 2010, I wrote of the increasing importance of ‘forging collaborations and working together’. This month provides two opportunities for us all to make progress with that, through responding to the Consultation on a Sector Reference Group and attendance at the Partnership Assembly, which can be found on the Consultations and Events pages of this site respectively.

One of the key reasons for forming the Reference Group is to provide a coherent, informed and representative voice for our sector, so that when one of our representatives attends a partnership meeting they can speak effectively on our behalf and report back on matters, especially potential opportunities, that will be of interest to us. I ask you to take the time to respond to this questionnaire and help us all make this Group truly representative and really effective.

The Annual Assembly of the Solihull Partnership is a terrific networking opportunity as well as an informative event. Time is built into the agenda for attendees to meet each other and discuss how organisations can support each other and work together. The Solihull Partnership is about serving our communities more effectively by working together rather than in isolation and we need to be table. Again, I urge you to look at the further detail on our Events page and consider attending.

Meanwhile, the consultation refers to our representatives ‘who sit on Partnership Boards’. Not everyone will know who they are, so here is the current list:

• Children and Young Peoples Trust – Janet Down, SoLO
• Healthier Communities – Martin Wright, Enable
• Prosperous Communities – Janet Johnson, SUSTAiN
• Safer Communities – Joanne Mackinnon, Welcome
• Stronger Communities – Dave Pinwell, SUSTAiN
• Adult Safeguarding – David Williams, Solihull Care
• Child Safeguarding – Claire Milican, SUSTAiN

The Reference Group will be setting up improved channels of communications between these representatives and the rest of the sector.

Dave Pinwell, CEO Colebridge Trust & SUSTAiN

Two consultations have been launched in recent weeks about strategies which, between them, will determine much about the future of our borough.

The Emerging Core Strategy consultation is about future developments in the borough, how land will be used, whether and where the Green Belt will be touched by development. What land will be potentially available for housing developers. What space will be available for retail and commercial space. How will this all affect transport links. In other words, it is a spatial strategy for the next decade and more.

The Local Economic Assessment looks at the development of the local economy, attracting more businesses to Solihull, developing skills which commercial interests will need, providing the strong local economy that will strengthen our communities and ensure high employment rates. In other words, making sure that Solihull is a prosperous borough a decade or more hence with less of an equality gap than it has now between the extremes of the borough.

These documents are inexorably linked. You cannot attract businesses without suitable commercial land, a choice of affordable quality housing in which its people might live and viable transport links. There is no point in building houses if people are going to migrate from the area because of a lack of jobs. There is no point in regenerating Chelmsley Wood if people there cannot access suitable employment. So, they need to be examined together.

There is an opportunity now for our sector to influence these strategies on behalf of our members and service users. They are challenging documents to assimilate and digest, but their potential impact on our future demands that we make the necessary investment.

If there is sufficient demand, SUSTAiN will seek stakeholder workshops to assist in the process. Please let us know by emailing tinab@solihull-sustain.org.uk if you think this would be helpful and would attend.

Last week, I attended, on behalf of our Sector, a Reducing Re-offending Workshop run by the Safer Solihull Partnership. Other Third Sector organisations represented included Fry Housing and SIAS. Reducing the re-offending rate is one of Safer Solihull’s priorities and an aim of the workshop was to explore how, through smarter working and in partnership, this goal might be achieved.

We were presented with statistics that painted a picture of the issue; the most prevalent crime of those who re-offend is violence (35%) followed by theft (27%) and then acquisitive crime (15%). The most prevalent group of re-offenders are males between the ages of 13 and 20 (33%).

We heard from Sue Moore, the Drug Intervention Programme Manager, that seven pathways to reduce re-offending have been identified. These are:

• Accommodation
• Education
• Training & Employment
• Health
• Drug and Alcohol Treatment
• Finance, Benefits & Debt
• Children & Families
  & Attitudes, Thinking & Behaviour

In other words, the presence of the above issues, like lack of a place to stay or job prospects, discord in the home or a grudge against society, in an offender’s life will act as barriers to them ‘going straight’ and appropriate, early interventions can reduce the probability of re-offending. We can readily recognise that our Sector is operating in each of the areas and has a potential role to play.

I also heard for the first time at this session of the work of SOVA, a charity, who from their Birmingham office, in the words of their web site:

• ‘work with participants in custody and in the community on release and was established to assist in removing the multiple barriers to labour market entry facing disadvantaged offenders.’
• ‘provides mentoring services to young offenders through the recruitment, training and support of community volunteers.’

Source: SOVA

Our workshop concluded that approaches of this nature, incorporating a mentoring/buddying approach, which began with a pre-release intervention and continued through, hopefully, a rehabilitation into the community, would be a useful approach for Solihull to seek. It could give continuity of support linked to multi-agency response to barriers faced by the individual offender. The feasibility of pursuing such an approach will be considered further.

If you or your organisation would be keen to find out more or potentially get involved, please email davep@solihull-sustain.org.uk so that I can include you in the dialogue.

The debate about ‘The Future of Solihull Community Schools’ that is taking place in the Council Chamber on Wednesday 22 September reflects widespread concern in our community about the haste and lack of consultation with which some of our schools are considering transition to Academy status. There are fears that two schools, Arden and Tudor Grange, have already decided irrevocably to make this conversion.

SUSTAiN has been made aware that consultation has hitherto been cursory, which is disappointing when this new Academy programme is being championed by the Government which wishes to give the people more say in a Big Society.

It is also a fundamental question of Governance. The decision takers here are school Governors. Each school Governing Board comprises representatives of the staff, representatives of the parents and representatives of the community. How can Governors represent effectively in their decision taking if they do not consult the views of those who they represent?

SUSTAiN has been made aware of other concerns. One of the community groups in our Third Sector Network has reported difficulties in finding out who is on the Board of Governors of the school in its area. Another has reported correspondence to the Chair of Governors being responded to by Head Teacher. Both of these reports lead to questions about how well schools are being governed.

We are on the leading edge of a time of great change that will affect us all. It is imperative that changes which will inevitably happen quickly are well managed and appropritely managed at all levels.

I hope you will excuse me for writing about my summer holiday here, but I came across the most inspiring illustration of partnership working whilst I was away and, as partnership working becomes more important to our Sector, it is an example that has something to say to us.

I took the family, including a plane mad son, to the Visitor Centre at Airbus in Toulouse, and I have to say it was an experience from the top drawer, showing how all-age friendly and informative a visit to a manufacturing facility can be. Cadbury – eat your heart out!

Airbus Industrie was spawned in 1970 as a consortium  of European aviation manufacturers, including the UK’s Hawker-Siddeley, by their respective governments, to help them compete in the global market. Today it is a successful aircraft manufacturer, producing nearly half of the world’s jet airliners. This includes, of course, the largest, the A380. Carrying, typically, between 500 and 600 passengers on two decks, it has more room per passenger and greater carbon efficiency per passenger than traditional long haul craft.

It was an A380 assembly plant that we had the privilege to see in Toulouse. We took a lift to a viewing platform, high up at the end of an incredibly large hanger in which three A380s were being fitted out. What was staggering, though, was the process for creating the shell of the aircraft and bringing it all together in Toulouse.

The wings are made at the former Hawker Siddeley plant at Broughton, near Chester. Fuselage sections are made in Hamburg, underbelly and tail sections in Cadiz.

Transport infrastructure to get the elements to Toulouse has been created from scratch, including the re-engineering of the Airbus A300 into the dolphin shaped Beluga transport plane (only 5 in existence, used to transport smaller components) and three roll-on roll-off ships, the ‘Ville de Bordeaux’, ‘City of Hamburg’ and ‘Ciudad de Cadiz’ (I guess ‘Village of Mostyn’ would not have the same ring to it), designed from scratch to carry the larger wing, tail and fuselage sections.

The journey taken by every completed wing is quite staggering. It is taken to a specially constructed barge, the Afon Dyfrdwy, waiting on the River Dee near the Broughton plant. Only when the tide conditions are right can it be taken fifteen miles downstream to a custom built berth in the Port of Mostyn for transfer to one of the ships.   

These all run a constant circuit from Hamburg to Mostyn to Saint-Nazaire to Cadiz to Bordeaux, collecting different plane sections as it goes and delivering enough main sections to build one plane in Bordeaux. Again, they go onto a river barge, this time to navigate the Garonne as far as Langon.

The final 200 kilometres must be tackled by road. A convoy of half a dozen slow moving oversize loaded vehicles travels only at night and spends the intervening days in specially built secure stopping off locations en route. All of this happens once per week.

By now you are probably thinking as I did – why bother? Why not build the whole damned thing in one place. Airbus claims, though, that it makes negligible difference. All of that transport infrastructure costs less than a halfpenny in the pound in relation to the cost of the plane! So, the earth has been moved (literally on roads between Langon and Toulouse) to make the A380 a true international consortium collaboration – and a success story.

So, what conceivable relevance has making planes in Toulouse got to supporting people in Solihull. I believe that what has been achieved by Airbus demonstrates three things very clearly:

• that several small and disparate organisations struggling to make an impact in a marketplace can bring their skills and experience to a collective table and work together collaboratively and, as a result, make a huge impact, achieving more and establishing greater sustainability as one than they could ever dream of on their own.
• that even if such collaborations demand moving mountains and creating new vehicles to make them work, that can be a small price to pay for the difference it can make.
• that the long term result of such collaboration can be mould-breaking innovation,  solutions with extra dimensions and bigger, better outcomes. 

I went to a Workshop about Hate Crime a fortnight ago. This is officially defined as to do with incidents perceived as being motivated by by prejudice and hate. It can be perpetrated as a result of race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender lifestyles or disability. This particular workshop dwelt mostly on disability and featured disturbing case studies, including a number many of us are familiar with such as those of Steven Hoskins and Fiona Pilkington.

The latter case was very much about repeat incidence of anti-social behaviour, the former about exploitation of a vulnerable person. Both were, in hindsight, avoidable if the intelligence available between different agencies and the community had been brought together in an intelligent and coherent way.

It was encouraging to hear individual agencies had now improved processes to detect repeating patterns of calls so that these could be followed up more purposefully. It was also recognised that with joining up this activity in partnership there was more work to do.

Our sector has its part to play, but how to contribute to a partnership effort is less clear at this stage. Perhaps those working with those vulnerable to hate crime should start to consider this, to be ready when consulation begins.

The Coalition Government’s initiative to get young people to undertake voluntary and community work has finally been revealed to mixed response. It does seem though that early fears have been heeded and an appropriately cautious and measured approach is being taken. 

That complete nonsense of an idea, compulsory volunteering, that many feared, is nowhere to be seen and the whole shebang, which is distinctly separate to the existing government funded youth programme ‘V’, is starting with a pilot involving just 10,000 youngsters who have completed their GCSE’s. Starting with a small number will allow us all to see how it pans out before getting carried away, which must be appropriate in the current economic climate. 

There remain significant concerns in many camps. Some of the potential pitfalls are obvious:

• A pilot programme like this could easily ‘hoover up’ easy to reach, compliant young people and miss the real target hard line cases that need turning around.
• Because the pilot will involve working up to 8 weeks during the 2011 summer holidays, recruitment might be a challenge. If all their mates are doing what they do in the summer holidays…
• Making a real success of a programme like this will probably be more expensive than anyone imagines, each participant will need a substantial investment of time and mentoring for it to work.

However, any progress involves risk and no-one will ever know if an idea has legs unless it is given a run out.

We do not yet know what level of funding will be made available or where it will come from (although the Prime Minister has indicated that he will ‘find the funds to make it happen regardless’).

At this stage all we know about the 2011 programme comes from the following, published by the Cabinet Office:

All young people participating in NCS (National Citizen Service) pilot programmes will have a common experience, wherever they live, whatever their background and whichever organisation delivers the programme. We will be asking that bids include five distinct phases of activity:  

Phase 1: An introductory phase in which expectations will be set and relationships built between participants and staff.

Phase 2: A set of tasks, completed in a residential setting away from home, which are personally challenging (typically in the form of an outdoor challenge experience), and focused on personal and social development (one week).

Phase 3: A set of structured tasks involving visiting and helping the local community and developing skills, again the aim is that this would be completed in a residential setting away from home (one week).

Phase 4: Participants to design a social action task in consultation with the local community (one week).

Phase 5 onwards:

• A period of 30 hours of social action on a part-time basis.
• A fair/event to encourage participants to get involved in ongoing social action or volunteering activities in their area (with a view to creating an NCS alumni scheme).
• A large celebration and graduation event for participants and their guests.
• An alumni programme, including training sessions and reunion events, to build on the enthusiasm and relationships generated by NCS.
• We hope to be able to offer outstanding NCS graduates the opportunity to take part in a programme of social action projects in developing countries.   

A tendering exercise is going to be launched next week, but we do not know whether this be for national organisations to pitch for the opportunity to run it for the Government or whether there will be an opportunity for local areas to get involved at this stage.

It would be helpful for us at SUSTAiN to know, though, anticipating local dialogue at some stage, whether or not local organisations would be keen to participate if there is an opportunity to do so.  Please contact Tina Burgess with your views via tinab@solihull-sustain.org.uk.

Major changes in legislation about equality and diversity are coming into force from October. Dave Pinwell, SUSTAiN’s Chief Executive Officer, presents the key points.

I went to a briefing last week on the Equality Act 2010. I must admit that this forthcoming legislation had sneaked up on me, three months short of becoming law and I had not caught up with what it was about sufficiently.

We all need to make sure we are up to speed with it by the time October comes to call and the new legislation cuts in, replacing a number of previous Acts (such as the Race Relations Act 1976 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995).

Some of the changes include:

• there are now nine strands of equality rather than six
• employees will now be able to complain of harassment even if it is not directed at them, if they can demonstrate that it creates an offensive environment for them
• claims for discrimination on dual grounds are to to be permitted
• positive discrimination between two equal candidates at interview will be permitted.

By October it will necessary for organisations to review their approach to equalities and as necessary:

• review equality policies and monitoring procedures
• brief trustees, staff and volunteers
• consider the need for any additional training.

Materials supporting the new Act can be somewhat heavy going. Check out, for instance, www.equalities.gov.uk, where you can digest over 250 pages of the Act itself and over 200 pages of supporting explanatory notes. Even the ‘easy read’ version runs to 38 pages!

Help will be at hand, though. SUSTAiN will be briefing the sector in more detail. It would help to know whether there is demand for workshops on the subject. If you are interested, let Tina know via tinab@solihull-sustain.org.uk.