If you employ Agency Workers there are a few key things you need to know. More information here

Volunteering England, a national charity that supports volunteering involving organisations,has issued their first quarterly e-newsletter with information about their activities and developments.

Keep in touch with their news, updates and training opportunities.

One simple way to reduce the amount of junk email we all receive is to hide your email circulation from the unscrupulous folk who go around farming email addresses.

When you put lots of email addresses in the ‘To’ field of an email, two things can happen:

• Your email gets blocked by spam filters
• Spammers spot big circulation lists and steal the addresses.

The simple way to prevent this is to use the BCC address field.

Like this:

That way, you don’t copy everyone’s email address to the world. All the recipient sees is their own email address or ‘undisclosed recipients’. Plus your own email is less likely to end up in the Junk email bin.

Social Welfare Training has produced a very useful poster as a guide to benefits for 2011-2012.

Download the poster here

More from legal expert Sandy Adirondack on Equality cases

• Catholic Care adoption agency appeals again to change its objects to allow it to provide services only to heterosexual adopters.More
• Employment tribunal confirms that a belief in animal rights can be a protected belief and another tribunal says a belief in public sector broadcasting can also be protected. More
• EAT says it is not unlawful, in this particular case, to require a Muslim employee to work during Friday lunchtime rather than being able to take time off to attend prayers. More
• Follow-up on homophobic banter case – employee held not to have been harassed, because he also acted offensively. More
• Pregnancy gossip can be discrimination and harassment. More
• Government Equalities Office short guide on health and disability questions during recruitment. More
• It’s now too late for an employer to make an employee retire because of their age, unless the retirement can be objectively justified. More
• New edition of joint CIPD/TUC guidance on managing age in the workplace. More
• Dual discrimination provision will not be implemented. More
• The government is going to consult on removing the provision that employers should take reasonable steps to stop harassment by third parties (customers, clients, contractors etc) when it’s happened twice or more and the employer knows about it. More
• From 6 April, an employer can in some circumstances give preference in recruitment or promotion to a person with a ‘protected characteristic’ if two candidates are equally well qualified. More
• Organisations which receive public sector funding or contracts (Inc Voluntary Sector) are likely to have to comply with aspects of the public sector duty as part of their grant or contract conditions.  More
• Compromise agreements may not be valid in relation to discrimination claims. More

Maggie Leaver, formerly CEO of Solihull Carers Centre, has set up her own consultancy business offering support, skills and experience to Voluntary & Community organisations and Health & Social Care providers.

Maggies Business Card

Services & Pricing

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.

Professor Munro has released her third and final report reviewing the child protection system and can be downloaded here – http://www.education.gov.uk/munroreview/

The report sets out principles for a good child protection system including the following:-

• Helping children and families involves working with them and therefore the quality of the relationship between the child and family and professionals directly impacts on the effectiveness of help given
• Early help is better for children: it minimises the period of adverse experiences and improves outcomes for children

Chapter 5 particularly looks at sharing responsibility for the provision of early help and sets out 3 key messages:-

• Preventative services will do more to reduce abuse and neglect rather than reactive services
• Co-ordination of services is important to maximise efficiency
• Within preventative services, there need to be good mechanisms for helping people identify those children and young people who are suffering or likely to suffer harm from abuse or neglect and who need referral to children’s social care

Some useful stuff (links) from our legal expert.

H&S policies and risk assessments. These include an online risk assessment tool for offices, consultation on an online tool for shops, the H&S made simple website, and a website specifically for organisations which use volunteers.

Managing stress at work.

Basic first aid leaflet.

Register of occupational safety and health consultants

Abolition of the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority

Risk, liability and the social value of activities

Harassment at work.

We recommend you visit and bookmark our legal experts website. It is crammed with legal information, advice, resources and tools specifically aimed at Voluntary organisations.

Legal Expert website

The Social Enterprise Mentor Network has produced a really useful guide which gives some practical tips for people who aren’t used to networking or who don’t feel comfortable doing it.

The good news is its easy and you are not alone.

You can download this simple guide plus other useful fact sheets and guides from our Resources section.

(See PR & Marketing section for this guide)