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While the world around us sinks further in despair, we seem
to be riding the storm. Our organisation, Her Centre, won a new contract to provide two
domestic violence advocates, and lost 40 per cent of our old grant funding at the same
time. The council, provider of both, felt that we couldn’t complain due to the
new work. We did appeal and were
able to get a small start up grant as the new service led to a move.
Gemma Quainton
Our can-do attitude is helping to create savings
By the time they want our services we will have disappeared
I feel very sad that all of the changes to
the health system still focus on structures such as GP consortiums, new Health
and Wellbeing Boards, Healthwatch etc. Again we focus on delivery systems and
completely ignore the quality of service delivered to real people. Will another
Health and Wellbeing Board or community planning structure really improve the
quality or level of support available for communities really in need? Having
worked in this field for over 25 years, I always believed the changes would ultimately
improve the lives of people. To be honest, I am struggling this time to be so
optimistic.
Downsizing does not make you more effective unless you were over-staffed before
Healthy Living Wessex is a not for profit social
enterprise and, like every other organisation in the new civil society, we are
struggling to survive the cuts and infrastructure changes.
I have not blogged
recently as I am tired of being a grumpy old woman. Until now I have always
been an optimist. I have always seen the bigger positive outcomes of any hard
change, but no more. I await the light and have restructured my company to
SURVIVE. This is not to make it more efficient or more effective, as it was this
before.
In January I served my successful team their redundancy notices…
Since my last blog life, as always, has moved on.
The
good part is that the independent evaluation of our work through the South West
Well Being Consortium: Well Being Programme has been described as ‘eye-wateringly exciting’ and has shown real statistically significant improvements
in reported good health, healthy eating, mental health, physical activity
levels and mental well being.
DIY services
With public sector bodies going through serious changes and
losing large amounts of money, it is time for the voluntary sector to step out
of their shadows and take the lead on new services. Less talk more action
should be our motto.
I feel insulted and let down by the transition fund
Email received from the Cabinet Office:
“Dear Sir or Madam,
Thank you for your interest
in the new £100 million Transition Fund. We are really pleased to let you know
this fund is now open for applications.”
Making sense of the new order
Healthy Living Wessex is a not for profit social
enterprise originating from Big Lottery funded Healthy Living Centre Programme,
and encouraged by the Lottery and the public sector to become established. We
have survived 5 years post grant funding and are in the process of trying to
make sense of the new order so that we can adapt and make the most of promised
opportunities it may bring to benefit the community we serve.
Make commissioning more sane
As a former local council commissioner and a current local charity director, I have been both sides of the fence.
With increasing financial pressures and the need to be transparent, government commissioning at all levels has become a real three ring circus. Prequalification questionnaires, procurement frameworks, 300 page long tender documents – it is all pretty exhaustive. So why is it done this way?
