December 11, 2024

Our District Manager for Cumberland, Bridget Johns, gives us an update on a packed five months, with the team helping organisations in South Copeland secure over £500,00 in funding, Phase 2 of the Bedrock Basics programme commencing, the end of the Community Connectors project and more:

Bridget’s Blog – August to December 2024

Well I honestly don’t know where the last 5 months have gone. They have whizzed by far too fast, though with lots of interesting things taking place.

Between April and November Cumbria CVS has supported over 200 different voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise (VCFSE) organisations that deliver services in Cumberland. WOW!!! I think this is incredible (and thanks to all the people involved with this amazing achievements). This is a combination of different activities including groups using our Open4Community funding search database, registering groups as charities, running networks (Volunteer Managers, Action for Health, Mental Health Provider Forum), promoting organisations volunteering opportunities, holding volunteering and funding fair, plus more.

Within our Supporting South Copeland project we really are making a difference to organisations’ financial sustainability – through our Development Officer Berry, we have helped organisations secure over £500,000 since the project started in July 2023. This amount is truly staggering. Gareth, the Development Officer for Supporting Allerdale, has had a focus on governance support including delivering Roles and Responsibilities workshops to trustees, supporting groups to register as charities and helping to draft safeguarding policies. He has also sourced a trainer to deliver adult safeguarding training that will take place in early 2025.

The Bedrock Basics team have started delivery of Phase 2 of the programme. Gordon (Development Officer) has been busy organising training for VCFSE organisations delivered by the Sellafield supply chain. Sessions include Human Factors Performance Coaching, Manual Handling and Infrastructure and Best Employment Practices. Laura (Digital Support Officer) has exciting plans to run a Digital Fair next year.

And this is just a snippet of the work undertaken by these much needed Officers.

At the end of October our Community Connectors project finished. This was a two-year project, funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, with the aim of connecting communities who seldom have their voices heard with decision-making that directly impacts them. The focus was to engage with under-represented groups that find it harder to have their voices heard.

I’d like to thank the 29 people who gave their time to be a Community Connector. They have represented communities including sensory loss, refugees and people seeking asylum, mental health, neurodiversity, LGBTQ, homeless and survivors of rape, sexual abuse or sexualised violence. We really do appreciate their commitment, and it has been a privilege to be a part of their journey. The project has had a positive impact on the communities that have been involved and we hope to still connect with them to relevant developments.

As an organisation, we have learned a huge amount from delivering Community Connectors and we will incorporate this (some of it we already have) into our operational practices across the organisation.

Although the Community Connectors project has now ended, this way of engaging with communities, known as Community Power, is taking traction across Cumberland (and Cumbria). Community Power is based on the principle that people have insight, lived experience and capabilities which should play a meaningful role in the big decisions taken by decision makers. Cumbria CVS is in a great position to share our learning from the Community Connectors project with key decision makers such as Cumberland Council (I’m a member of their Community Power Program Board) and advocate for and support engagement of those communities that find it harder to have their voices heard.

The final thing I’d like to share with you is that Cumbria CVS is a delivery partner on the Cumberland Health Determinants Research Collaboration (HDRC). This is a 5-year project, hosted by Cumberland Council, and its purpose is to embed research and evidence-based practice at the heart of everything the Council does. This will inform future policies to improve the health and wellbeing of our Cumberland.

This is a collaborative project with direct delivery partners including Cumberland Council, University of Cumbria, University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) and us. Our role is to promote the work of the HDRC to our wide network of VCFSE organisations, including the community researcher roles (Community researchers will be members of a community who are given training to conduct research in their own community), and will actively connect HDRC project workers with the harder to reach communities.