February 25, 2025

As I’m writing this, I’ve officially been in the Cumbria CVS Chief Executive role for nearly two months, and despite many thing being very familiar (I’ve worked for the organisation for over 20 years), it’s still felt like a bit of a whirlwind……

The role of a local infrastructure organisation like Cumbria CVS is very broad. Our national body, NAVCA, describes it as having 4 Pillars: Leadership and Advocacy, Partnerships and Collaborations, Capacity Building, and supporting Volunteering.

Whilst I love working with tiny community groups, whose ability to “get stuff done” is very refreshing, it’s perhaps inevitable that, as Chief Executive, I’ve spent more time doing things that could be described as leadership, advocacy, or collaboration.

I’ve found myself in a startling array of “partnership” meetings. Despite having done a health partnerships role in the past, I’m running to get up to speed with our current health and care structures (don’t confuse the ICB with the ICS, or an ICC!), whilst getting involved in the development of Cumbria’s Economic Strategy, the investment coming into the Furness area through Team Barrow and the development of Cumberland’s Joint Strategic Needs Assessment.

What a lot of acronyms, abbreviations and long words! I suppose the good news is that part of our role as an infrastructure organisation is to get our heads around all of these, so that we can explain them in ways that make sense to the wide range of organisations within Cumbria’s voluntary and community sector.

With that in mind, we’ve just organised an online session around devolution in Cumbria. You could wade your way through the national consultation website (it’s here if you want to!) and try to understand what a Strategic Authority and directly elected Mayor might mean for people in Cumbria. Or you could book your place for our online session, and let senior Council staff talk you through the basics, followed by a chance to ask your questions. We hope the second of those options is going to be useful to many of the organisations we work with.

But I think it’s important not to spend all my time in “strategic partnership” meetings; I can only play a useful role during those meetings if I’ve not lost touch with what things are like on the frontline. So in the next few weeks, I’ll be at the Carlisle Community Groups Network meeting, taking part in Cumbria Local Resilience Forum’s Flood Exercise (along with some of our community groups), and at online events around Community Emergency Planning aimed at groups in the Westmorland and Furness area.

Maybe I’ll see you there?

 

Carolyn Otley
Chief Executive
Cumbria CVS