Would you or someone you know like to take two months out to help make a huge success of the Hello campaign?
The Vodafone Foundation ‘World of Difference 2010’ programme is now open for applications until the 23rd November 2010 – so get your application in quick!‘World of Difference’ offers 500 people the chance to work for a UK-based charity for two months from March 2011, and get paid for your time.
The Communication Trust is calling for people to apply to help deliver the Hello Campaign. Perhaps you are a speech and language professional, teacher or parent? There are lots of ways that you can take part, from helping to deliver the campaign in your local region to working at our office in central London.
Interested? Then what are you waiting for?
We are particularly interested in people with a background and experience in:
speech, language and communication (such as a Speech and Language Therapist); project management; press and public relations; social media campaigns; evaluation; and participation (i.e. consultation and user engagement).
Applicants must be 18+ and be able to work full time for two months to support the Hello campaign. All placements must start in March 2011.
Talk to us today about how you can help Hello to improve the lives of children with communication difficulties. Call 020 7 843 2557 to find out more or email mbeagan@thecommunicationtrust.org.uk
Showing posts with label charity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label charity. Show all posts
Friday, 29 October 2010
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
Round-up of the Comprehensive Spending Review - David Hare, The Whitehouse Consultancy Ltd
Below, David Hare from The WhiteHouse Consultancy, gives a summary of last week's announcements regarding the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR).
The CSR has been unveiled today and as predicted has made over £70 billion of real terms cuts over the period 2011-12 to 2014-15. The biggest winners from the CSR were health and international development – technically protected from cuts – but education also suffered less significant reductions than feared.
The budget of the Deptartment for Education will be down by 3.4% over the period, with schools budgets protected and a 12% reduction in other areas to allow this. Part of this reduction will come from rationalising or ending all centrally directed programmes, though what that means in practice remains unclear, particularly as the Government has committed to a national campaign to support families with multiple problems get the help that they need, suggesting some national programmes will be created.
The Pupil Premium will be introduced, Sure Start services will be maintained and extra Health Visitors will be recruited.
The main development for Special Educational Needs (SEN) is the announcement that children with SEN/disabilities will receive a personalised budget, though no information on how and when that will happen accompanied this announcement.
Local government will be forced to absorb significant cuts, suffering a substantial 27% reduction in real terms, though with far greater room for manoeuvre coming through the abolition of ring fencing in all but two areas. This extra flexibility is designed to help Local Authorities balance the books, but local government funding for services is likely to be highly constrained for several years. This will inevitably lead to a reduction in the number of contracts available for the voluntary sector, though for those contracts that do emerge, there is likely to be an extension of tariff payment mechanisms and payment by results and also a central government guarantee that a certain percentage of services must be delivered by the voluntary and independent sectors.
£470m will be made available to the voluntary sector to develop capacity, with some £100m being made available to support troubled voluntary agencies who deliver public services to keep that service going.
As Whitehouse has indicated for some time, the CSR has not set out every line of cuts that will be made by Departments; it has instead merely given Departmental allocations along with a few headline points as to what will go (and, also, what they have decided to retain). In some ways the more important announcements will come next month when all Departments set out their business plans to 2014-15, plans that will include more information on what has been cut.
The CSR has been unveiled today and as predicted has made over £70 billion of real terms cuts over the period 2011-12 to 2014-15. The biggest winners from the CSR were health and international development – technically protected from cuts – but education also suffered less significant reductions than feared.
The budget of the Deptartment for Education will be down by 3.4% over the period, with schools budgets protected and a 12% reduction in other areas to allow this. Part of this reduction will come from rationalising or ending all centrally directed programmes, though what that means in practice remains unclear, particularly as the Government has committed to a national campaign to support families with multiple problems get the help that they need, suggesting some national programmes will be created.
The Pupil Premium will be introduced, Sure Start services will be maintained and extra Health Visitors will be recruited.
The main development for Special Educational Needs (SEN) is the announcement that children with SEN/disabilities will receive a personalised budget, though no information on how and when that will happen accompanied this announcement.
Local government will be forced to absorb significant cuts, suffering a substantial 27% reduction in real terms, though with far greater room for manoeuvre coming through the abolition of ring fencing in all but two areas. This extra flexibility is designed to help Local Authorities balance the books, but local government funding for services is likely to be highly constrained for several years. This will inevitably lead to a reduction in the number of contracts available for the voluntary sector, though for those contracts that do emerge, there is likely to be an extension of tariff payment mechanisms and payment by results and also a central government guarantee that a certain percentage of services must be delivered by the voluntary and independent sectors.
£470m will be made available to the voluntary sector to develop capacity, with some £100m being made available to support troubled voluntary agencies who deliver public services to keep that service going.
As Whitehouse has indicated for some time, the CSR has not set out every line of cuts that will be made by Departments; it has instead merely given Departmental allocations along with a few headline points as to what will go (and, also, what they have decided to retain). In some ways the more important announcements will come next month when all Departments set out their business plans to 2014-15, plans that will include more information on what has been cut.
Monday, 16 August 2010
Awareness raising bad. Very bad. - Anita Kerwin-Nye, The Communication Trust
Well, at least according to government. Many Trust members in receipt of Children and Young People’s Grant funding have received letters restricting any spend on communications, awareness and marketing activity, even if that was the point of the original grant. This is in line with wider government activity restricting communications spending and outlined guidance from the Treasury released weeks after the election, (please e-mail enquiries@thecommunicationtrust.org.uk to request a copy).
Of course there was a need to reign in communications spending – all governments spend an inordinate amount on untested and unevidenced marketing and campaigns and it genuinely pleasing to see the government restricting itself in this field (especially as recent experience showed how some government communications consultants daily fees are the equivalent of a consultant SLT for a week!)
But the guidance to voluntary organisations is a bit irritating and somewhat patronising. To say that we need ‘to make the most of very £1’ and to ‘prioritise funding to frontline staff’ is like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs (never really understood that phrase – can an expert in idiom and allegory please explain it to me!)
Many third sector bodies running communications activity also run frontline services. We know the reality that money spent on marketing and awareness raising is one less SLT or specialist teacher so we do not do it lightly.
So why do it at all?
First and foremost to get information to parents, children and young people and those that work with them. The single biggest complaint during the Bercow Review of speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) was that parents did not have the information that they needed when they needed it. This both delayed the help that they got – in a field where early intervention is crucial – and increased their sense of isolation. This was particularly true for parents of children with specific language impairment where the lack of awareness of the condition was heartbreaking as doctors told parents their 4 year old son with no speech would ‘grow out of it’.
Studies consistently show that voluntary sector organisations are often the first port of call for parents (or the first positive source of information) and Talking Point (the speech and language information services that will be the Powerhouse behind the national year) already gets 20,000 hits a year. Member helpline services get thousands of calls a year from desperate families and the marketing of member frontline services is really just another way of ensuring that families can learn about the help that is available from both voluntary and public sector.
The information includes how to better access local provision and how many Trust members provide services that help parents and families better understand what is available to them and how to make their way through the maze of services.
Secondly in an era when government is rightly focusing on the local national voluntary organisations in particular can help local staff share their good practice and learn more about what others are doing. This sharing of what works helps save money – reducing the need for the wheel to be invented again and again. A recent Trust workshop between teachers and SLTs left participants with improved skills and a range of additional techniques that they did not have to invent themselves.
Both the Trust and our members constantly review both the need for communications and awareness raising. We analyse the best ways to get to parents and balance on line and print materials with support for frontline staff who work directly with hard to reach families. We balance well placed national media articles with local services that put experts directly in contact with families at shopping centres, children’s centres and schools. We can track how our awareness raising has started to improve earlier access to services and reduced the isolation of families but we are never complacent. We know the value we need to squeeze from the £1.
Lastly communications activity allows the Trust and our members to keep families and those that work with them up to date on government policy. As Cameron sets out the call for real people to inform government policy and to take forward ‘big society’ with personal responsibility this is surely an essential part of our work. The Trust’s networks reach nearly all of the million families of children with SLCN and communications activity gives them a voice to responds to policy changes and funding decisions that affect them. They can and will tell the government when they have got it right and they will be a powerful voice when they think the government has got it wrong. Now what government would not want to fund that?
Of course there was a need to reign in communications spending – all governments spend an inordinate amount on untested and unevidenced marketing and campaigns and it genuinely pleasing to see the government restricting itself in this field (especially as recent experience showed how some government communications consultants daily fees are the equivalent of a consultant SLT for a week!)
But the guidance to voluntary organisations is a bit irritating and somewhat patronising. To say that we need ‘to make the most of very £1’ and to ‘prioritise funding to frontline staff’ is like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs (never really understood that phrase – can an expert in idiom and allegory please explain it to me!)
Many third sector bodies running communications activity also run frontline services. We know the reality that money spent on marketing and awareness raising is one less SLT or specialist teacher so we do not do it lightly.
So why do it at all?
First and foremost to get information to parents, children and young people and those that work with them. The single biggest complaint during the Bercow Review of speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) was that parents did not have the information that they needed when they needed it. This both delayed the help that they got – in a field where early intervention is crucial – and increased their sense of isolation. This was particularly true for parents of children with specific language impairment where the lack of awareness of the condition was heartbreaking as doctors told parents their 4 year old son with no speech would ‘grow out of it’.
Studies consistently show that voluntary sector organisations are often the first port of call for parents (or the first positive source of information) and Talking Point (the speech and language information services that will be the Powerhouse behind the national year) already gets 20,000 hits a year. Member helpline services get thousands of calls a year from desperate families and the marketing of member frontline services is really just another way of ensuring that families can learn about the help that is available from both voluntary and public sector.
The information includes how to better access local provision and how many Trust members provide services that help parents and families better understand what is available to them and how to make their way through the maze of services.
Secondly in an era when government is rightly focusing on the local national voluntary organisations in particular can help local staff share their good practice and learn more about what others are doing. This sharing of what works helps save money – reducing the need for the wheel to be invented again and again. A recent Trust workshop between teachers and SLTs left participants with improved skills and a range of additional techniques that they did not have to invent themselves.
Both the Trust and our members constantly review both the need for communications and awareness raising. We analyse the best ways to get to parents and balance on line and print materials with support for frontline staff who work directly with hard to reach families. We balance well placed national media articles with local services that put experts directly in contact with families at shopping centres, children’s centres and schools. We can track how our awareness raising has started to improve earlier access to services and reduced the isolation of families but we are never complacent. We know the value we need to squeeze from the £1.
Lastly communications activity allows the Trust and our members to keep families and those that work with them up to date on government policy. As Cameron sets out the call for real people to inform government policy and to take forward ‘big society’ with personal responsibility this is surely an essential part of our work. The Trust’s networks reach nearly all of the million families of children with SLCN and communications activity gives them a voice to responds to policy changes and funding decisions that affect them. They can and will tell the government when they have got it right and they will be a powerful voice when they think the government has got it wrong. Now what government would not want to fund that?
Friday, 16 July 2010
Austerity we know what it means now let’s make it work - Guest slot, Cara Evans, Operations Director
I have to say if I see austerity in one more magazine article or on a newspaper article I may scream. We get it, we all need to tighten are belts, make the pennies go futher. I totally agree with that. What I want to see now is action not just talk. At the Trust we have been cost saving since day one, not only that we are building the capacity of our partners.
As you know The Communication Trust is a coalition. Having worked in the voluntary sector for 15 years there is nothing more depressing than seeing new charities set up when ones already exist and are doing a good job. Just having additional overhead costs that don’t need to exist is simply wrong. Don’t get me wrong if there is a need for an additional charity that meets the needs to the users I have no argument.
So how does a our coalition work? The Trust and its partners have a common aim, to help children and young people who need support with their communication. We employ a very small core team, for every project we assess what we can achieve within the core team, and when we need extra support we turn to our partners and commission them, identifying who has the best expertise to get the job done, paying them a fair rate. We share accommodation with one of founders, thus sharing overheads costs. We have jointly tendered and won contracts. We share marketing and publication costs.
We have built a considerable amount of trust in our members to ensure we have their interests at heart, but ultimately it is using the best resources in the most efficient way to help the children and their families who need it most.
Monday, 10 May 2010
Diamond Lights - Guest slot, Andrew Ball, Campaign Director
This week marks my 10th anniversary of joining the voluntary sector. In that time I’ve been fortunate to have met some very remarkable people (and some pretty unremarkable ones too) but probably none more so than the parents and professionals working to support children who need help to communicate. As anyone that has ever volunteered, worked for or supported a charity will tell you, personal experience is one of the most important reasons why they give their time and support to their chosen cause.
Since I joined The Communication Trust it’s become very clear that for a long time so much of the great work that goes on in the children’s communication sector is a result of the passion and dedication of a small number of individuals – most of whom have firsthand experience of the struggle that they, their children or children close to them have faced because of some form of speech, language and communication need. What’s more, this relatively small band of people have faced the uphill task of creating a better understanding of this issue without the media spotlight or glare of publicity that many other causes have benefited from at various times over recent decades – despite this being an issue that impacts on more lives in the UK than most of the big cause célèbres we could all name.
Help, however, is now at hand with the fast approaching national year of ENTER WORKING TITLE OF CHOICE HERE! This awareness campaign will shine a big, bright light on our sector and build on recent successes in emerging this cause. The national year will increase broad understanding of how children’s communication skills should be developing , what the effects are of speech, language and communication needs and what local services parents and children need in order to make a real difference to such needs. If you have anything in particular that you would like to see happen during the national year then please do get in touch – you can tells us your views at enquiries@thecommunicationtrust.org.uk .
Since I joined The Communication Trust it’s become very clear that for a long time so much of the great work that goes on in the children’s communication sector is a result of the passion and dedication of a small number of individuals – most of whom have firsthand experience of the struggle that they, their children or children close to them have faced because of some form of speech, language and communication need. What’s more, this relatively small band of people have faced the uphill task of creating a better understanding of this issue without the media spotlight or glare of publicity that many other causes have benefited from at various times over recent decades – despite this being an issue that impacts on more lives in the UK than most of the big cause célèbres we could all name.
Help, however, is now at hand with the fast approaching national year of ENTER WORKING TITLE OF CHOICE HERE! This awareness campaign will shine a big, bright light on our sector and build on recent successes in emerging this cause. The national year will increase broad understanding of how children’s communication skills should be developing , what the effects are of speech, language and communication needs and what local services parents and children need in order to make a real difference to such needs. If you have anything in particular that you would like to see happen during the national year then please do get in touch – you can tells us your views at enquiries@thecommunicationtrust.org.uk .
Monday, 7 September 2009
Collaboration, coalition and competition
I have been looking at entering The Communication Trust into the latest spate of third sector competitions under the ‘partnership’ award categories. The Communication Trust is a coalition organisation – a group of not-for-profit organisations that have decided to collaborate in pursuit of a common cause – and partnership runs through everything that we do.
When talking to friends about my job those outside the sector I take it for granted that such joint working is the norm - after all charities, (from the Latin Caritas meaning love), are all sweetness do-gooding altruistic bodies. However, friends who have spent their life working in charities tend to suck through their teeth and ask how I cope with the other “c” word – competition.
That charities compete is the non spoken truth of the voluntary sector. Like corporates we compete for money, for PR, for profile and even for clients. Unlike much of the private sector many charities are also driven by passion for their cause, their users, and their beliefs – a passion that can fuel aggressive business strategies epitomised in the Chair of a major national charity recently declaring their intent to wipe the competition off the playing field.
Competition is not per se bad. It can spur organisations on to achieve more for their users. But all charities should, from time to time, consider whether they may achieve more by making their competitors their partners (or, and I have rarely met a charity that has admitted this, consider whether one of their competitiors may be better placed then they to pursue their cause).
Two years ago members of The Communication Trust took such a moment for reflection and decided that collaboration was an essential next step in pursuit of their individual missions. While making the decision was the first step the road to a functional coalition is pathed with challenges. Several Trust members represent impairment specific missions; autism, stammering, specific language difficulties, learning difficulties, hearing impairment; others have an interest social exclusion and poverty; still others have a mission to promote particular approaches or interventions and some come with a wider interest in education and employment. Some are small volunteer run bodies – some are £100 million corporations. These differences in size, mission, style and philosophies compound the challenges faced by competing organisations attempting to collaborate in a market place where funding is ever tighter.
And yet the Trust has succeeded. There are over 30 members of the coalition and the numbers are growing. How has this happened?
In truth taking the first step to decide to collaborate was key. Many Trust members had not had good working relationships and it took courage from these CEOs to reach out – this bold leadership from the CEOs of I CAN, Afasic and other early members of the Trust set a positive model.
The next step was agreeing a common enemy. As many of 10% of children have significant speech, language and communication needs, linked to range of different impairments; in some parts of the country 40-50% of children are entering schools with poor language skills, often linked to social disadvantage; still others do not have the skills for employment and further education. Tackling this time bomb became a common purpose for Trust members and that action was needed fast provided the imperative for shared action.
However even with this common purpose joint working is in practice difficult. Sometimes very difficult. With early support from VCS Engage, the Trust explored models of working and based on early experience I created a guide to good practice in coalition which appears alongside some really useful advice on coalition working that can be found at http://www.vcsengage.org.uk/publications.aspx. Two years on much of this advice remains; starting with something small (we started with developing a leaflet with a shared definition of the problem) be honest, have a strong leader and be informed by evidence and users. I would now add the need to balance sensible process with pragmatic practice – the voluntary sector temptation is to develop complex rules and flow charts for joint working and, while some process is important, the tendency to sit in a room and engage in what a mentor once branded ‘semantical joggerpokery’ about whether a rule should read ‘could’ or ‘will’, must be tempered by some real work.
It is on this last point I am most proud of what the Trust has achieved. We have sensible rules and processes (helped in a large point by adopting a PRINCE 2 approach with an excellent project manager), we work together well (but are never complacent - joint working is a dynamic process), but most of all we have increased the range and quality of services available to children and young people who find communication difficult. As well as our own work we have, through our joint working, pushed and supported the government to take forward a £50 million action plan that will ensure better communication for many children in the years to come. Competition remains between members and between causes but this is tempered by another driver – ambition. We have achieved much with and for children but we are ambitious to achieve so much more and together we will.
When talking to friends about my job those outside the sector I take it for granted that such joint working is the norm - after all charities, (from the Latin Caritas meaning love), are all sweetness do-gooding altruistic bodies. However, friends who have spent their life working in charities tend to suck through their teeth and ask how I cope with the other “c” word – competition.
That charities compete is the non spoken truth of the voluntary sector. Like corporates we compete for money, for PR, for profile and even for clients. Unlike much of the private sector many charities are also driven by passion for their cause, their users, and their beliefs – a passion that can fuel aggressive business strategies epitomised in the Chair of a major national charity recently declaring their intent to wipe the competition off the playing field.
Competition is not per se bad. It can spur organisations on to achieve more for their users. But all charities should, from time to time, consider whether they may achieve more by making their competitors their partners (or, and I have rarely met a charity that has admitted this, consider whether one of their competitiors may be better placed then they to pursue their cause).
Two years ago members of The Communication Trust took such a moment for reflection and decided that collaboration was an essential next step in pursuit of their individual missions. While making the decision was the first step the road to a functional coalition is pathed with challenges. Several Trust members represent impairment specific missions; autism, stammering, specific language difficulties, learning difficulties, hearing impairment; others have an interest social exclusion and poverty; still others have a mission to promote particular approaches or interventions and some come with a wider interest in education and employment. Some are small volunteer run bodies – some are £100 million corporations. These differences in size, mission, style and philosophies compound the challenges faced by competing organisations attempting to collaborate in a market place where funding is ever tighter.
And yet the Trust has succeeded. There are over 30 members of the coalition and the numbers are growing. How has this happened?
In truth taking the first step to decide to collaborate was key. Many Trust members had not had good working relationships and it took courage from these CEOs to reach out – this bold leadership from the CEOs of I CAN, Afasic and other early members of the Trust set a positive model.
The next step was agreeing a common enemy. As many of 10% of children have significant speech, language and communication needs, linked to range of different impairments; in some parts of the country 40-50% of children are entering schools with poor language skills, often linked to social disadvantage; still others do not have the skills for employment and further education. Tackling this time bomb became a common purpose for Trust members and that action was needed fast provided the imperative for shared action.
However even with this common purpose joint working is in practice difficult. Sometimes very difficult. With early support from VCS Engage, the Trust explored models of working and based on early experience I created a guide to good practice in coalition which appears alongside some really useful advice on coalition working that can be found at http://www.vcsengage.org.uk/publications.aspx. Two years on much of this advice remains; starting with something small (we started with developing a leaflet with a shared definition of the problem) be honest, have a strong leader and be informed by evidence and users. I would now add the need to balance sensible process with pragmatic practice – the voluntary sector temptation is to develop complex rules and flow charts for joint working and, while some process is important, the tendency to sit in a room and engage in what a mentor once branded ‘semantical joggerpokery’ about whether a rule should read ‘could’ or ‘will’, must be tempered by some real work.
It is on this last point I am most proud of what the Trust has achieved. We have sensible rules and processes (helped in a large point by adopting a PRINCE 2 approach with an excellent project manager), we work together well (but are never complacent - joint working is a dynamic process), but most of all we have increased the range and quality of services available to children and young people who find communication difficult. As well as our own work we have, through our joint working, pushed and supported the government to take forward a £50 million action plan that will ensure better communication for many children in the years to come. Competition remains between members and between causes but this is tempered by another driver – ambition. We have achieved much with and for children but we are ambitious to achieve so much more and together we will.
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