Compact Voice's blog

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about social prescribing.

With a number of pilots showing promising results, and more and more areas exploring how such a system could work for their communities, there is no doubt that social prescribing is one of the topics of the moment. 

But what exactly is social prescribing, and what implications does it have for partnership working? 

Compact Voice recently responded to the Labour party consultation “renewing our bond with the third sector”. The consultation, which covered a range of issues from volunteering to procurement to the independence of the sector, is part of a wider policy review which will help Labour develop its manifesto for 2015.

The Labour consultation was a chance for us to make recommendations on the future of partnership working in three key areas: supporting charities to grow and thrive; procurement; and a strong independent voice.

Every quarter, the Cabinet Office and Compact Voice hold a ‘cross department Compact meeting’. The most recent meeting sparked some new ideas and keen debate, which I hope will benefit partnerships between not only departments and the organisations they commission – but at a more local level too. 

There’s less than one week to go until the nomination period for the Compact Awards closes.

The Compact Awards has become the highlight of my working year. This is the 4th year Compact Voice have run them, although it’s the 11th Compact Awards overall. Each year we get more nominations and the awards event is bigger and better – I’m expecting 2014 to be no different. And we’ve already had a real mix of submissions – some very local, some regional, some national.

In this guest blog, NCVO's Andrew O'Brien provides an overview of how a group of organisations are working together to review the financial sustainability of the voluntary sector. 

Here, Andrew considers what this means for partnership working and the Compact, and how you can contribute your experiences.

On Thursday 4 September, representatives from the voluntary sector and government gathered at the NCVO summer reception.

In between hearing from the previous and current ministers for civil society, meeting old friends and new, and swapping knitting jokes, attendees took the opportunity to peruse the publication being handed around: none other than the NCVO Manifesto 2015.

We at Compact Voice think the manifesto is great example of how the principles of the Compact underpin how the sector imagines our relationship with government.

In this guest blog, Leonie McCarthy, Chief Executive Officer of Peterborough Council for Voluntary Service (CVS), talks about some of the issues considered when refreshing the Peterborough Compact, and how it is intended that the new agreement will help voluntary organisations and commissioners to work together.

At Compact Voice, we talk a lot about what departments can do to engage better with the voluntary sector. However, there isn’t much in the way of guidance for voluntary organisations on how they can effectively and efficiently respond to consultations.

A lot of our public facing work here at Compact Voice focuses on the local element of our work. 

But an equally important aspect of what we do is raising awareness of the Compact at a national level, and encouraging government departments to work well in partnership with the voluntary sector.

The Lobbying Act (officially the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act) finally concluded this January after an eventful journey through Parliament.
 
Here we provide a bit of background into the Act, to accompany a new short briefing we’ve produced. The briefing is aimed at people who may not work in a policy role, but are concerned as to whether their organisation may be affected by the Act.