Policy and legislation

Improving policing by engaging hard to reach young people: Guest blog from Katy Bourne, Sussex PCC

In this guest blog, Katy Bourne, Police and Crime Commissioner for Sussex, talks about the role the voluntary sector has played in the Sussex Youth Commission, a project aimed at engaging hard to reach young people to inform policing policy in Sussex. The project won the 2015 Compact Engagement Award.

The importance of infrastructure for partnership working

The Big Assist National Conference took place in London last week. The conference featured talks and workshops on issues affecting voluntary sector infrastructure organisations. In this blog post, we reflect on the role of infrastructure organisations in cross-sector partnership working.

February 2016 Compact Voice Round-Up

We’ve scanned all the latest news for voluntary organisations involved in cross-sector partnership working and public service delivery and distilled it into a bite-sized blog.

Tower Hamlets: Engaging hard to reach groups to inform health priorities

Tower Hamlets Community Intelligence Bursary

The Community Intelligence Bursary (CIB) is a grant programme jointly funded by Tower Hamlets Healthwatch and Tower Hamlets Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and supported by Tower Hamlets CVS and Public Health. The coming together of these bodies ensures that the needs and views of the local community, particularly those seldom heard, directly feed into the effective and transparent design and development of services commissioned and delivered in the borough. This is achieved by funding research carried out by voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations who have experience of working closely with the local community.

Devolution and Us: our journey so far

In this special guest blog for Compact Week 2015, Warren Escadale, Chief Executive of Voluntary Sector North West, talks about the voluntary sector's journey so far as the devolution agenda gains pace in the North West of England.

Health check: why our sector matters for health and wellbeing

Last month saw the launch of a major joint review into the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector’s contribution to health and wellbeing. The review will consider whether partnerships between government and the sector are operating in the most effective way possible and how they might work better in future.

Southwark Commission gives early action approaches a boost

A couple of months ago, Southwark launched its independent Early Action Commission. The benefits of “early action” – shorthand for the idea that helping people to manage health and wellbeing issues is better than managing a crisis later on – are widely accepted. Yet until now, translating this into concrete action has not been straightforward.

In this blog post, we look at why early action matters so much, what is happening in Southwark and what the future holds for early action approaches.

Voluntary Organisations Network North East: Supporting the Sector with Policy and Representation

The Compact Award-winning Policy and Representation Partnership was set up in 2009, after receiving four years of funding to help the voluntary and community sector to influence public policy.

The Partnership, facilitated by VONNE, set out to create a ‘Festival of Ideas’ around policy. This created the space and opportunity for people from grass roots voluntary organisations, people from across different sectors and funders to come together to explore ideas and influence policy-makers on issues that matter deeply to communities in the North East.

Response: Judicial Review consultation

Compact Voice have submitted a response to the Ministry of Justice's consultation into proposed reforms to the Judicial Review process.

Sneak preview of our annual survey results

First of all, a huge thank you to everyone who has taken the time to complete our annual survey. As Tom explained in his last blog, the results from the survey help us understand what is working well in different areas across England, as well as what is not working so well. The findings also help us set our priorities for the coming year as we respond to what you’ve told us.

Secondly, our survey is open for another two weeks!