The first two months of 2010 have continued to be a busy time for the project. I'm working with the vinvolved team, in particular Amanda Bishop who is our new Youth Volunteer Development officer on getting more young people involved in governance.  Given the low number of young people involved in governance we wanted to do some focused work to get young volunteers thinking about this type of opportunity but also to get groups to consider how accessible their Trustee recruitment policies are to young people. A workshop event is taking place on 11th March - take a look at the governance tab for details of what's going on. I've been doing some work with the Community Organisation Support Team (COST) within the city council to assist them with their understanding of the VISIBLE quality assurance system: this has enabled them to see the links with their priorities and offer their endorsement of VISIBLE. I've continued to offer 1:1 support to groups (both voluntary and community based organisations) to implement PQASSO and VISIBLE. Everyone is going at a different pace and focusing on varying improvements which is good because it means that groups are using these systems to benefit them within the timescale that works for them.

Two groups have agreed to write their ‘diary' charting their quality journey; one for PQASSO and one for VISIBLE and their first instalment can be seen on the quality tab attachments list (My PQASSO Diary and My VISIBLE diary). Hopefully by giving a couple of groups' own brief account of how it's going for them will help others to get an insight into the reality of implementation.   I recently facilitated a peer support session on PQASSO with four groups to assist with implementing quality area 11 ‘Monitoring and Evaluation'; this gave a chance for groups to network and share knowledge and ideas on this topic as well as identify evidence and actions to take forward.

I'm continuing to get feedback from groups that have used services under the project as well as get views and opinions to steer future activities. For example, we produced last year a booklet entitled ‘thinking of being a trustee?' which detailed the basics about trustee roles and responsibilities. A number of groups asked for more copies to help with promoting and explaining the role of a trustee to prospective, new and not so new trustees. We asked them how useful the booklet was and their feedback was very positive. At the same time, I've spent a bit of time getting some feedback from Coventry trustees on demand and interest for an accredited training course for Trustees to determine whether or not we deliver this training later on in the year.

A summarised work plan for Coventry is now on the website just go back to the Quality and Governance main page for more details!