As is often the case March was a busy time for ‘end of year' project reports to our project sponsor (Coventry and Warwickshire Infrastructure Consortium i.e. CWIC) and project Funder (Capacity Builders Modernisation Programme). This does however provide a good chance to take stock of the impact that the project is making; throughout Coventry and Warwickshire 227 front line groups have accessed support provisions under the project (October 2008 to March 2010) In Coventry alone 61 groups have been supported; some have accessed multiple activities whilst others may just have accessed one activity. There are now 20 groups ‘signed up' to implementing a relevant quality assurance system in their organisation (PQASSO or VISIBLE). A number of groups are making steady progress and noticing the improvements that these systems have helped them with. An area that is certainly benefitted by using these QAS is governance and groups have affected a number of improvements such as managing conflicts of interests, having clearly defined role descriptions, devising and implementing effective recruitment and induction policies plus others.

During March and April we continued support in trustee recruitment and induction. We have partnered a few volunteers with an organisation to support them to improve their recruitment policies to ensure more appealing & accessible to young people. The volunteers were particularly interested in decision making and governance hence why identified for this opportunity. We would like to broker more partnering arrangements however we haven't had too many groups respond to this opportunity despite many groups telling us that they have trustee vacancies and struggle to get enough people ‘on board'. So, if you want to have a good cross section of people joining your board but need to review how appealing your group is to younger people (18-25 years) then do take a look at an exercise document that has been created to facilitate a review of how ‘age diverse' your group is. To see this click here. Please get in touch if you would like some support to work up an action plan and obviously volunteers can assist with carrying out some of the identified actions which will not only get the input of a young person's perspective but help with doing the work!

Also, during April a morning workshop took place on Trustee recruitment and induction. A resource pack was given to participants on this topic that takes account of best practice information available at this time. A summary resource document highlights the relevant stages to support effective recruitment with lots of information about relevant resources. Click here to see this.

We had some good feedback from Trustees on running an accredited training course for Trustees; this has helped us to decide how to progress this type of opportunity. As a consequence we are now working up the detail of a one day training course focused on Governance only and this will be OCN accredited; further details will be forthcoming in the near future.

Finally, work continues to support commissioners to see the relevance of appropriate quality assurance systems to meet their priorities when commissioning services. It is important that if groups have invested time and effort to make improvements using a good system that those systems are recognised for supporting improvement that directly impacts on effective services. Good working relations exist between us and the City Council COS Team (Community Organisation support) and they have endorsed the VISIBLE standards (alongside equivalent QAS) because they recognise the direct benefit to organisational improvement which is high on their agenda.

As before please contact in touch with me if you want to know more about Quality Assurance and how it can support your group.

Kate Harris k.harris@vacocoventry.org.uk