East Midlands

RDM: Karen Parsons Email: karen.parsons@childrenslinks.org.uk
Alice James Email: alice.james@childrenslinks.org.uk

Mapping of the key contacts for the children, youth and families VCS in each Local Authority area can be found here [doc 32kb].

Partnership meetings
Key representatives from the children, youth and families VCS meet together with Local Authority staff from across the region, in order to share information and best practice and identify gaps where additional work may be needed.

Black and Minority Ethnic VCS
A comprehensive research and mapping of the needs of the BME VCS has been carried out and can be found here [doc 166kb].

The partnership group are looking to help develop some of the actions from this work to support more effective involvement of the BME VCS.

Additional support
As in other regions, focused support is going to three areas, where Local Authorities will complete a Self Evaluation Tool (SET) to establish how effective their engagement with the VCS is, in order to develop an action plan for development. The areas involved are:

  • Nottingham City – would like to improve practice and review early stages.
  • Lincolnshire – would like to improve practice and review early stages.
  • Northamptonshire – would like to take part to learn the ground rules and principles.

Good practice
Examples of good or emerging practice will be added to this section:

Derbyshire GRID [doc 31kb]

Commissioning

The East Midlands Centre of Excellence has developed a regional commissioning framework. Information can be found here.

RDMs are supporting the local VCS in engaging with commissioning, and looking at how else they can support the sector with this challenging agenda.