Diary snapshot

I thought I would take a different tack this week and give a snapshot of my diary for ten working days (last week and this…)

On Friday I will be meeting with Surrey County Councillors Clare Curran and Linda Kemeny to give them an update on Surrey Youth Focus.

One of my top priorities is helping the youth third sector in Surrey to become sustainable in the light of on going funding cuts. This involves a variety of activities including opening doors for our member charities, envisaging very different ways of operating and forming new collaborations. A significant number of meetings in my diary during this period are contributing to this.

In the snapshot period I am having three meetings with large companies – potential Community Champions for Communilab. This will give youth charities access to a variety of people within companies – HRs managers, CSR managers and many employees who are given a couple of days a year by the company to spend with a charity or community organisation of their choice. What a rich seam for charities to tap into…however I urge you to be creative and develop relationships slowly, building trust. Don’t dive in for the big ask on day one.

My colleague Paul Mitchell (Transform Housing) and I are doing a piece of work to find ways to develop further trading opportunities for charities e.g. doing gardening or catering work, like the Leatherhead Youth Project model. Related to this we are having a meeting tomorrow with a large organisation’s purchasing department.

Surrey County Council are interested in promoting collaboration between charities and companies…sound familiar? As you may have spotted by now, a subject dear to my heart with Communilab. I had an initial meeting on this with the lead project manager at Surrey CC. We will be looking at how we can collaborate with them on this… with Communilab we believe that we have part of the answer already up and running.

The new CAMHS contract is an opportunity for a much better deal for young people with mental health issues and I strongly believe that the third sector has a key role to play in this. To this end I set up a meeting with some of my third sector colleagues and one of the potential bidders for the CAMHS contract. A very interesting meeting where we explored what we would like the brave new world to be....different routes to access and physical location (some young people would like services in school, others definitely would NOT), the young person being empowered to share information e.g. from counsellor to youth worker, educating the first line of youth workers/teachers to help nip problems in the bud, manage transitions better e.g. to senior school, and have a clear definition of what mental wellness is.

I'm currently sitting on the youth commission being run by Surrey County Council to look into the future of use work in Surrey. As a part of this work I met with my colleague Chris Hickford at Eikon who is also on the commission. We want to think creatively from both a financial and delivery perspective to find ways to deliver quality youth work sustainability in Surrey. We will be looking for others to be involved with this.

My colleague Su and I had a good meeting yesterday with the sociology research department at Surrey University looking at how we can develop our “Voice of Youth” work in  a way that is empowering and interesting for young people whilst simultaneously being based on rigorous research methods.

Other items in my diary during the snapshot two weeks…chairing a meeting of youth charity chief executives this Friday, attending the Children and Young People’s Board and the Surrey Nature Partnership board, meeting with my wonderful predecessor Mike Abbot for a cuppa, internal meetings with my chair and team, and then various responses that I owe funders/potential funders.

Actually I feel quite tired reading all of this. Looks like I am doing a fair amount….hopefully from this you get a flavour of that I am working hard to ensure the future sustainability of the third sector over the coming years. 

New ideas very welcome…contributions of resources to these initiatives also very welcome…

Cheers,

Cate

P.S. I haven’t mentioned any of my private life during this period… organising a school entry in a swimming gala, captaining a hockey match, date with a nit comb, seeing Shaun the Sheep at the Cinema, taking the kids to a Chinese for the first time….9 year old was more up for it than the 4 year old.