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[[Our aims] [Foreward by the Chair] [The schedule] [Manager's report] [Staff & volunteers 2006/2007]
[Service detail guide - general advice] [Service detail guide - specialist advice] [Statistics]
Annual Report 2006/2007:
Manager's Report
'A healthy and vibrant voluntary and community sector (VCS) is a crucial part of strong communities. ... The VCS can contribute to better public service by delivering in partnership and providing a strong user and citizen voice to drive up standards; it can support the work of the council in developing greater community engagement; and through these roles add to the social capital of the area'
(Lucy de Groot, Executive Director, IDeA 2006)1
This year has a particularly strong partnership theme, some building on long established relationships and others coming from unexpected quarters. It certainly meant that the bureau increased the variety and depth of advice given to the local community.
Our first new linkup was with the Shell STEP programme whereby we had the opportunity to work with a second year degree student to our mutual benefit. The programme allowed us to completely revise and rewrite our quality system manual whilst giving our chosen student, Sharmila Kutty; studying financial economics, the experience of working with professional office procedures and staff. The successes of the project lead to Sharmila being a local finalist in the Awards 2006, 'celebrating outstanding achievements'.
During the summer we were pleased to be approached by our colleagues at Castle Point bureau to help overcome some operational difficulties that they were experiencing. This involved providing supervisory cover to their general advice service to help maintain a reduced service whilst a recovery plan was put into action by the trustees with support from Citizens Advice east region. Whilst this stretched our service we used the opportunity to give some of our people the opportunity to learn from supervising other advisers in a different setting to our own. Partly as a consequence of this the Legal Services Commission asked us if we would take over the specialist advice services formally delivered out of Castle Point by the South Essex Legal Aid Consortium. Having agreed to do this we now work out of Canvey Island providing specialist debt, housing and benefits advice to Castle Point residents and to debt clients in Rayleigh and Rochford. Our thanks go to those respective bureaux for welcoming our caseworkers and for providing them with clients.
Continuing on the provision of specialist advice and partnerships, in 2004 the government announced the establishment of the £120m Financial Inclusion Fund (FIF) to underpin initiatives to tackle financial exclusion. Working in partnership with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI as was) and Citizens Advice we were awarded funding to employ a trainee debt advisor to increase the availability of face-to-face debt advice in Thurrock. The funding is innovative in that it encourages the recruitment of new debt advisors and their training so that the availability of skilled professionals in this ever expanding area of national indebtedness will increase.
It was also good to renew and re-vitalise long standing partnerships between the council and the voluntary sector by a series of meetings with the senior directorate team. This allowed the VCS to voice its concerns over the perceived lack of a positive relationship between the two parties at the highest level. As a direct result of these meetings, and others, many long-standing voluntary groups now have service level agreements to ensure continuity of funding and a clear understanding of the services they provide to the community.
Partnerships form a key component of the Government's agenda for public sector reform and modernisation and advice providing organisations add an important perspective to this engagement and community voice. A recent report from Michael Bell Associates looks at partnerships in the advice sector and notes: 'Many advice organisations were created and developed by local communities to meet the needs of those local communities. They have a strong tradition of reflecting the voice of service users...(and) can provide important evidence of how well public services are working and meeting the needs of the local community. Their role is often particularly key in hearing the voice of excluded groups who may engage advice services for help but hide from the Local Authority in its official functions, sometimes from fear due to debt or child care issues'. (Michael Bell Associates, 2006)2
The same report paraphrases a useful checklist, The Top Ten Partnership Killers!3, from the Improvement Network which seeks to highlight issues that can undermine or even destroy a partnership:
- For ever and ever... a partnership which has outlived its usefulness or purpose
- One-upmanship - competitiveness and one-upmanship
- Right place, wrong people - engaging people from organisations who cannot make decisions or not delegating authority to such people
- Pulling rank - hierarchical behaviour, using more senior staff to over-rule decisions
- Mission creep - losing sight of the goal, what is a priority and what is achievable
- Only here for the cash - organisations being motivated to engage in a partnership in the hope of obtaining some extra funding
- Target? What Target? - failure to set real targets around the shared vision
- Death by drudgery - uninteresting or bureaucratic business meetings, particularly if there is no useful outcome
- We know what's best for you - tokenistic consultation by the bigger organisations involved in a partnership
- Strictly on a need-to-know basis... - secrecy and poor communication between partners
Fortunately the Improvement Network give solutions to tackling these problems, it is certainly worth reading the full script and even taking it to the next meeting you might have to attend.
Finally the statistics contained in this year's report show the hard work that staff and volunteers put into Thurrock CAB, and it should be remembered that behind each statistic and graph is someone's life or problem that has been improved because of the advice received in the bureau.
Mike Rawlings
Manager
1 - Cairns B, Brier S, Harris J, Harris M, Hughes H (2006) 'Making It Real: A report of the pilot partnership improvement programme with voluntary and community organisations and local authorities'. IDeA. June 2006
2 - Michael Bell Associates, (2006) 'Partners in Advice: Advice Partnerships between the Voluntary Sector and Local Authorities' Research Report for Citizens Advice, London; October 2006
3 - www.improvementnetwork.gov.uk/imp/aio/11465
Thurrock CAB Annual Report 2006/2007
 Download the full annual report 2006/2007 (PDF 505kB)
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