EVOC closed Monday 20th May

Our offices at 14 Ashley Place will be closed on Monday 20th May for the Victoria Day bank holiday.

We will reopen on Tuesday 21st May at 9am.

Website health check: Tuesday 4th June at EVOC

• Website problems?
• Need help?
• Too expensive to even talk to people about it?

Meet with an expert and find a solution.

Book a FREE 30-minute session and get your website health check. First session at 1pm, last one at 3.30pm.

Contact Julie Anne on 0131 555 9127 to book your place. Priority will be given to charities with income under £200,000.

We are planning further website clinics in Autumn 2013. These clinics will be available to all charities in Edinburgh. Read more about Zach, the expert taking these sessions…

OSCR in Edinburgh: Meet the Regulators

Save the date: Wednesday 30th October

The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) will be holding a Meet the Regulator event in Edinburgh.

More details will be forthcoming in due course. In the meantime, save the date in your calendar.

Pension plight: survey glitch fixed

Please retry the survey if your prior submission was curtailed.

We recently circulated an invitation to participate in a survey about pension liability in the third sector.  The questionnaire had originally been set up with a focus on customers of the Pensions Trust in Edinburgh.

We have now revised the survey structure to allow input from third sector organisations throughout the Lothians using any pension provider.

If you have tried to provide us with information but were bounced out of the questionnaire at its start, please accept our apologies for the confusion and the nuisance this caused.

Please see below the text of the original invitation, giving context to the invitation and information about the steps being taken to make policy-makers and funders aware of the financial implications of pension liability upon the sector.

Thank you to all participating in the questionnaire, and again please accept our apologies for the survey glitch.

Vacancy: Development Worker, Royal Edinburgh Hospital Volunteering Hub

Our Third Sector Interface partners, Volunteer Centre Edinburgh, are recruiting for their Royal Edinburgh Hospital Volunteering Hub.

The role has two strands:

• to support in-patients with severe mental health problems to volunteer
• to develop a new “Activity Buddy” service which will match volunteers with inpatients.

With in-depth understanding of mental health problems, you will have demonstrable skills in volunteer management and in enabling the personal development of individuals.

This post is funded by Edinburgh and Lothians Health Foundation.

Closing date for applications 20th May 2013, 4pm. Interviews to take place Wed 29th May 2013.

Please contact the Volunteer Centre Edinburgh on 0131 225 0630 for an application.

Pilot report: Services for Children and Young People in the City of Edinburgh

A major new report has praised services for children in Edinburgh.

The joint inspection report for ‘Services for Children and Young People in the City of Edinburgh’ was carried out by the Care Inspectorate.

Their pilot report, the first one to be carried out under new inspection rules, was published on Monday 29 April and highlights the many positive areas of work being carried out by the City of Edinburgh Council, NHS Lothian, Police Scotland and voluntary organisations in the Capital.

There is also a document of the feedback received by the Joint Inspection team, in evaluating the pilot inspection process itself.

Pension plight: impact on the sector

Dear colleagues

LAYC and EVOC are working together to re-raise concerns about the current pension plight faced by many organisations which will be compounded by the introduction of auto enrolment (compulsory employer/employee contributing pension scheme) along with changes in financial reporting that will bring any pension deficits into the organisation’s balance sheets. Both these changes, which are due in 2015/16, could have significant consequences for the voluntary sector which is already struggling to meet its current pension obligations.

We are raising these and other pension matters with Edinburgh MSPS and MSP’s and with SCVO as this is a national issue that requires national responses. If you are in a position to alert your local MSPs and/or MPs (pensions remain a reserved issue) to your concerns about the pension situation either in general or specific to your own organisation, please do so as this will strengthen our hand. This outline of a draft letter may be used or adapted as you see fit.

In addition we are seeking to better understand the pension plight faced by the sector in Edinburgh. In September 2012 EVOC circulated a pension questionnaire but we are keen to secure more returns in order that we can have a clearer picture of the situation. For sector members who didn’t take the chance to complete the survey or who are receiving it for the first time, we would be grateful if you could take a bit of time to complete it. (Please access the survey here.) If you are a member of both organisations we are only looking for a single return so please indicate on the form your joint membership.

We appreciate that pensions are both complex and sometimes lost in a sea of other pressures. However, we also know that the light at the end of the long pension tunnel is that of a hurtling projectile rather than any helpful illumination. We want to bring our pension concerns to the fore with our national representatives at a political and sectoral level in order that the issue doesn’t slip below either’s radar.

With your assistance we will give ourselves the best chance of achieving that.

Yours

Ian Boardman, Director, LAYC
Ella Simpson, Director, EVOC

Enclosed: Charity Finance Group briefing paper: The case for consultation on multi-employer pension schemes

EVOT urgent update

EVOT is currently inundated with applications for funds to assist individuals and families. We regret that we’ll have difficulty meeting the level of demand during the present financial quarter (April to June.)

Current applications will be considered according to order of receipt, and once the quarter’s budget has been allocated, then any remaining will be postponed to the next quarter (July to September.)

In the meantime, any applications for funds to assist individuals 18 and under, please consider seeking funds from the following other sources:

• The Buttle Trust (grants for children and young people in need)
• Elizabeth Finn Care (grants for people who have less than £4,000 in savings and, lacking enough household income, manage a bare hand-to-mouth existence)
• Family Fund (grants for low-income families raising disabled and seriously ill children and young people)
• ECAS (grants for physically disabled residents of Edinburgh and the Lothians)

Free GIRFEC training

There are two new dates set for free training in Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC):

• Tuesday 14 May
• Tuesday 11 June

Please see the flier below for details about the course and how to book.

Thank You for joining us at our recent ThinkSpace

Welfare Reform – ‘A Right State?’

Thank You for your help!

Thank you to all those who joined us at our ThinkSpace event on the topic of Welfare Reform.

It was you who made the morning a success.

We will publish a brief report on the event shortly – along with our plans for taking your suggestions and ideas forward.