The end is in sight. There’s only two weeks to go of the Compact 10 year, and what a year it has been!

The Compact 10 project started off in July 2014 by reviewing 10 years of the Edinburgh Compact Partnership – looking at the amazing organisations that work tirelessly to support communities across the City, and how they work in partnership not only with each other; but also with our Compact colleagues from the City of Edinburgh Council, Police Scotland, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and NHS Lothian.

This gave us a good opportunity to return to Compact’s roots, explore the principles it was built on, and begin get our heads around the world of Community Planning…

Armed with our knowledge of the last 10 years, we embarked on a city-wide consultation with Edinburgh’s Third Sector to hear about their hopes and fears for the future. Alongside that, we met with Public Sector partners to explore the future as they see it for the Compact Partnership. This learning from over 120 organisations and agencies fed into development of the new Edinburgh Compact Partnership Strategic Framework and Action Plan 2015-2020.

“But what good is a high level strategy?”  That’s a question many people have asked us over the Compact 10 year, and with the array of strategies and consultations out there at the moment, I can understand why people might ask. However, I’d say this strategy has the potential to be a useful tool whilst also providing some good opportunities for organisations and partnerships across the City.

Why? Because it sets out, on paper, the principles we all agree to adhere to in our work. And the focus is prevention.

Why else? Because it has an action plan that has been coproduced by the Third and Public Sectors which focuses on building social value, strong partnership working and equal respect. What more could you want from a city-wide Strategic Partnership, involving our vibrant, diverse Third Sector as equal partners alongside Edinburgh’s Public Sector?

“But what does that actually mean for me?” Well, the Strategic Framework is based around four strands, alongside the volunteering and social enterprise strategies. The strands are outlined in the diagram below:

Each of these strands has an array of actions linked to it, including:

• Support the Sector in understanding changes in policy (Future Thinking)
• Co-produce new investment programmes and funding (Resourcing and Investment)
• Pilot innovative CSR projects (Resourcing and Investment)
• Ensure that the views of Edinburgh’s communities and Third Sector are heard within the Edinburgh Partnership (Community Planning and Reach)
• Drive contracts to support the application of a living wage across the Sector (Thriving Third Sector)

Sound good? Want to know more? Take a look for yourself here.

Still not convinced? Have a look at our film, ‘Getting it Right for Edinburgh: The Power of Partnerships’ which showcases projects which demonstrate the ethos and values of the Edinburgh Compact Partnership.

It has been a fascinating year, and we’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who was involved with Compact 10. But now it’s the end of Compact 10, and its over to Edinburgh’s Third and Public Sectors to drive this forward, together.

The Scottish Government laid out economic planning earlier this year in Scotland’s Economic Strategy March 2015, promising a core & central purpose to create a “more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish, through increasing sustainable economic growth.“

The ScotGov economic strategy, outlined in the diagram below, is based on two key pillars: increasing competitiveness and tackling inequality.

It is important to note that many of the key levers for addressing both competitiveness and inequality however, remain reserved to the UK Government. The effects of the recently announced further cuts to Scottish public spending remains to be seen.

Creating greater prosperity and fairness is a shared national endeavour. Only by working in partnership with the wider public sector in Scotland, the Third Sector, trade unions, businesses and communities, will we be able to create a society where the benefits of economic growth are shared more equally and where future economic growth is stronger and more sustainable.

What does the economic strategy mean for the Third Sector?

Scottish Government recognises the work of the Third Sector, stating in the the strategy:

“The Scottish Government recognises the critical role the Third Sector plays in addressing issues of inequality and the needs of disadvantaged communities, and the contribution that the sector makes to Scotland’s economy. The [Third] sector is essential to the design and delivery of public services, and to helping us find solutions to the economic and social challenges that Scotland faces.
As we deliver our Economic Strategy we will bring an increased focus on local communities.” 

The ScotGov strategy plans to align a social justice approach with economic policies. This includes the aims of:

• Ensuring that the benefits of economic growth are shared more equally across society is just as important as boosting overall growth. 
• Working to reduce unemployment, underemployment and in work poverty (Among working age adults in poverty in Scotland, 52% live in households with at least one adult in employment.)
• Addressing inequalities in educational outcomes also improves employment opportunities and living standards for individuals
• An increased focus on local communities and considering how they connect into supply chains to ensure that local communities have the best possible opportunity to benefit. We will also look at how communities across Scotland can benefit from a community-based approach to economic development.
• Employment and training opportunities
• Creating opportunities for SMEs and third sector organisations to deliver public services;
• Support for community initiatives
• Environmental benefits
• Decisive shift towards placing prevention at the centre of public service delivery – working with local communities and the Third Sector to nurture flexible and innovative approaches to achieving better outcomes. 
• Re-designing approaches to procurement to maximise social and environmental benefits from public spending, including providing local training and employment opportunities and sub-contracting opportunities for small businesses and the Third Sector.

These aims support EVOC’s mission for a valued and respected Voluntary Sector, which helps to build and enable resilient, sustainable and inclusive communities. EVOC will serve, as always, as a trusted leader, effective strategic partner and model of good practice for the Sector. We do understand that aims and plans are not always as straightforward as action. We have, therefore, been instrumental on the integration of Health & Scoial Care, holding several thinkSpaces through the year to share ideas with Edinburgh’s Third Sector and feeding these ideas directly to the Integrated Joint Board for Health & Social Care.  In implementing Scotland’s Economic Strategy the EVOC will continue our work in building on these partnerships to improve Scotland’s economic performance and reduce inequalities in communities and in the workplace.

The whole public sector in Scotland, the Third Sector, trade unions, businesses and communities need to be onboard in the ‘One Scotland’ approach to become more competitive and fairer country for current and future generations; where communities are empowered to drive change and deliver growth in the shared interest of the people of Scotland.

Further Reading

• Scotland’s Economic Strategy March 2015
• Scottish Government – Third Sector
• Third Sector Tender for Public Contracts
• Edinburgh  Health & Social Care Partnership

 

 

I have been working as a Financial Inclusion Worker with Recovery Essentials Project for over a year now. I am soon leaving to relocate to my home town and start a new job.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with Recovery Essentials, as it has given me the opportunity to continue working with the most vulnerable people in Edinburgh; those whose history has affected their adult lives through mental health and addiction problems, those who have sometimes considered suicide as a solution to their devastating situations, and those who are struggling against a tidal wave of financial issues- unmanageable debt, low income and poverty so severe that they need others to provide them with food. However, by the same token, I have witnessed such bravery, positivity, and compassion that this work continually restores my faith in human kindness and if I said the past year has been an emotional roller-coaster, I would be putting it lightly.

Fortunately, I have had the privilege of working alongside colleagues whose compassion and dedication has been second to none. I have worked in partnership with various drug & alcohol, mental health, and homelessness agencies whose ethos and practice have provided my clients, myself, and colleagues with a great amount of support, encouragement and empathy to help achieve goals. I am proud to have been part of my clients’ road to recovery by empowering their financial recovery. I have helped people go from homeless, starving and having to walk 4 miles each way to the job centre to gaining necessary welfare assistance, being housed, and eventually moving into paid employment. I have helped women and children suffering domestic abuse to live independently, and financially independently, from their abusive partners. I have helped people to become sequestrated and free themselves of the emotional and financial burden of unmanageable debt. I have been part of a necessary process to help people pick themselves off the ground, dust themselves off and re-start their lives.

I will miss this job, my clients and my colleagues very much. If only you could take a job with you! I wish the folks of the Recovery Essentials project the very best and continued success, but mostly I wish my clients a happier and healthier life free from financial struggle.

All the best,

Elaine Bowie

Since the Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act was granted royal assent on April 1, 2014, the Integration of Health and Social Care has been snowballing into action.

This ambitious programme of reform to ‘join up’ & improve services for service users will help ensure that health and social care provision across Scotland is joined-up and seamless – especially for people with long term conditions and disabilities, many of whom are older people.

These services, as anyone working/volunteering in the Third Sector will tell you, are crucial, vital – and a lifeline for those who need it most.

At the risk of starting a sentence with a coordinating conjunction, the question remains:

“But how do we find these services?”

EVOC Redbook can help. The EVOC Redbook came from humble beginnings as a physical printed directory (remember them?) which was sent out to organisations across Edinburgh. Third Sector representatives and beyond used this resource to find local services across Edinburgh.

Of course, coming out of the stone age, we now have much more sophisticated technology, and EVOC Redbook had to evolve. The digitised Redbook was relaunched in 2014, providing a one stop shop for not just services, but social groups, training and more.

Searches can be refined alphabetically, as well as according to type of service, age group, and cost of service. These can then be tailored to within a certain distance of your postcode; meaning you can  find the services needed that are closest to you/the service user. It’s that simple.  

The EVOC Redbook can be accessed at www.evocredbook.org.uk.

If you would like to submit your organisation or service(s) to our directory, please complete the data collection form.

Hello, I’m the development worker for the The GreenSpace|ArtSpace PSP which is part of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital Campus redevelopment. Public Social Partnerships (PSPs) are strategic partnering arrangements, based on a co-planning, and co delivery approach, through which the public sector can connect with people, third sector organisations (voluntary organisations, community groups, charities, social enterprises etc) to share responsibility for designing services focused on responding to service user needs and improving outcomes.

The GreenSpace|ArtSpace PSP aims to work within the PSP model to develop and maximise therapeutic public spaces with a focus on green and art related activities and environments within the Royal Edinburgh Hospital Campus.  At the end of 2014 the REH redevelopment received funding form the Edinburgh and Lothians Health Foundation, part of which will be used to fund projects developed through the GreenSpace |ArtSpace PSP.

 Within the GreenSpace|ArtSpace PSP there are two development groups or “cocoons”  – the ArtSpace Cocoon and GreenSpace Cocoon, which focus on designing and developing arts based and green based activities and environments. In January this year the cocoons met to prioritise which ideas they wanted to start work on first. The top priority for the GreenSpace cocoon emerged as the growing space and the ArtSpace cocoon identified shelters as its main focus. We have just run two workshops to pull together initial ideas to feed into design briefs. Below are some of the initial designs developed within the workshops. 

Are next aim within the GreenSpace|ArtSpace PSP is to have a range of talks, workshops and visits where we can share learning and theory from different fields which link in with greenspace and art space design for maximising therapeutic environments and activities. These events are a great way to learn more about design, art and greenspace from a wide range of individuals and an opportunity to put this learning into practice when developing the finer design details of the Gimme Shelter and Growing Space and Sensory Garden projects. 

Details about the events to follow soon!