PERFECT STORM

Children England is starting a new piece of work that will explore the variety of pressures currently faced by the voluntary and community sector and the children, young people and families that we work with. Rather than looking at these pressures individually, we want to show their cumulative effect. We hope to do this through a handful of in-depth case studies.

There are 3 strands to the project:

1. Organisations – the combined impact of financial pressures on individual organisations. For example cuts to national and local statutory funding, increased competition for trust and foundation funding, loss of match funding, reduced individual giving and the difficulty of engaging corporate funders.
   
   
2. Areas – the combined impact of financial pressures on individual areas. For example cuts to local authority children’s services, schools and VCS services as well as factors such as rising unemployment and reduced benefits.
   
   
3. Commissioning – we would like to quantify the cost to the CYP VCS of the current competitive tendering environment, particularly how much staff time is being put into the process. Ideally, we’d like to explore both the total cost to an individual organisation of bidding for contracts over a specified period and the total cost of a single tendering process for all of the VCS organisations taking part.

If you would like to discuss this further, think that your organisation, project or local area would be appropriate for the project or have any case study suggestions then please contact Nick Davies on 0207 833 3319 or nick@childrenengland.org.uk. We will happily include contributors anonymously.