Agenda item

(To receive a report from the Lincolnshire Voluntary Engagement Team, which provides the Committee with an update on the contribution the Lincolnshire Voluntary Engagement Team make to improving health outcomes in Lincolnshire.  Chris Wheway, Chair of Lincolnshire Voluntary Engagement Team will be in attendance for this item)

The Committee considered a report from the Lincolnshire Voluntary Engagement Team (LVET) which provided an update on the contribution the LVET was making to improving health outcomes in Lincolnshire.

The Chairman invited the Chair of the Lincolnshire Voluntary Engagement Team, and the Managing Director of LVET to remotely present the item to the Committee.

The Committee was advised of the LVET’s Activities; the future for LVET and the current challenges faced by members of LVET.

During consideration of this item, the following comments were noted:

·       The Committee was advised that LVET employed four members of staff, one of whom was on secondment and whose role was solely focused on the personalised agenda and the relationships with Primary Care Networks;

·       The Committee noted that music and singing was something that could bring some radical change to those with dementia;

·       It was reported that the complexity of the LVET sector was vast and that membership varied from large organisations to two or three people meeting together in a church hall.  With support of the LVET team, effective use was made of all the resources to help them have a strategic impact.  It was noted that LVET ensured that smaller organisations and groups were able to gain access to available funds;

·       Anyone wishing to contact any of the delivery groups was advised to contact Paul Gutherson via email;

·       Further information was sought regarding LVET supporting service redesign through 60 working groups, steering groups or boards.  It was noted that LVET was a collective who represented around 150 organisations of different sizes, all of whom had different capacity and resource issues, and to enable members to voice their concerns or make contributions to any of those groups needed time to do that.  As sometimes the timescale of being contacted before a board meeting or working group meeting did not always provide enough time to effectively talk with members for them to feedback to the working groups, so it was really hard to find a mechanism for more effective collaboration enabling all member to have a voice;

·       The Committee noted that the challenges of staff and volunteer burnout, recruitment and retention affected all groups, and was a general theme post pandemic along with financial challenges and the increased feeling of pressure at leadership level within organisations;

·       The representatives were unable to advise of the total amount of funding from NHS Lincolnshire given to voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector through contractual arrangements.  Some concern was expressed that funding information needed to be made available and monitored as to how it was being spent as there was a danger of the amounts being reduced.  The Committee noted that it was felt that LVET was not taken seriously as a sector and that investment in the sector should grow on the basis of ensuring particularly with the NHS that it was able to focus on what it needed to be doing;

·       The vital role of the voluntary sector in communities and that getting people to volunteer was getting increasingly difficult.  It was highlighted that the volunteering sector was not seeing many younger people coming into the sector;

·       The problems voluntary organisations had in obtaining premises and also having the necessary finances to pay for increasing costs such as heating lighting and insurance costs; and as a result some organsiations were now ceasing to exist;

·       The importance of the physical and social infrastructure that was required by voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise organisations;

·       Confirmation was provided that there was a voluntary car scheme in Lincoln which was within the membership of LVET; and

·       Suggestions put forward for the Committee to gain further insight into the work of the voluntary sector, it was suggested that contact should be made with the Lincolnshire Community & Voluntary Service.

RESOLVED

1.      That thanks be extended to the representatives from the Lincolnshire Voluntary Engagement Team for their presentation to the Committee.

2.     That the Committee’s gratitude be recorded for the work of all voluntary, charity and community interest organisations supporting the health service in Lincolnshire, including volunteers giving their own time for this role.