Information & advice for the third sector across Lancaster District – 29 Sept 21

You are invited – LDCVS AGM 2021
The trustees, staff and volunteers of Lancaster District Community Voluntary Solutions have great pleasure in inviting you to join us at our virtual Annual General Meeting.

Join us to learn about our work over the last year, find out more about the new LDCVS business plan, and have your say on the issues that affect you in our open forum.

Date: Thursday 21st October 2021
Time: 3.10 pm (doors open 3pm) – 4.30 pm.

To attend: Click here to register.

Our AGM is open to all, but voting rights are restricted to LDCVS members.
Become a member now by signing up here.

Lancaster Community Fund (LCF)
All voluntary or community groups are welcome to apply, and we specifically welcome applications from new and small grassroots groups. Groups without a formal constitution are asked to seek support from an established organisation or group.

The LCF aims to support projects that:
• Increase community involvement, build community wealth and resilience
• Contribute towards carbon reduction and a more sustainable district.
• Support to individual and community wellbeing.

Grants of up to £1,000 are available. The next application deadline is Sunday 31st October 2021.

Visit the Lancaster Community Fund page to start your LCF application.

Urgent Response Fund (URF)
The URF is available for charities and community groups in need of resources to effectively deliver projects/activities to support the basic health and wellbeing needs of vulnerable members of the community in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the lockdown and from March 2021 to the gradual easing of restrictions.

No minimum or maximum award amount. Applications are reviewed monthly.

Click here to find out how to start your URF application.

Lancaster District Street Aid
The Street Aid initiative has been launched by Lancaster City Council in partnership with Lancaster BID, Lancaster and Morecambe Area Police and Lancaster District CVS.

Street Aid helps people who are, or have been, on the streets to apply for a grant to help them get off, and stay off, the streets.

Types of support that can be applied for via the scheme include access to housing, furniture and other home essentials, education/training courses, clothing for job interviews, transport to interview/place of work, and help with searching for a job.

Maximum application value of £750. Applications are reviewed as submitted.

Click here to find out how to apply for the Lancaster Street Aid here.

Additional Restrictions Grants Round 3 – September 2021
Two new Additional Restrictions Grants are now available to support businesses impacted by the effects of COVID-19:

1. Business Protection Grant: For businesses that have been forced to close due to internal outbreaks of COVID-19 amongst staff.
2. Business Recovery Grant: For businesses in the most severely impacted sectors, who were not in receipt of the Local Restrictions Support Grant (Closed) before 16 February 2021 but have been severely financially impacted since the move to Tier 4 on 6 January 2021.

For more information on how to apply for available grants, click here.

Thomas Wall Trust
The Thomas Wall Trust was established in 1920 for the “encouragement and assistance of educational work and social service”. The Trust continues to assist by providing grants to individuals and registered charities.

Grants of up to £1,000 are available. Applications can be made at any time and will be considered at the Trustees meetings held twice a year usually in July and November.

Click here to create an account on the website and apply.

Email [email protected] for more details.

Trusthouse Charitable Foundation
Trusthouse Charitable Foundation is a medium-sized foundation giving grants to small, well-established organisations in the UK that address local issues in areas of extreme urban deprivation or remote and fragile rural communities.

The grant focuses on supporting small charity organisations that work in the most deprived urban areas or the most remote and socio-economically deprived rural areas. Applications can be submitted at any time.

Click here to check your eligibility or start your application.

Sir Halley Steward Trust
The Sir Halley Stewart Trust is a grant-giving charity that supports innovative and pioneering social, medical and religious projects, to enable human flourishing and to prevent suffering.

The Trust funds a wide range of organisations, with grants normally ranging from one to three years in duration and up to circa £60,000 per project (with a £30,000 limit per year), although in exceptional cases up to £80,000 may be considered. Applications can be submitted at any time.

Click here to find out if you are eligible and how to apply.

Email: [email protected]k for more details.

The Noel Buxton Trust
The Noel Buxton Trust is providing funding for families on the issue of domestic abuse. Trustees will consider projects that work with survivors and/or perpetrators of domestic abuse.

The emphasis of their giving is on areas outside London/south-east England. Branches of network organisations are not funded and the Trustees welcome applications from Black and Minority Ethnic community groups.

The maximum grant is £5,000 per year for up to three years. Applications can be made at any time.

Click here to find out how to apply.

Faith Groups Have Until 7 October to Apply for Nearly £1m in Funding
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government recently launched the new £1 million Faith New Deal Pilot Fund to support faith-based organisations who are working alongside local authorities and other local partners to support their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the recovery phase.

The pilot scheme will provide up to £975,000 for faith groups working on community projects which support one or more of the following COVID-19 recovery objectives:

• Mental wellbeing and loneliness
• Debt advice
• Employability
• Food poverty
• Increasing community engagement through volunteering

The funding will be distributed as:

• Grants of up to £125,000, and
• Grants of up to £200,000 for innovative projects to be delivered by new or existing partnerships. This must include a community need that seeks to support COVID-19 recovery and solve a local problem.

Deadline for applications is Thursday, 7 October 2021 (23:50). Decisions will be made in October 2021.

Visit here to find out how to apply.

The last 18 months or so have been challenging, not least for volunteers and volunteer recruitment. During the pandemic, Lancaster District CVS has looked closely at how volunteers, and volunteer involving organisations, engage with each other and as part of a sustainable plan for future volunteering in our district, we have invested in a new online platform which will, eventually, underpin our Volunteer Centre offer.

You can REGISTER as a volunteer-recruiting organisation by visiting our new website here.

It is a very simple process and should take you mere minutes. Once registered, our Volunteer Centre manager, Mark, will contact you to discuss your volunteer requirements, whether straightforward recruitment and promotion of roles, or training, or anything else related to volunteer engagement. The new platform is very much in its infancy, but we are confident that it will prove to be a valuable tool in helping you find and recruit new volunteers.

Community Learning Network
The Lancaster District Community Learning Network is a network of community education providers and community development organisations that are passionate about developing the skills of people living and working in our communities. We aim to provide educational pathways by offering a wide range of courses that can lead to people gaining new skills that are valuable in all areas of life and work. We are working to provide community-led, community-based opportunities and your support in helping us to understand your community needs would be most welcomed. You can find out more about the Community Learning Network vision and goals by visiting our website here.

We would like to invite you and your community to complete our 10 minutes survey so that we can find out more about the skills and interests you would like to discover. We would very much appreciate this survey being shared with your community residents, people that use your services and people looking to learn and develop their skills and confidence.

You can complete the survey by clicking here.
Email [email protected] for paper copies of this survey.

We are in the process of arranging information briefings, personal invitations, presentations and we very much look forward to discussing this network with you in the near future. In the meantime, please do share across your networks and your communities.

Date: Thursday 14th October 2021

The next voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise leaders forum will take place on Thursday 14th October, 9.30 am – 11 am online (link below).

The leadership forum was formerly held on the first Thursday of each month but this has been changed due to a clash with a local health meeting.

The Bay Integrated Care Partnership meetings which we are working alongside and contribute to now hold their meetings on the first Thursday morning of each month in preparation for the new health social care system coming into place next April.

This will now provide an opportunity for us to feed-forward information from the Integrated Care Partnership meeting to you. We hope this new time & date will work for you.

If you would like to discuss any aspect of this meeting or would like more clarity or simply want to catch up over a coffee, please email Yak: [email protected] or call 01524 555900. Hope to see you at the meeting.

Click here to join us at the next Leadership Forum.

New charity recipe book celebrates dishes of local people with cancer and bereavement
Next month, CancerCare will publish Extra Helpings, a 200-page collection of recipes contributed by the charity’s clients, staff and volunteers and which have a unique significance to them, whether the favourite of a loved one or comfort food that helped them during a particularly tough time.
The recipe launch event will take place at Leighton Hall, Lancashire on the 24th of October 2021. Tickets for the launch event are on sale now (ticket price includes a signed copy of the book).
Click here for the event details.

Weekly activities at the Marsh Community Centre, Willow Lane Lancaster
Marsh Community Choir – Mondays 1.30 – 2.45 pm at Marsh Community Centre, Willow Lane,
No experience is needed, just a chance to enjoy great company and good songs while learning a little bit along the way. £1.00 donation is collected to pay for trips, such as Christmas dinner, afternoon tea or a concert.

Coffee and Cake Club – Fridays 1.30 – 3.00 pm at Marsh Community Centre, Lancaster
For a small friendly group of women meet to chat, share a laugh and enjoy homemade cake. Most weeks we will have time for a game: Bingo, dominos, scrabble and card or word games. £1.00 donation is collected every week which pays for a trip each term.

For more information contact the Centre:
Call 01524 843300 or email: [email protected]

Affordable online training for charities with a shop and/ or cafe
The Charity Retail Academy provides online training and webinars for charities with a shop and/ or café. The training has been developed by industry experts. There are paid and free modules available. Click here to find out more.

The next webinar is Christmas Visual Merchandising – practical, inspirational tips & ideas for making a magical & profitable Christmas.
Date: 27th October 2021

Find out how to attend the next webinar here.

Safeguarding and Risk Management Hub
The Hub is a freely accessible online resource providing guidance, support, advice and access to training resources concerning safeguarding and risk management for organisations and individuals working with young people.

The Hub’s resources include specific guidance topics arranged into four key areas of Safe People; Safe Place & Activities; Safe Policy, Process & Procedure; and Safe Equipment & Resources.

Click here to register for available courses.

Cook at Centre @ Halton
An opportunity exists for an enthusiastic and reliable person with experience of cooking for large numbers (up to 50) to provide meals for over the 55s Luncheon Club.

Minimum 5 hours on 2nd and 4th Fridays of the month. Competitive salary.

Application closing date is on the 15th October 2021.

Successful applicant will be required to start as soon as possible.

Contact Naomi: 01524 811316 or email [email protected]

Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust Initial Response Service

LSCFT have a newly developed Initial Response Service (IRS) that will provide a single point of contact for all Mental Health urgent and routine referrals via one single number and a dedicated email address in each of the locality areas. The service includes an extended crisis mental health helpline and rapid response function (for an urgent face to face assessment). New service will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

From November LSCFT will gradually start diverting referrals for the START team in Pennine to a single team based in the Mount in Accrington. This central team in the IRS will triage each referral and make contact with the referrer to let them know the outcome.

The IRS model for the Central Lancashire and West Lancashire Service is due to commence in February 2022. This will be based at their Avondale Unit on the Royal Preston Hospital Site Fylde and the Bay is planned to go live in April 2022. The Trust has held extensive co-design workshops held with partners, people with lived experience of mental ill-health, carers and professionals in developing the service model.

Click here to find out more about the initial response service.

Mental Health Support Groups – Delivering ongoing support throughout the year.

Do you struggle with depression, anxiety or poor mental health? Are you feeling lonely or isolated? Or do you struggle with low self-esteem?

Adullam is providing a range of mental health support courses. Get in touch and register your place.

Next date: 1st October – 26th November 2021, 10.30 am.
Email: [email protected]
Call: 07449373979

Click here to learn more about available courses.

7 in 10 charities plan to change the way they operate over the next 12 months
During the pandemic, Charities Aid Foundation has been issuing regular pulse check surveys to understand the impact of the crisis on the sector and on giving.

Their latest poll results show:

• 7 in 10 charities plan to change the way they operate over the next 12 months
• Many are moving towards digital fundraising, but traditional approaches are not lost

Click here to read the full results.

Call for examples of good practice of social prescribing
The social prescribing team at NHS England and Improvement are co-producing a social prescribing maturity framework for integrated care systems with stakeholders. The purpose of this framework is to support systems to develop and implement social prescribing by outlining the key capabilities, processes and behaviours required to embed high-quality social prescribing and community support offers at all levels of the system.

The team is looking for examples of good practice of social prescribing being developed or implemented at a system, place, or neighbourhood. The team are particularly interested in examples that involve joint or collaborative commissioning or contracting arrangements at system or place; partnership working between VCSEs and PCNs; large-scale projects requiring multiple organisations in design and delivery; examples of strategic social prescribing workforce development or retention; and examples of work to specifically target health inequalities at system, place or neighbourhood. Other examples are welcomed.

Contact the team with examples or case studies at [email protected]

New research about affording the basics in Lancaster District
Citizens Advice North Lancashire has produced a new research project about how much it costs to live in Lancaster District. The research looks at how much people earn and how much people can get in benefits, and compares it with the costs of living.

The research was carried out by looking at actual wages and benefit income in Lancaster District (this varies from place to place due to the Local Housing Allowance) and the cost of living in Lancaster, including average costs for utilities, rent, childcare, food and clothing.

Click here to download the report.

Our organisational development team provide support on fundraising, governance, policies & procedures, safeguarding, DBS checks, monitoring and evaluation, media & marketing and setting up new community groups. If your organisation needs support whether it be listening ear, all aspects of volunteering support, payroll, independent examinations of accounts or funding guidance and support, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team:

• Free one-to-one development support, contact [email protected]
• Volunteering and upskilling your workforce, contact [email protected]
• Payroll, bookkeeping and independent examinations, contact [email protected]
• Or with any other enquiry, call 01524 555900 or email [email protected]