Nottingham City Council is undertaking a review of the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) Grants Programme. The current programme is coming to an end in March 2022. Please don't miss this opportunity to feed directly into the process to help shape the future of the VCS Grants Programme.

Louise Graham, VCS Partnerships Manager at Nottingham City Council, is leading the consultation process and invites you to have your say.

Consultation events will be hosted by NCVS over Zoom during the first week of August. We ask you to register to ensure you are sent instructions about how to join the meeting on your preferred session date.

All events are the same so you only need to register to attend one.

The choice of dates is:

• Wednesday 4 August 2021 from 2pm to 3.30pm - Register here
  
  
• Wednesday 4 August 2021 from 6pm to 7.30pm - Register here
  
  
• Thursday 5 August 2021 from 10am to 11.30am - Register here

The next joint meeting of our Children and Young People's Providers Network (CYPPN) and Vulnerable Adults' Providers Network (VAPN), will take place on Thursday 26 August 2021, from 10am-12noon, on Zoom.

If you are a member of either network, don't forget to register your place to ensure you're sent instructions about how to join using Zoom. Registration will remain open until 10am the day before the meeting.

If you have any queries about this event, please contact ncvs@nottinghamcvs.co.uk

As we move towards Monday 19 July, when we expect pandemic restrictions to be lifted, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is doing a big push to vaccinate all eligible cohorts, with a particular focus on 18-39 year olds.

It is really important that the younger groups come forward for a vaccine to protect themselves from the Delta variant and to protect their family and friends.

The NHS is continuing to offer walk in appointments across all vaccination sites in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. All sites are offering both Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines, apart from Queen's Medical Centre which is only offering Pfizer.

If any member of the public is unsure or has any concerns, clinicians will be available at the vaccination sites to help put them at ease and answer any questions.

To view the latest opening times at vaccination sites in Nottingham and Notts, visit the CCG website.

The Department of Health and Social Care (CHSC) is offering free PPE (personal protective equipment) for use by voluntary sector organisations.

You can express your interest in this free PPE by completing this short form with a few details and then a representative of DHSC will contact you to arrange delivery.

Please note that the details you provide will only be passed to DHSC, and the PPE and the delivery are both free of charge.

The date of this year's Nottinghamshire Pride event has been moved from Saturday 31 July to Saturday 11 September.

The decision was made due to the government's delay in lifting Covid-19 restrictions until 19 July. Visit the Nottinghamshire Pride Facebook page for updates.

UK charities and Community Interest Companies (CICs) that support those facing the impacts of financial and digital exclusion are invited to apply to The Santander Foundation for a share of The Financial & Digital Empowerment Fund.

Twelve grants of up to £150,000 per organisation (over a three year period) are being provided by the foundation to support those most excluded from financial services.

The National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF) has partnered with The Ubele Initiative to invest £50 million in Black and ethnic minority charities over the next five years. The new scheme, called The Phoenix Way, is expected to open for funding applications in the autumn (2021).

Black and Minoritised community-led charities and grassroots groups that wish to register their interest in this innovative new programme are being encouraged to email thephoenixway@ubele.org

Large charities received more than a quarter of emergency Covid-19 government funding aimed at smaller community organisations, it has emerged.

In an article published last week on the Civil Society news website, it was revealed that hundreds of grants from the Coronavirus Community Support Fund (CCSF) were awarded to charities with incomes over £1 million, even though the fund was established to help small and medium-sized charities cope with the impact of the pandemic.

The findings are the result of an independent evaluation by the polling company Ipsos MORI. 

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”. This chant has rung out in school playgrounds and where groups of children get together since time immemorial. Even as we chanted this, or heard it chanted, we knew that it wasn’t true but it reminds us that words can hurt and the way we use them is important.

If you and I already know each other, you’ll already know that I am the ultimate, grumpy old bloke and I am well aware that I’ve talked about how supporting volunteers is often a challenge. But putting flippancy aside, I am very serious about this topic.

Wednesday 28 July, 10am-11am, online via Zoom

Have you ever considered what could be preventing volunteers from applying to your organisation? There can be lots of invisible barriers between your volunteering opportunity and someone who would be ideal for the role.

Book onto our next Addressing the Barriers to Volunteering course to explore this topic in more detail and discuss ways to overcome barriers, in order to give the volunteer and your organisation a rewarding, fulfilling and effective volunteering experience.

You can find out more about our course and meet our Trainer Dave Thomas in this video.

The cost of this course is £10 per participant.

Join us online, on Wednesday 4 August, 10am-12noon, for our next Leaders of Volunteers Network meeting.

Nottingham’s Leaders of Volunteers Network (LoVN) is the meeting place for anyone with an interest in volunteering. Share your experience, give and receive advice and network with people who understand volunteers and volunteering.

Please register your place to ensure you are sent instructions about how to join the session on Zoom.

If you have any questions about LoVN or this event, please contact Dave Thomas at davet@nottinghamcvs.co.uk

Wednesday 21 July 2021, 5.30pm-7.30pm

This two-hour online course, delivered by our expert Trainer David Saunders, will help you to further develop your involvement and awareness of trustee duties, so that you can better support your organisation.

This session is suitable for trustees (Board Members / Committee Members) of voluntary and community sector organisations as well as directors of Community Interest Companies (CICs), Charitable Incorporated Organisations (CIOs) and social enterprises.

Cost: £20 per participant

Tuesday 27 July 2021, 10.30am-12.30pm

This new two-hour online session will explain the basics of health and safety, then take you through the process of carrying out a risk assessment in an organisational environment.

This session is suitable for trustees, staff, volunteers, and in fact anyone wanting to develop a basic understanding of health and safety, including risk assessments.

Cost: £20 per participant

Wednesday 21 July 2021, 10.30am-1.45pm

An online course giving a basic understanding of roles and responsibilities in the safeguarding of children and young people and how to respond to concerns.

This interactive course is delivered over one session, but divided into two parts, allowing for a 45 minute break and reflection between part one (10.30am-11.45am) and part two (12.30pm-1.45pm). You are required to complete both parts.

Cost: £25 per participant.

The PDU aims to promote and facilitate collaborative learning and the sharing of good practice among professionals and volunteers from all sectors, in Nottingham and neighbouring areas, who work with people experiencing multiple disadvantage (understood as a combination of mental ill-health, substance misuse, homelessness, offending and domestic abuse, among other issues).

Contact our coordinator Filipa Santos for more information by sending an email to enquiries@pdunottingham.org or calling 0115 934 8428 or 07483 354 441.

Join our free online hub www.pdunottingham.org

Follow us on Twitter @NottinghamCVS #PDUNottingham.

All of our upcoming events are fully booked. Keep checking this space for new events being announced for the autumn period.

In the meantime, you might be interested in one of our Communities of Practice (CoP).

Our CoPs are informal forums for social learning, designed to facilitate discussion and sharing of experience and good practice between peers. The groups meet on a quarterly basis and welcome professionals, volunteers and people with lived experience of multiple disadvantage and using support services.

Follow the links below to find out more about our current CoPs that are open to new members:

Co-production Community of Practice

Gender Responsive Services Community of Practice

Homeless Link, the national membership body for frontline homeless agencies, is calling on local authorities and charities who regularly support people experiencing rough sleeping, to come together and sign a pledge to #SupportDontDeport people sleeping rough.

The call for action follows on from Home Office changes to Immigration Rules in October 2020, which made rough sleeping grounds for refusing or cancelling someone's leave to remain within the UK. These rules were developed without consultation with the homelessness sector.

Applications are now open for the 2022 GSK IMPACT Awards, funded by GSK and managed in partnership with The King's Fund.

The awards recognise charities doing excellent work to improve health and wellbeing. They are open to registered charities that are at least three years old, working in a health-related field in the UK, with a total annual income of between £120,000 and £3 million.

To mark the 25th anniversary of the GSK IMPACT Awards, The King's Fund has increased its funding and launched the new GSK Grow Programme, which will support small charities working with some of the least privileged and more diverse communities in the UK.

NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) are running a consultation to inform the creation of a new holistic, healthy lifestyle service for children and young people who are significantly above a healthy weight without having other health issues. This service will provide support for those in Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire County (not including Bassetlaw).

The CCG would like to hear from children and young people up to the age of 18, their parents and carers and frontline professionals with experience of weight management services.