More than one week on from the tragic events that unfolded in Nottingham, it is difficult to fathom how, if ever, things will be the same. What won’t ever change is that Ian, Barnaby and Grace have lost their lives, leaving families and loved ones with holes in their hearts that will never heal. While those who were injured in the events will physically heal with time, they will bear emotional scars for life.

But, Nottingham is a great city, It is resilient in the face of adversity and will not allow hate and fear to dominate. This is a time for our diverse communities to stand more united than ever and to reject those who would seek to undermine this through hateful rhetoric. 

We must honour the wishes of the families of Ian, Barnaby and Grace to unite in love and not hate. This is a challenge that Nottingham is more than capable of. United against hate we will eventually heal, while we will never forget.

At NCVS we wish to extend our sincere condolences to all of the families, friends and loved ones that have been directly impacted by the incidents. To Nottingham’s communities, local authorities and public services, we will work alongside you to continue to bring #NottinghamTogether.

You may be feeling the impact of last week's events. Or being reminded of other incidents of violence and tragic loss of life that have affected our Nottingham communities.

Help is available for anyone who has been negatively impacted by incidents in Nottingham:

• Nottinghamshire Victim CARE can be contacted on 0800 304 7575 or www.nottsvictimcare.org.uk. The helpline is open Monday to Friday, from 8am to 8pm and Saturday from 9am until 5pm.
• If you need victim support outside of these hours, call the national Victim Support helpline on 0808 168 9111.

NCVS is working in partnership with Historic England to lead on a new Heritage Buddies Project. This is an innovative pilot project to test and trial an approach to delivering social prescribing and wellbeing through heritage in local settings, across Nottingham City.

The project aims to help people appreciate the value of their local heritage and the local historic environment, experience how it can positively benefit their health and wellbeing, widen the access to heritage organisations and activities they offer, support active participation in engaging with the historic environment and strengthen community cohesion and pride of place.

The project will test and trial the use of volunteers in both befriending and heritage organisations to link people in need through social prescribing to engagement with local heritage and the historic environment in a place.

What is a Heritage Buddy?

A Heritage Buddy is a specially trained volunteer who helps a person, on a one-to-one basis or as part of a small group, to overcome barriers to taking part in activities they want to do. This could be visiting a local heritage site and connecting with the history of their community, going on a heritage walk or taking part in a creative heritage activity.

A Heritage Buddy could simply help a participant access a bus timetable to travel to an activity or introduce and help the individual to take part in a heritage activity they want to do.

Want to get involved?

We would like to invite interest and involvement from befriending or heritage organisations with a volunteer policy and supporting procedures, who are interested to involve their volunteers in this pilot. Volunteer training with organisations will take place throughout July, August and September 2023.

Not able to host a heritage buddy? We will also be creating a supportive Heritage Providers Signposting Section on the NCVS website to increase awareness of provision and opportunities across the city.

If you are interested to be involved or would like further information, please contact Sarah Greaves, our Heritage Buddies Coordinator. Sarah works Thursdays and Fridays. Email sarahg@nottinghamcvs.org.uk.

We'd like to say a huge thank you to our sector for reaching out and booking a stall at the first Social Prescribing Conference in Nottinghamshire (due to take place on Thursday 29 June 2023). The event sold out in no time. We have a fantastic 30+ partners at the event across our voluntary and community sector, health and public services.

For those who have booked a stall, you will have received a confirmation email with details and we are looking forward to seeing you. If anybody wanted a slot at this event and was not able to secure one, or for those who weren't aware of the event and are interested, please keep your eyes peeled for future events and our concluding report.

After the event, we will be creating a report showcasing learning from the day, as well as highlighting all our partners in attendance. We'll post details of how to access the report as soon as it's available.

The event has been received with such enthusiasm and positivity that it confirms our belief that our voluntary sector and social prescribers are looking for opportunities to connect and work together. We hope this will be the first of more events, perhaps at smaller, local community levels as well as other county-wide events.

If you have any questions or observations about the VCSE sector and social prescribing, please contact Ruthe Sawyer, Programme Manager for Social Prescribing and Community Development. Email ruthes@nottinghamcvs.co.uk.

This is a reminder that the second round of changes in the Charities Act 2022 came into force this month (starting from 14 June).

The changes relate to:

• selling, leasing or otherwise disposing of charity land
• using permanent endowment
• charity names.

Advocacy drop-in
Second Tuesday of every month, from 11am to 1pm at Mary Potter Health Centre, 76 Gregory Boulevard, Nottingham NG7 5HY. Services can be provided in Urdu and Punjabi.

Women can receive culturally sensitive support on a range of issues such as resettlement support, signposting services, divorce, child contact, domestic abuse, FGM and forced marriage. No appointment necessary. Although if you would like to make contact in advance, call 0115 837 2627 / 07883 430392 or email enquiries@nmwn.co.uk.

Legal Advice surgery
First Tuesday of every month, by appointment only from 9.30am to 12.30pm at Mary Potter Health Centre, 76 Gregory Boulevard, Nottingham NG7 5HY.

This is a culturally sensitive women-only free legal advice service to help Muslim women who experience violence or abuse in their marriages or close relationships.

The surgeries are run by legal professionals and you can confidentially talk about divorce, child contact, domestic abuse, FGM and forced marriage. Advice and advocacy is also provided on wider issues like housing debt and disability. Appointments should be made in advance. Call 0115 837 2627 / 07826 464722 or email enquiries@nmwn.co.uk.

Some significant changes have been announced in the new Strategy.

• The maximum Awards for All grant to communities will double to £20,000 this autumn, as part of the seven-year strategy.
• Groups will also be given two years to complete Awards for All projects – up from the current 12 months.

There is a greater emphasis on equitable funding: "We know not all communities have the opportunities or the right set-up to come together. So, while our funding is available to all communities, we’ll invest most where the need is greatest, with people, places and communities who experience poverty, disadvantage and discrimination."

Apply by 12 noon on Friday 30 June 2023.

Bupa Foundation Green Community Grants support practical projects which help both people and planet health through funding amounts between £250 and £2,500.

Priority will be given to the regeneration of green spaces for community use. However, other examples include:

• Improving green spaces for community activities to improve wellbeing
• Tree planting to improve air quality and biodiversity
• A school wanting to create an outdoor classroom or forest school
• A community group who’d like to create an allotment
• A voluntary organisation wanting to install sustainable equipment, such as a heat pump.

This is not an exhaustive list and other project ideas are welcomed.

Your volunteer training has a monetary value. Are you making the most of it?

Whether a new volunteer joins you to make the tea for your group meeting or becomes one of your trustees, they will need some training. There probably isn’t a volunteer role anywhere that doesn’t need some initial training or induction.

As Leaders of Volunteers, training is a very important part of our function that can involve considerable investment of time and resources. While our training will always be tailored to the activities and needs of our own organisation or project, many of us could be delivering training on similar topics.

One example of this would be training of befriending volunteers.

Despite the comprehensive training programme offered by NCVS, we can’t offer training in those specialist skills. We provide “generalist” volunteering and organisational skills support and training.

Here’s the suggestion:
You are the expert in your own service area. Could you open up the specialist training you already provide to external partners?

There are already organisations who have opened up their specialist training to the sector. You can regularly see these in the 'Training from Other Providers' section of the NCVS e-bulletin. If this is something you could offer, please let us know by emailing the details to communications@nottinghamcvs.co.uk.

There is an issue that prompted this article in the first place.

NCVS has been asked if we know of any organisations providing training in befriending skills. Is this you?

If you’d like to talk about this area of volunteer support – as a provider or as a potential partner, please contact Dave Thomas, our Volunteering Development Officer. Email davet@nottinghamcvs.co.uk or call 07564 040767.

There are likely to be benefits and disadvantages to opening up your training to external partners, and we've considered some of these in the full version of this article. So please read more...

Feel free to drop-in between these times and spend as much time as you can, getting creative and producing something sustainable and colourful for the streets of Hockley. You can help out even more to let them know you'll be joining a workshop by signing up for a session on Eventbrite.

This is a week-long festival to welcome, celebrate and stand alongside people who are seeking asylum and who are refugees within the city of Nottingham.

A reminder that events continue until Sunday 25 June 2023.

Wednesday 28 June 2023, 3.30pm to 4.30pm
Online event, free to attend

Nottingham Youth Trends is a project led and delivered by Nonsuch Studios, Nottingham's independent theatre, creative venue and arts charity.

Nottingham Youth Trends is Nottinghamshire's largest youth-voice survey that has been running since 2018. Every year, 13 to 25 year olds in Nottinghamshire are asked what it's like to be them and key questions on key areas of their lives. The data is then analysed and shared back, in an open access manner, to all organisations, schools and project partners.

Youth organisations, schools, researchers and those who work with 13 to 25s are invited to feed into the process to shape this year's survey.

If you can't make the kickstart event and would like to find out more or would like to partner/support the project in a significant fashion, please email hello@nonsuchstudios.co.uk.

Friday 30 June 2023, 1pm to 2pm
Online seminar, free to attend

The latest results from the third wave of the quarterly VCSE Sector Barometer, carried out by Pro Bono Economics (PBE) and Nottingham Trent University National VCSE Data and Insights Observatory have been published in a report called Shifting out of reverse.

An online seminar is being held on Friday 30 June 2023, especially for VCSE groups and organisations, to discuss the findings of Wave 3.

You are invited to participate. With your support, the aim is to further develop the Barometer so that it becomes the largest, most useful UK indicator of trends and issues in the voluntary and community sector. 

The results show that, while a large majority of charities still expect demand over the coming months to increase, a growing proportion expect that they will be able to meet it. For the first time since the survey started in November 2022, more than half of charities of all sizes (51% of large charities, 52% of medium charities and 61% of small charities) expect to be able to meet demand for their support over the next three months. There is, however, rising concern about dwindling volunteer numbers leaving charities in a precarious position.

Wednesday 12 July 2023, 10am to 12.30pm

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

Cost: £25 per participant

Wednesday 26 July 2023, 10am to 12.30pm

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.

Cost: £25 per participant

Wednesday 30 August 2023, 10am to 12.30pm

An online course giving a basic understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the Designated Safeguarding Lead Person.

Cost: £25 per participant

Wednesday 16 August 2023, 6pm to 7.30pm

An interactive online session for Trustees (or members of Management Committees) of organisations whose activities put them in contact with vulnerable adults or children.

Cost: £15 per participant

Wednesday 5 July 2023, 6pm to 8pm

This two-hour online session covers the basic information for all trustees, whether you are new to the role or long-established.

Cost: £20 per participant

Tuesday 18 July 2023, 10am to 12.15pm

A new interactive hands-on workshop for organisations and community groups who want to practice their skills and would welcome constructive feedback to further develop their skills in writing successful funding applications.
Cost: £20 per participant

Tuesday 10 October 2023, 10.30am to 12.30pm

Do you manage a space, office or building? This new two-hour online session will take your Fire Wardens and/or Fire Marshal through the basics. As a result, they will be better equipped to carry out these very important roles.

Cost: £20 per participant

Tuesday 7 November 2023, 6.30pm to 8.30pm

This two-hour online session is intended for trustees who have completed our 'Being a Trustee' course, who want to further develop their involvement and awareness of trustee duties and improve their personal skill set.

Cost: £20 per participant

Tuesday 16 January 2024, 10.30am to 12.30pm

Are you acting as secretary or note taker, or do you need to record meetings? Learn how to take effective minutes and make your task easier. This two-hour online session replaces our previous face-to-face three-hour course and will take you through the process of producing a 'minute'.

Cost: £20 per participant

Wednesday 11 October 2023, 6pm to 8pm

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.

Cost: £20 per participant

Monday 3 July 2023, 6pm to 8pm

What is the right structure for your organisation? This two-hour online session will explain your options and provide you with some useful tips to help you through the process of registration and beyond.

Cost: £20 per participant

Tuesday 19 September 2023, 10am to 11.15am

For organisations and community groups who are new to applying for funding, or for those in need of a refresher. Relevant for groups applying for cost of living funding and recovery support as well as other general funding.

Cost: £10 per participant

Thursday 29 June 2023, 10am to 11am

In this one-hour online session, we will identify some of the barriers that potential volunteers face to becoming involved in your organisation and share ideas to remove these barriers.

Cost: £10 per participant

Thursday 9 November 2023, 10am to 11am

This one-hour online session aims to share some ideas about how best to deal with the inevitable disagreements, personality clashes and conflicts that arise from time to time among a team of volunteers.

Cost: £10 per participant

Wednesday 5 July 2023, 10am to 11am

This one-hour online session looks at methods that have proved to be effective in volunteer leadership, including the best ways to plan, involve, support and retain volunteers.

Cost: £10 per participant

Thursday 21 September 2023, 10am to 12 noon

For some time, we’ve been asked about training that goes beyond the basics of managing and supporting volunteers. In this new two-hour online session, we’ll explore some of the real-life issues that you are facing.

Cost: £20 per participant

Tuesday 5 September 2023, 10am to 12 noon

A two-hour online course for Leaders of Volunteers to start to develop an understanding of some of the legal requirements that relate to your volunteering programme.

Cost: £20 per participant

Thursday 20 July 2023, 10am to 11am

A one-hour online session to help your volunteer role descriptions stand out, ensuring you attract enthusiastic volunteers.

Cost: £10 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 Katie Hall, our PDU Programme Manager, for more information: enquiries@pdunottingham.org

Join our free online hub www.pdunottingham.org

Follow us on Twitter @NottinghamCVS #PDUNottingham.

This is a quarterly forum for anyone with an interest in in employability and skills in the context of severe and multiple disadvantage (SMD), who recognises the benefits of training and employment, and wants to embed this more within their organisation / roles.

It is a supportive peer led space for practitioners, volunteers and people with lived experience to come to together to learn and share expertise about skills led recovery, employment and resettlement.

The next meeting is on Tuesday 8 August 2023, from 10am to 12 noon via Zoom.

Please email enquiries@pdunottingham.org if you would like to attend.

Download our Employability and Skills CoP poster to share with your networks.

Due to popular demand, we are beginning a new “Working Residents” subgroup within our Employability and Skills Community of Practice (CoP), to more fully understand the barriers to employment experienced by both staff and service users within supported accommodation settings.

This new Subgroup will provide opportunities to gain more in-depth understanding of this topic, and to develop case studies highlighting good practice and positive outcomes, to be shared as learning resources and promote the benefits of engaging with employability.

Whilst our main CoP will continue to be an open group for people to learn about employability and skills in the context of SMD, this forum will be a closed group to people working within or receiving support from supported accommodation locally.

Please email enquiries@pdunottingham.org if you would like to attend.

Download our poster for more information and to share with your networks.

Following our “Introduction to Gambling Related Harm, Credit and Illegal Money Lending” workshop earlier this month, we have launched a monthly Gambling Related Harm Learning Series to deep dive on important topics in more depth. These take the form of free 1 hour live webinars on Wednesday mornings (usually the first Wednesday of the month).

Gambling-related harms are the adverse impacts from gambling on the health and wellbeing of individuals, families, communities and society. These harms impact on people’s resources, relationships and health. Harms can be experienced not just by gamblers themselves. They can also affect their children, partners, wider families and social networks, employers and communities.

Our first webinar will focus on Gambling Related Harm and the Cost Of Living.
In this session we will explore how the cost of living is impacting people experiencing gambling related harm. We will discuss national research around the new challenges that people who gamble face and the influence this is having on gambling behaviours.

Though you do not have to attend all the webinar sessions, it is recommended you do to get the most out of the series. You can register for all events in the series at the links below:

• Cost of Living - Wednesday 5 July 2023, 10am to 11am
• Screening - Wednesday 2 August 2023, 10am to 11am
• Affected Others/Women - Wednesday 6 September 2023, 10am to 11am
• Cultural responsivity - Wednesday 4 October 2023, 10am to 11am

We welcome individuals with lived experience of Severe Multiple Disadvantage (SMD) to attend, as well as professionals and volunteers from all sectors.

Though attendance is free, advance booking is essential.

Want to know more about how you can contribute to reducing the impact of Domestic Abuse in your community?

Equation has launched a brand-new series - Safer Streets - reducing the impact of domestic abuse in communities. These free, 90-minute sessions help to create safer communities for everyone and are available for free in Nottingham City.

• Community By-Stander - Approaches to Domestic abuse and Sexual Harassment training is ideal for office staff, staff teams, volunteers, and community members.
  
  
• J9 training is relevant for staff working in premises which are open to the public and service users. On completion of the J9 training, staff teams will know how to offer ‘safe spaces’ for survivors of Domestic Abuse. Safe spaces offer survivors support by offering a private space and the use of a telephone so survivors can discreetly reach out to domestic abuse specialist agencies.

A variety of dates are available during June, July and August 2023.

For more information contact training@equation.org.uk.

Direct Help & Advice (DHA) is a charity working across Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire that supports people into work, education or training and provides information and advice around debt and housing issues.

They are currently delivering a variety of free workshops across Nottingham City to help with practical money management skills. Sessions are offered through Multiply, a new government-funded programme to help adults improve their numeracy skills.

Participants must be aged 19+, employed or unemployed, live in Derby City or Nottingham City, and not have a Level 2 or GCSE equivalent in Maths.

DHA can come to your venue and deliver sessions to your staff or volunteers.

To learn more about the full range of workshops on offer, call 0115 930 0199 / 07593 678432 or email training@dhadvice.org.

Vision West Nottinghamshire College is currently offering a 3-day First Aid at Work qualification fully funded by the European Social Fund.

This course would usually cost in the region of £200-£300, however if you are a small to medium business located in the D2N2 area this course can be funded through the Reskill & Recover project.

Some of the topics covered include:

• assessing an incident
• managing an unresponsive casualty
• CPR
• heart attacks
• choking
• head and spinal injuries
• fractures
• anaphylaxis.

If your business isn’t eligible for the European Social Fund, there may be other funding available to support you with the desired course.

If this could be of benefit to your organisation, please contact Tricia Dean, Business Development Account Manager at West Notts College for further information.
Email tricia.dean@wnc.ac.uk.

The background to the Youth Work training offer is that Base 51 Training Academy was fortunate to secure vital funding from Nottinghamshire Violence Reduction Partnership and The office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Nottinghamshire.

This enables Base 51 to deliver fully funded, accredited youth work training to people working with children and young people from the voluntary and community sector across Nottingham and Nottinghamshire.

The training opportunities in Youth Work range from Level 1 Certificate in Exploring Youth Work, through to accredited and JNC recognised Level 2 Certificate in Youth Work Practice and Level 3 Diploma in Youth Work Practice.

There isn't an exact start date and schedule for the next set of cohorts, as this is dependent on numbers. However, a Level 2 Award cohort is scheduled to start, hopefully around the beginning of September 2023.

Please contact Nikki Hutt, Training Academy Coordinator, for further information. Email n.hutt@base51.org.uk.

Tuesday 5 September to Thursday 28 September 2023
Tickets: £65 per person (includes eight live webinars)

Throughout September, Harmless is hosting a fourth annual online Suicide Bereavement Conference, called "2 steps forward, 1 step back: How do we keep momentum in challenging times?"

To mark World Suicide Prevention Day, they will be presenting a series of eight short live webinars examining practical applications for working in suicide bereavement. Sessions take place every Tuesday and Thursday between 5 and 28 September, from 10am to 11am. Each will be led by an expert in the field.

This unique CPD-accredited event allows you the flexibility to join as many as you like. If you are unable to attend any sessions, they will be recording the whole conference and making sessions available to delegates for viewing from October via the Harmless e-portal.

Final project proposals will need to be submitted by 12 noon on Wednesday 20 September 2023.

The next round of PhD research project development has begun and runs through to September 2023. This development phase is a core part of the Col(l)aboratory programme which brings together Nottingham academics (from both Nottingham Trent University and University of Nottingham) and a wide range of partners from local community-focused organisations to work together to co-create new PhD research projects which address challenges relevant to Nottingham and Nottinghamshire communities.

Under the remit of Co(l)laboratory funding, community partners must be organisations who are based and operate within Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. Community partners can be from any organisation whose work has a focus on the local community, whether that be large organisations such as NHS bodies and City or County Council departments, or smaller organisations such as local charities, schools and community groups.

Ten projects started earlier this year, addressing challenges such as local mental health provision, understanding youth violence in Nottingham, local experiences of modern slave labour practices, and much more.

Online information events are being held so you can find out more. These take place on Tuesday 27 June and Tuesday 4 July, both from 1pm to 2pm.

Closing date for applications is 9.30am on Monday 21 August 2023 and the Den is on Tuesday 26 September 2023.

Nottinghamshire Community Foundation has organised another Dragons' Den style event which is being hosted by Nottingham University. If you have a business idea and want to apply for a small grant to help you on the road to success, then please apply.

Applicants are given the opportunity to pitch to a panel of successful local business leaders who decide on which businesses will receive a grant of up to £3,000. Many also offer their advice and support for free.

Following the success of last year’s Knife Crime event, another event is being planned for 14 November 2023 at Nottingham College, Basford Hall Campus. Approximate timings are 2pm to 7pm. This is also during Operation Sceptre which is the national knife crime week of awareness/action.

This event is specifically for College students, Alternative Provision students and other young people. It is anticipated that 500+ young people will be involved and attend.

The three key themes of the event will be: 

• The impact of Knife Crime through the voices of those most affected by it.
• The positive work that is being done to reduce serious youth violence.
• The improvements required to continue to reduce serious youth violence.

If you are interested in supporting this event, having a stall, or providing an activity, please contact Romel Davis, Youth Outreach Worker at Nottinghamshire Police.
Email romel.davis@notts.police.uk.

Deadline for responses: Saturday 1 July 2023

The 32nd edition of the Charity Shops Survey 2023 is now open, and Civil Society would be grateful for your participation. Participants in this year’s survey will be entered into a prize draw for a chance to win a £100 John Lewis voucher.

Deadline for responses: Thursday 3 August 2023

The Carers UK annual State of Caring survey is the UK’s most comprehensive research into the lives and experience of unpaid carers. Last year, a record 13,000 carers took part in the survey – the highest number of responses to date.

With a General Election in Westminster on the horizon, knowing the issues carers face in 2023 couldn’t come at a more important time.

Please note that this survey is only for unpaid carers (or former unpaid carers) who are looking after a disabled, older or seriously ill relative or friend.