So what about this week?

The countywide Building Stronger Partnerships (BSP)  group agreed this week to feed information into the 'third sector working group' at the County Council especially to try and improve the clarity of guidance around quality assurance required of charities who seek to contract with the county council and around the issues of ownership of intellectual property arising from those contracts. This is aimed at helping to address the inconsistencies curently existing which make the tendering process more fraught than it needs to be.BSP also agreed to publish a report of Compact in Action detailing some of the achievements of the Compact in West Sussex with recommendations for a further refreshed Compact.The Advancing Infrastructure in West Sussex (Transforming Local Infrastructure) group met to discuss ways in which the partners might work together in the event of the bid not being successful.The Local Strategic Partnership in Adur & Worthing (Waves Ahead) this week reviewed the progress of health & wellbeing, neighbourhood action and business partnership development. There is still a much needed focus on local neighbourhood improvement areas where need caused by deprivation is high. Business health checks are to be carried out to gain insight into the health of that sector. Neighbourhood action plans are to be develeoped in Central, Heene and parts of Broadwater, Selden (Worthing) and Eastbrook ((Adur) wards with stakeholder meetings ongoing. The next three months sees the roll out across the county of the Family Intervention Project which has been piloted with some success in Worthing & Adur working with some of the most troubled families.The Fuel Poverty programme has continued to help people facing this including negotiating with gas suppliers and preventing disconnections; this project has shown that getting into arrears with heating costs causes such fear that people simply turn their heating off causing even further vulnerability.In a week when further cuts to welfare benefits are proposed and charities and voluntary groups are facing losses of funding and reduced income, it is difficult to see what we can do to prevent increased hardship and suffering among the communities the voluntary sector works with. However positive news has come from Business in the Community who want to be working across Worthing & Adur to harness social responsibility among local companies. This heralds greater support for charities including contributions of time and expertise from employees of those businesses.