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Representation

Representation

Having a voice at planning and decision making meetings is important for the voluntary and community sector. Government sees the sector as being crucial to helping to bring about 'Big Society'. Partner agencies want to consult voluntary groups on key issues and priorities and the sector is expected to take on a central a role in delivering 'community benefits'. Voluntary groups of all sizes covering all sorts of activities have an important part to play in shaping plans and policies which will ultimately affect their service users and members.

Most voluntary groups cannot spare the time to get to meetings which are not directly concerned with their  daily objectives. Many groups rely on the CVS to do that for them and a core function for us is to ensure that voluntary and community action is represented at strategic levels of policy development and local and county partnerships. We attend a range of partnership meetings on behalf of the voluntary and community sector including:

  • 'Waves Ahead' the Worthing & Adur Local Strategic Partnership
  • Worthing & Adur Health & Well-being Partnership
  • Building Stronger Partnerships (Compact group: countywide)
  • Representation sub group (countywide)
  • Worthing & Adur Community Cohesion Group
  • West Sussex Public Service Board
  • Economic Development and Regeneration Partnership
  • West Sussex Health Trainers Steering Group
  • West Sussex Volunteer Centres Steering Group
  • Training Partnership Group

The above list changes from time to time as the agenda moves on; different frameworks and policy groups come and go.

Reporting back to you

As well as individual contact with groups on specific isues, we report back to the sector through our newsletters, briefing papers, e-bulletins, quarterly Voluntary Sector Forum meetings and through this website.

We need your views and we want to hear from as many voluntary groups as possible. We also frequently seek direct answers to questions that are topical and important to voluntary and community groups .

Please do keep us informed about issues you are grappling with, questions you would like asked and  answered or go to our Frequently Posed Questions page.

Better Representation

With other Councils for Voluntary Service and countywide colleagues we want to improve both the framework of and opportunities for representation. Ultimately we would like to establish a way of electing and supporting voluntary sector representatives from a wide 'constituency'  to sit on and report back from a range of partnerships across West Sussex.  Proposals for this had been worked on between 2009-10 but have been recently halted in the Summer of 2010 by the impending cuts in public sector finance which have put the brakes on new initiatives. This will not prevent us from supporting new proposals but it has halted what was already quite slow progress in enabling the voluntary sector in West Sussex to be properly represented. We will publish further updates and news on this website.