ESF REGIONAL COMPETITIVENESS & EMPLOYMENT 2007-2013
TENDER SPECIFICATION WORKSHOP (25 Sept 2007)
Notes from the Community Grants Workshop
Facilitator: Geoff Hyde Coventry City Council
Present: Andy Stowe WMEN
Jerry Conway WM LSC
Antoinette Smallman WM LSC
Key areas discussed:
Strategy:
The group agreed that the strategic fit for the community grants element of
the new ESF OP needed to be:
WM ESF Regional Framework
National Action Plan for Social Inclusion
DWP’s ‘Get Heard’ campaign
Local Neighbourhood Plans
Aim:
The group agreed that the aim of the community grants programme should be
to create opportunities for individuals to engage in a learning environment for
the first time where excluded and/or disadvantaged people could also gain
experience in shaping programmes that satisfy their own needs – and that of
their community.
The programme could also enable people to articulate their needs; thus
providing communities with a vehicle to disseminate lessons that emerge from
widespread, but usually fragmented actions which harness their undoubted
energy and potential – the very things that enhance social capital. This would
also encourage applied research into the issues around accessing and design
of information and services associated with learning and employment – how
wide is the digital divide?
Distribution of funding:
The group felt that community grants should not be tendered for at the
regional level because the intermediary bodies would be too far removed
from the localities to fully understand and therefore meet local area needs.
The group also felt that there were few, if any, regional organisations ‘fit for
purpose’ i.e. that would be resourced to distribute the grants effectively
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ESF REGIONAL COMPETITIVENESS & EMPLOYMENT 2007-2013
TENDER SPECIFICATION WORKSHOP (25 Sept 2007)
across the region in order to meet local needs.
The group also felt that dividing the funding by Local Authority would also
potentially dilute the impact of community grants.
Although the group felt that applications for community grants should be
assessed individually on merit (i.e. potential impact on those in greatest
need) without necessarily prioritising geographical coverage, the group
agreed that there was merit in the strategic alignment the funding with
ERDF Priority 3 (SUD) Package Areas. It was stressed however, that this
would could potentially exclude some of the rural shire areas.
Failing this, the preference was funding to be distributed at the sub-
regional level or by super-output areas.
There needs to be some work done on the type of organisations that we
would see running this. Track record of running Global Grants would be an
obvious qualification so Heart of England Foundation in C&W, and Digbeth
Trust in Bham should be considered as both have expressed an interest to
do so. Test the model to see how it works. It would also enable some
alignment with SUD packages in the areas served.
The group agree with the employability group that we need to avoid a
pattern of contracts that is purely reliant on large providers offering generic
services across large areas and that the specifications should give
significant weight to demonstration of locally tailored delivery including a
physical presence, visibility and trust within key local communities.
Target groups:
The group agreed that the specifications should reference all of the Priority
1 target groups but give tendering organisations the flexibility to bid to
deliver culturally sensitive activity to one or more of the target groups e.g.
ex-offenders, focusing instead on the strength of the case out forward e.g.
in terms of potential impact.
Activity:
The group agreed that the community grants element of the ESF OP
should encourage innovative applications from potential deliverers and
should therefore steer clear of defining the activities to be supported within
the specifications.
The group agreed that the ‘theme’ for the specifications could be
‘developing social capital’, and that they should focus on pre pre-
engagement activity designed to develop the local capacity of individuals
to access services. The group wanted to see a shift away from the usual
focus on ‘organisational capacity building’.
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ESF REGIONAL COMPETITIVENESS & EMPLOYMENT 2007-2013
TENDER SPECIFICATION WORKSHOP (25 Sept 2007)
The group re-iterated the significance of the notion of the aim of the
programme i.e. that community grants should focus on creating
opportunities for individuals to engage in a learning environment for the
first time, as this would allow for activities to be developed that do not
necessarily have an explicit link to formal learning e.g. projects related to
healthy living. This approach has been particularly successful in the WM
based ‘Engage’ project funded through the Equal Programme.
The group agreed that they would like to see organisations bidding to
deliver activities such as consultation events, confidence-building,
sessional training and mentoring/support, community champions, and
applied research.
One suggestion for tendered research was to look at ways of recognising
progression routes through informal learning.
The group discussed whether it would be appropriate to tender for test-bed
activity in the first round of the new OP thereby creating an opportunity for
evaluation prior to tendering on a larger scale.
Outputs:
Again, to encourage innovative bids, the group agreed that it would prefer
specifications to steer clear of defining outputs. It was felt that ‘hard’
outputs should not go beyond for example, ‘numbers attending’ and it was
agreed that bidding organisations needed to define the ‘soft’ outcomes that
would be achieved for example, ‘distance travelled’. The group would like
to see organisations focussing on promoting good work habits and/or
encouraging individuals to appreciate the benefits of further learning or
employment.
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