Partnership Working

Partnership working may seem an unusual item to put in our services category but the fact is that partnerships take effort and require time and resources to work. WVA contributes a significant amount to a range of partnerships across the Borough and region to be benefit of the partners we work with and the Communities we all serve.

WVA have always been committed to working in partnership between the Public, Private, Community and Voluntary Sectors. We are keen to hear from you, maybe we could link up and work together.

One of our ongoing strategic objectives is to work in partnership to achieve greater involvement of the voluntary and community sector in partnership decision making, service design and delivery and to support the development of stronger relationships between all organisations wishing to work in partnership.

Partnership Services

• Help gain representation by voluntary and community organisations on strategic partnerships.
• Signpost and linking of voluntary and community organisations to emerging strategies and partnerships.
• Directly accessing a range of partnerships and initiatives via our established links into them.

Sector Intelligence

Knowing who is out there in the sector and doing what is valuable to a range of partners and we are constantly seeking to improve the quality of information we hold about the sector in Walsall. To find out about organisations operating in the Walsall area you will soon be able to visit our VCS information portal at www.walsallvcs.info the servcie is currently being developed. In addition to the portal every year WVA completes a sector mapping exercise which is part data checking and part detailed review to give us important information about the sector to better inform us how we can best support them. Every year demands of the sector change and we are reviewing the information we need to collect. A summary of what we offer is below.

• What organisations are out there
• What activities they undertake
• Where they are based
• The areas and client groups they serve
• How big an organisation is
• What their staff and volunteer profile is
• How they are funded

The information we hold is as good as we can get on the resources we have to administer such a large data set and depends on the quality of information organisations provide us with. The co-operation of the sector in providing us with this information is important and much appreciated and has proven extremely valuable to a wide range of our own and partner organisations work.

If you are a Voluntary or Community organisation please fill in our 2007-2008 mapping excercise here (coming soon) if someone from your organisation has not done so already. If we have up to date information about your organisation we can reflect on how we can better serve your needs and our mapping exercise provides you with the opportunity to tell us!

In 2006-2007 the biggest challenge for the sector was finding funding. In response to this WVA have been working with partners on how to better involve the VCS in servcie design and delivery and create new opportunities but we have also taken direct action and developed the West Midlands first VCS funding portal. Find out about funding available to Walsall organisations at www.walsallfunding.com